Hiii everyone :)

My name is Alizey and I am a third year undergraduate student, majoring in political science and philosophy. I’m planning on pursuing law and will hopefully be taking my LSAT this year, depending on how the year goes and if I can find the time to study. A little about me, I was originally born in Pakistan but I moved to Canada when I was 2 years old, so I basically grew up in BC for most of my life. Having moved so young and being “forced” (not necessarily forced in the negative sense…I just couldn’t think of the right word) to learn about two cultures, influenced my love for history and made me want to learn more about the world and other cultures.

I took SPAN 312C with Jon last year, so I’m not too curious about what the course will be like, in terms of structure. However, I am curious to see what books we will be discussing this year since the last course was focused heavily on Latin American literature. I really enjoyed that course because I got to expand my horizons and read books that I might not normally choose in the bookstore. Now, with this course I get to once again pick up books that I wouldn’t necessarily gravitate towards in the bookstore. I also love that we get options of books to choose from, it makes me feel like I have more control over my choices and the outcome I want to see from this class.

Speaking of the different books, I’m excited to see the different genres we will be touching on. I have to say the books revolving around death are standing out the most to me right now, maybe because I’m currently reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, which are a bunch of different short stories having to do with death. Anyways, besides the death theme I’m interested to see how the books that have a mixed themes (like love and regret) will turn out.

Touching on the lecture, I liked the part where it was said that “there is no romance world”, because initially when asked I would say places like France or Italy were the “romance world”. Maybe I was putting too much emphasis on the word “romance” when thinking and forgot that this class isn’t actually about romance. Anyways, when thinking more about it (and continuing on with the lecture) I came to understand what was said, and it was true that romance studies truly isn’t tied to anything. Their is a sense of fluidity when it comes to this discipline because its understanding and identity can vary across territories and culture.