Hi everyone! My name is Nini and I am a first year student. I’m planning on majoring in psychology next year. I moved here from Montreal, Quebec in August. I’m fluent in French but I prefer reading in English. I have always had a passion for reading so I’m very excited for this class. Reading is my favourite form of escapism. I usually prefer reading fantasy, romance and fiction but I am still looking forward to reading the novels assigned in this course. Some other random facts about me are that I used to be a competitive gymnast, I love marvel movies and I am currently obsessed with the new Percy Jackson show on Disney plus.

When I registered for this class I didn’t really have any expectations other than I have to fulfill my literature requirement. And I still do. However, after our first lecture, I am intrigued by this class. I like to think of myself as a good reader so I want to challenge myself by signing the contract to get an A+ in this class. This will either confirm that maybe a I am a good reader, or I’ll end up hating books forever. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen. I honestly still don’t have that many expectations for this class other then the fact that I am expecting it to be challenging as reading 11 literature books does not sound easy. I guess I could say I’m expecting to learn how to properly read a book like a piece of art rather than just words on a page.

After watching the lecture video, I was surprised to find out that the term “Romance” comes from the Roman Empire. I don’t know why but this really surprised me. Something that really caught my attention was when Dr. Beasley-Murray said: ” Romance studies belongs nowhere, and it finds a place everywhere. This enables a democratic freedom of expression” (10.04). I found that this is such a beautiful way to think about literature. Because it doesn’t belong anywhere, it belongs everywhere. Also, in the conversation video with Dr. Tim Beasley-Murray, when talking about all the languages that derive from Latin and how knowing one of them facilitates the process of learning another one. I’ve noticed this before when I was learning Spanish in high school. Because I know how to speak French, whilst learning Spanish I couldn’t help but notice all the similarities which made it so much easier. Even though all of these languages come from Latin, they all offer different things to literature and reading the translated versions is just not the same as reading a novel in its original language.