Hi! My name is Rebecca and despite the mediocre and plain aesthetic, this blog took me way longer to set up than I would like to admit. Although I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I’ll read every long-winded anecdote before scrounging for the “jump to recipe” button, I’ll admit that I now have a newfound appreciation for the food bloggers who are able to effortlessly navigate through WordPress and pump out weekly posts.

Anways, going back to the introductory purpose of this post, I am a second-year student in the faculty of arts and I’m from Vancouver. I’m planning on majoring in either Political Science or International Relations. Also, I never really know what to write for introductions, but the instructions for writing blog posts mentioned that we can do anything including uploading cat pictures so I’ll take that offer up! For about a year or so, since the pandemic has allowed for more time to be spent at home, I took on fostering cats as a pastime. The picture below is my current foster cat, Tally and she’s currently up for adoption! 

As for why I decided to take this course, my initial motivation was for it to fulfill the Bachelor of Art’s literature requirement. However, after watching the first lecture and going through the website, I’m also excited to see what else I can get from this course! As one of my new year’s resolutions this year is to get back into reading, I’m hoping that taking this class can be an incentive for me to read more frequently.

Also, the “drinks pairings and playlist” pages on the site caught my eye and I’m very curious to find out how those drinks and songs will correlate with the readings and the topics that we’ll focus on. In particular, I remember singing along to “Thrift Shop” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis in the car on the way to school in fourth grade, so I’m intrigued about how it might be relevant to Paris Peasant. 

The lecture was very engaging and as someone who isn’t very familiar of what Romance Studies is, I think the note about how it “belongs nowhere, and it therefore finds a place everywhere” is very intriguing. Additionally, the comment about how a common denominator for Romantic languages is how they are not Latin also leads me to wonder what the opposite of Romance Studies is. Would it be fair to see Classicism as the opposite to Romance Studies?

All in all, I can’t wait to dive into this course and get a better understanding of what Romance Studies entails!