Introducing Myself!

Hi everyone! My name is Isabella and I am a third year psychology student. A little about myself is that I am a huge fan of movies. Specifically, curling up under a blanket and watching a movie is my favourite thing to do this time of year. On that note, unfortunately I am not a so called “reader”, but I am up for a challenge in this course! Besides watching movies, I love to spend my time with my kitten Mango, who I got a few months ago. It took me about 15 years or so of convincing my mom to a get a cat, so I could not be happier. Below is a photo of him from Christmas.

Overall, I am excited for this class as I heard great things regarding this course. My expectations entering this course is that I will become a so called better “reader”, and as the professor pointed out, be able to read not just the words but what is not written. As i’ve probably watched over 10,000 hours of movies throughout my life, I would say i’m much better at this with movies than books. However, i’m sure this class is going to provide great practice. I am also curious and wanting to learn the differences and similarities between literature throughout different parts of Europe at different periods. However, most of all why there is such thing as ‘Romance Studies’ and what the discipline can show us.

From what I understood from the lecture, Romance Studies is something far more complicated than it sounds. I will not, while I did not entirely think Romance Studies was the study of love, I did believe that it would be somewhat focused on this. I then believed that it was comparing literature from the romance languages, although, it was mentioned that literature from other places besides Europe, such as China and Japan, also falls under Romance Studies. It was also interesting to find out what bonds these so called romance countries and languages is distruction and conflcit, quite opposite of love. As the words ‘betrayal’ and ’escape’ was used, I think a fight or possible expression of freedom or creativity will be seen in the novels. Therefore, it seems that this class may touch on heavier topic literature, which I think will make for a very interesting class. While I am still confused, I hope I will gain a stronger understanding of what Romance Studies is.