Week One: About Me + Expectations

Hello!

I’m Vidushi and I’m a second-year psychology student in need of a more engaging elective course, which is why I’m here. I used to be an avid bookworm as a kid and it would be a task for my parents to get me to put my books away by bedtime. As much as I wanted that habit to stay, high school had other plans for me and I lost that touch that I once used to have to speed through books. I’m hoping that this course will plunge me back into reading while allowing me to venture through romance novels, several of which I’ve never heard of, but am very eager to learn about!

The introduction to Romance Studies through the first video really made me feel welcomed into this space of “not-Latin” speakers and it has cleared up a lot of misconceptions that I had about this course. I had initially assumed this course’s book selection to be Europe-based as the regions there are the origins of the Romance languages, essentially a Romance world. I found it very interesting how I was incorrect as actually, the idea of there being a Romance world just simply isn’t true because those languages are spoken across the globe in many different places. In fact, one of the texts is from Africa, which represents how romance novels have been chosen from just about any romance-language speaking region.

What I found very interesting about the conversation on romantic studies is how special, yet mind-boggling it must be to share a language with hundreds of speakers who each may have grown up in completely different cultural contexts but still have this one thing in common, drawing them to each other. The example that Tim Beasley-Murray gave about gathering speakers from London, Vancouver, Romania, and other regions and putting them in one room will of course show that each of them have a lot of differences in their beliefs, mindsets, cultures, personalities, values, etc. But, their language being the same will give them this foundation of literature which will bring forth a strong sense of belonging.

I feel truly fascinated by this revelation because it’s very similar to one of the reasons I have for why I chose to pursue psychology. We are built with an intricately distinctive and complex framework to carry out the same biological functions needed for survival and even though we are completely different and unique individuals, we still find others who resonate deeply with us across many contexts. This idea makes me fall in love with how incredibly fascinating human minds are and the linguistic context is one of the areas in which I hadn’t realized the extent of its influence on an individual, but upon hearing the above example, I feel like this course and the conversations that spark from it will truly give me yet another reason to love what I am pursuing.

Is there any link that you find between your passions or academics and the field of romance studies?