Introduction!

Hello! I’m Ava. I’m a second year psychology student and have absolutely no idea what I would like to do with that degree! (I’m living in denial of having to figure it out). I’m currently taking five courses alongside work, so I’m admittedly hoping this course has some ebbs and flows to the work level. I was born and raised here in Vancouver, but would ideally like to do Go Global at some point during my time at UBC. In my free time I enjoy doing puzzles, listening to music, and playing volleyball.

My course schedule as a whole required an overhaul and this course caught my eye, that being said, as such I came into this course with very little expectations beyond ideally not drowning in work. Though I enjoy reading and generally read a good bit, the amount of older translated literature I tend to read is rather low so I’m hoping this course may spark a bit more of an interest in that regard. Additionally, admittedly reading for enjoyment has taken a bit of a backburner for me as of late, as the swaths of schoolwork and textbook readings have prioritized my time, and made me dread having to read any more than I already have. Despite all of this, I have decently high hopes for this course’s methodology, as contract grading seems like an interesting idea to keep expectations clear and reduce grade anxiety (of which I have much). Ideally, this will be an interesting and engaging course which allows enough freedom to not seem stifling, but enough structure to explore various ideas and perspectives I don’t tend to naturally interact with. I don’t personally enjoy writing literature, which has stopped me from persuing a large portion of other English or Literature courses, which also may have facilitated interacitons with a wider variety of viewpoints, so I hope that this being more reading and discussion focused will fit me a bit better.

In regard to the question “Where is the Romance World?” found within the lecture, I would argue that the romance world cannot be a physical place in any sense of the word. Though the romance languages are a language family/group, that doesn’t give it physiological substance or a ‘world’. In this case, my instinctual response to the question of “Where is the Romance World?”, is that the question should instead be “What is, or would be the Romance World?”, should it exist in any medium. If essentially every boundary separating entities of all kinds, including land, is fiction, then how could the “Romance World” be truly separated out from any other? Who would, in theory, decide what that entailed? Rather, I’d argue it is an abstract if anything, accessible by those who wish to explore it linguistically, through any means, but not physically.