Hello everyone! My name is Daniel Choi, I am a third-year arts student majoring in International Relations and minoring in Law and Society. As evident from my minor, I am interested in law and how it affects\u2014and, in turn, how it is shaped by\u2014society. I am by no means a natural reader\u2014if there ever is such a person. While I cannot describe reading, especially academic reading, as \u201cenjoyable\u201d, I can confidently say that Professor Beasley-Murray\u2019s previous course (RMST 202) taught me that academic reading could in fact be interesting and engaging.<\/p>\n
RMST 202 was about literatures and cultures of the Romance world. As such, the central question of the course was, \u201cWhat is the Romance world?\u201d \u201cWhat is Romance studies?\u201d Although there isn\u2019t one definitive answer nor a clear definition, this intrinsic obscurity and abstraction was what made the course extremely interesting; it allowed us to be limitless in our approaches to the diverse texts, helping us keep our thoughts open to the new ideas, imagery, and symbolism that the books introduced to us rather than actively seeking for \u201chidden messages\u201d based on our own presumptions. This unique approach was what helped me grow as a student and reader. It allowed me to find meaningful links between literature and life, literature and time, as well as interesting connections and contrasts between the texts and between related themes such as surrealism and modernism.<\/p>\n
Watching the introductory lecture, a lot of SPAN 312 seems to have the same theoretical approaches to RMST 202. While the background context of a story is emphasized, the focus of our analysis is not limited to just context; as Professor Beasley-Murray stated, \u201cwe are not doing history here.\u201d It is the unique focus on the \u201cdistortion, elaboration, invention, mystification, [and] fabrication\u201d of literature that excites me. I mean, where else would we be allowed to adopt such a fascinating approach? It is certainly a new way of approaching texts, but once your focus falls into what Professor Beasley-Murray calls the \u201cgap between representation and the real,\u201d it will certainly open up a new journey.<\/p>\n
Specifically for SPAN 312, I am excited to start thinking about the idea of Latin America and Latin American literature. Similar to Romance studies, I do not think there is one clear definition of Latin America. It could be thought of through multiple methods\u2014for example, through geography, shared cultures and history, etc.\u2014but it nevertheless does not provide an accurate definition. Rather, like the notion of \u201cmagic realism\u201d, it only seems to be limiting the scope of our analysis. While having these thoughts and ideas in mind, I hope to allow myself to go beyond the limits of these approaches and find new, meaningful connections and disconnections between the texts that we read.<\/p>\n
Question:<\/u><\/strong> What does Latin America mean to you? Do you have any past experiences related to Latin American literature? If so, in what ways do you think your experiences will affect your approach to the readings?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello everyone! My name is Daniel Choi, I am a third-year arts student majoring in International Relations and minoring in Law and Society. As evident from my minor, I am interested in law and how it affects\u2014and, in turn, how it is shaped by\u2014society. I am by no means a natural reader\u2014if there ever is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89812,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11,8,10,5,6,7,4,3,9],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-introduction","tag-abstraction","tag-context","tag-geography","tag-latin-america","tag-literature","tag-magic-realism","tag-rmst-202","tag-span-312","tag-temporality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/5"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/span312blogdc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}