Hi everyone!

My name is Emilia Mazzella, and I’m a second-year student currently double-majoring in Psychology and Linguistics. I grew up in Colorado in the United States, but from a young age, I knew that the United States was not where I wanted to live my life, which is part of why I’m here in Vancouver, along with my love of living in the city. In my free time, I enjoy reading, dancing, skiing, and trying new crafts/hobbies.

I discovered this course through the recommendation of a friend who enjoyed its format while searching for a course to fulfill the Humanities and Creative Arts requirement. One thing that I’ve always struggled with in the past regarding literature is much of the associated stereotypes that literature must be a challenging, uninteresting entity. Having this bias affects how I go into books and my enjoyment of them, even though I often find that I do enjoy the work in the end.

In the past, I’ve found it challenging to have conversations and share my thoughts and opinions on works that I’ve read for fear of being wrong, sounding dumb, or hurting my grade. I’m excited for this course to take much of the pressure off of these worries, and to continue to write blog posts. I hope that having no choice but to put myself out there will help me become more confident in what I have to say. One of my goals for this semester is to improve my ability to have meaningful academic conversations, and I’m excited for the opportunity this course will offer.

Furthermore, as a linguistics major, I’m fascinated by the ways that language, culture, and translation interact in a literary work. Language is an incredibly powerful tool, and I look forward to exploring literature through the unique lens of the Romance language family. I was particularly interested in the discussion in the lecture of translation as it relates to the goal of the course, as both seek to question the past and construct something new. Translation is an interesting concept to me: the challenge of conveying the intent and emotions behind an author’s writing beyond their literal words presents an interesting challenge to the translator.

I’m excited for the discussions to come in this course. This week’s conversation about the ways that jargon and biases can make conversations about literature feel almost exclusive made me feel very understood and less alone in feeling that I lack the necessary skills to have nuanced discussion about literature. I already feel less anxious and more eager about reading these books for the purpose of applying my own experiences and knowledge to conversations about what we’ve read. The lack of pressure to “get the right message”, I hope, will allow me to more easily approach these books with a more open mindset.