At the beginning of this course, I didn’t even know the full breadth of what “Romance Studies” was, let alone any of the future readings we’d have to read. The books we had to read for this course allowed me to explore various topics relevant to each of their distinct era and country of origin. The similar themes we got to read about, from memory and nostalgia to war and love made reading all these separate books connect and flow better with one another. My favourite book, however, is Agostino by Alberto Moravio, as it delivered a moving story depicting the coming of age of a young boy. It was a simple book, taking place during summer vacation but I thought that it still managed to explore the depths of growing up, and learning more about yourself as you get older.
Though I have only taken one other course that had contract grading, this course structure was still really different for me because of the blogs we had to write instead of formal written assignments such as essays. I think that the freedom we were able to get with our blogs gave us a way to express our personal opinions of the book more and showcase our individual ways of analyzing them. Rather, with other courses where essays have stricter rules, I find myself more so worried about things such as my grammar and citations and not the content of the reading itself. Although this course is different from my major and it was taken as a literature requirement, I still feel as if what I learned can nevertheless connect and translate well into my other courses. Because I study anthropology and part of it is getting to know other cultures better, I feel like I got a sense of that from our readings as they were each so specific to their respective culture and historical background. One thing I definitely took away from this course is how I approach my readings. For most readings we have to do for classes, we mainly only do it to get it done, but after this course, I feel that it’s important to know all aspects of the reading more; from the background of the author to the purpose of each storyline.
My last question for the class is: Though we mainly read books with the same themes, is there a specific one you were drawn to the most?
patricio robles
April 4, 2022 — 9:28 pm
Thanks for your post, Lillian! I am glad that it has helped you catch a bit of the culture of the (non-existent) Romance world. And primarily that you’ve gotten a new approach to reading.
Best regards.
michael liudeng
April 6, 2022 — 6:43 pm
Hi Lillian! I definitely agree with you in that finding connections between what we’ve read, especially near the end of the term, was really rewarding. I think that my favourite book was “The Society of Reluctant Dreamers”; Agualusa explored the idea of consciousness and dreaming in really beautiful ways, and the activity we did in class on Tuesday helped me see a bunch of connections between it and “Amulet” and “Soldiers of Salamis.” In that sense, it also felt informed by the Romance literature of the past but brough into a 21st century world, which I loved.