Hello everyone! My name is Daniel Choi, I am a second-year arts student currently with an undeclared major. I am looking forward to pursuing a major in International Relations. Throughout my first two years of post-secondary studies, I have developed a keen interest in law and history. As such, I enjoy topics that require critical thinking, active discussion, and creativity. From watching the introductory lecture, I already became fascinated by the big questions the course was asking. I am excited to engage with the readings and continuously attempt at answering some of those questions. I was also especially delighted to learn about the first goal of the course, as I am always interested in ways to improve my reading strategies and critical analyzation skills.

I don’t have much background knowledge in Romance studies; however, I am very interested to learn more about it. Before watching the introductory lecture, I always viewed the “Romance World” as a confined region within Western Europe. I always thought of the “Romance World” in significant connection with the Romance languages, and therefore thought of it only as a region in Europe. Realizing the limitless nature of Romance studies is exciting, as it allows a more creative approach towards concepts such as colonialism, globalization, and much more. I am looking forward to critically examining how our course readings represent various concepts through language. One point from Professor Tim Beasley-Murray in the conversation video that left me thinking was that “we tend to think of literature as a testimony to a certain set of experiences.” I completely agree with this point, and I think this might sometimes be a pitfall in trying to find new relationships between languages and cultures. I look forward to “putting language at the heart of things again”, as Professor Tim Beasley-Murray said, and find interesting commonalities and differences between Romance languages.

To finish off my blogpost, I would like to reflect on questioning the authorship and agenda of literature sources. I learned that for reading historical sources, especially primary sources, this question of authorship and agenda is important for contextualization. However, I feel like this process of critical analysis is somewhat confined, as it aims to understand a text in a perspective that is particular to a specific area or time. With that being said, I would like to end off with a central question: Do you think analyzing the authorship and agenda of our course readings, asking who wrote it for what purpose, would help us better understand what Romance studies is? Or would it rather mislead us to an understanding that is confined to specific areas, which goes against the limitless nature of the Romance world?

Thank you for reading my blogpost! I hope you have a great day.