My name is Yiwen Guo, a third year student majoring in Economics combined Statistics. I really want my life in UBC to be colorful, so I still learn a lot of science courses even though I am in Arts. At the same time, I am interested in many things, such as reading, singing and playing the piano, that’s why I want to find a course about reading, writing and thinking.

To tell the truth, when I saw the name of this course, I had a strong interest in this course. This course is called Literature and Culture in the Roman World, so I had many questions when I see the name: how do we define romance in literature? What is romantic culture? People often say that France is a country of romance, and is there any connection between French culture and romance? There were so many questions I wanted to explore, so I chose this course without hesitation.

At the same time, we all know that literature and culture are inseparable. Since I can speak both Chinese and English myself, I find that the language of a country is a very important reflection of its culture. Then, when we study this course, I believe that I will also know about the history and culture of different countries by reading the literature works of different countries. These books are not just words, they are windows through which we try to touch the temperature of history. I was also amazed by the number of books read in this course, and I was really excited to read books from France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and other countries in the same course, almost all of which are from Europe with a long history. They have experienced the glory of the Renaissance and have countless cultural and artistic treasures, and I am very much looking forward to the inspirations that writers from these countries can bring to me.

What’s more, I really like the grading of this course. I found out that it was graded using “contract”. Because, we all know that reading is a very subjective thing, just like Shakespeare saying “there are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes”, but if it takes the form of “contract”, I no longer need to worry about whether my ideas can get high marks, but just need to express them directly. At the same time, blog also gives us a platform to express and discuss, we can discuss our opinions about books freely.

I am looking forward to meeting you in class!