stephen moore

Hey everyone. My name is Stephen Moore, and I am a senior English and Government major from South Burlington, Vermont. I guess I chose these two different majors because I’ve always enjoyed reading and writing. Math and science never really came that naturally to me, so it made sense for me to pick a major where I could just read books and write stories. I decided on the Government major a bit later, after I realized that I had taken a bunch of gov. classes and had enough to do a major there as well.

Being an English major though, I have had definitely had a lot of experiences with English courses. My favorite areas are fiction and drama, and these are probably where I have had the best experiences. I really enjoyed taking both the intro and advanced fiction classes because I was able to have a lot of fun in creating and telling my own stories. I think this is probably why I like taking writing classes. I really enjoy creating and telling stories. I’m actually really excited about this semester, because I am doing an independent study on absurdist drama where I am going to write my own absurdist play. I’m hoping that this will actually end up being my best experience with an English course because I pretty much made it up for my self. If there is one area that I’ve had trouble with it’s creative nonfiction writing. I seem to have a bit of trouble with this style and struggled a bit trying to figure it out.

In this class I’m really interested in reading literature from the 20th century. I’ve already had some exposure to early African American lit, although of course not all, but I would really like to see how it developed during the last century. I’d especially like to learn about African American drama. I’ve read A Raisin in the Sun, and Fences, but am not really familiar with other dramatic works.

I would describe my self as being a white, upper middle class liberal. I have a Jewish background, but was not raised to be very religious. Now I don't have any religious affiliations, and am pretty skeptical of organized religion. Growing up in Vermont has also given me a pretty liberal perspective. I generally believe that people should be free to live and do whatever way they want as long as they are not hurting anyone else. Although I like to think that Vermont is liberal and forward thinking, I also realize that I have not lived amongst a lot of diversity. Vermont is pretty homogeneous, and my high school and town were almost all white. This has definitely affected my perspectives, although I would like to think that I have grown up to be an accepting person. Being white in America, I also realize that I have lived my life as an insider, and have really had very little outsider experience. I don't think that I can really even imagine what it would be like as a true outsider in society, as I have always been a privileged member of society.

Chesney Randi

For those who don't know me, my name is Chesney, and I am excited to get to know all of you during the spring semester. I am an English Major, hence why I am taking this class. I had no expectations to major in English until I was enrolled in my FYS, Food for Thought. The class was led by Paul Graham another professor in the English department. He taught me many things like how important writing is and how many windows of opportunity their are by becoming and English major. Sometimes I regret becoming an English major because I am not as strong a writer as other students. I also find myself struggling when I am trying to find out a professor's writing style and what they expect the students to deliver right off the bat. so, with those being only minor issues, I have only had a bad experience with one English professor. At the end of taking that class and truly given it my all, I couldn't say it was very horrible because I did learn a lot.

In this class however, I expect to learn a lot. I want to be able to explore the feelings and conclusions that occur after the assigned readings during class time. I have been learning about Shakespeare and mainly English/British lit for three semesters now and I think it is time for a change. I picked this class because the topic of discussion covers topics that go beyond an average class taken within the English major. I have really never read a lot of African American Literature therefore, I am excited to expand on this particular experience.

Since I have never explored African American Literature, I believe it has to do with where I have grown up. I grew up in a small town known as Garden City, Long Island. It is not diverse at all and just about everyone is Irish or Itailian and Catholic as well. I was one of twelve kids in my grade to be brought up Protestant and that was about as diverse as it got for me until I went to St. Lawrence. The diversity that St. Lawrence offers is what made this school so appealing to me. Since I have been going to this school for three years, my social ladescape that surrounds me here has prepared me for other social situations that I might incounter in the future. Overall all, what I have learn thus far is that their are no identity makers that are important to me. As I begin to learn how to adapt to different social situations at St. Lawrence and else where, I learn that their is nothing that is physically significant that should seperate the human race. Now, that doesn't mean I don't have a problem talking about situations like segregation that have done so in the past, but I only hope to learn more from our past with an open mind and learn to better the social situations that we shall encounter in the future.

My name is Anna Meisenheimer and I am studying Psychology at St. Lawrence University. I enjoy it because I love working with people and I am interested in exploring what makes people “tick.” In addition, I feel that positive human interaction is very gratifying for me and humanity as a whole. With that said, my plans after graduation include obtaining a graduate’s degree in Clinical Psychology, so that I may help people on a daily basis (or so I hope).

My first English course that I took in college was during my first semester freshman year. Unfortunately I decided to major in other extracurricular activities besides academics, and my grades, especially the grade of this course took a toll. My second and final (until now) English course was actually my second semester freshman year. It was called “Creative Fiction Writing,” or something of the sort. During that semester I decided to focus more on academics, and it turned out I thoroughly enjoyed the class. Though it was writing intensive, it allowed me to draw on my imagination and even fond memories and tie it into a humorous, serious or off-the-wall story. To add, it surprisingly harnessed my writing skills for future courses that required analytical, fictional or scientific writing.

The liberal arts education of St. Lawrence University has allowed me to explore many areas of education that I would have shied away from if it wasn’t mandatory to fulfill distribution requirements. Gender and Society with Prof. Hornsby-Minor happened to be one of these courses. I have to say that it was one of the most meaningful courses that I have taken thus far. We learned about gender roles, sexuality and race on a macro and micro level, and our individual place in these socially constructed domains. This class actually drew me to Survey of African American Literature, and I hope that I may learn more about these contentious topics from perhaps a more historical perspective.

If I was to provide a census with my subject positionality, I would say that I am a white, female, upper-middle class American who is a full-time student living in Upstate New York. Though on paper this may provide the census with valuable statistics, I find this sort of information to be rather minimal in my own personal identity, and even superficial to humanity at large. If a friend or acquaintance was to ask me the same question, I would answer that I am a spirited 21 year old female that loves her family, friends, and the outdoors. I am unwavering in my ideals and truly believe that nature is the medicine for almost all of life’s ailments. Optimism is an important quality to me as well. I find that my family and greatest friends share these beliefs too and I am most drawn to those sorts of people, regardless of race, gender, sexuality or socioeconomic status. Basic human connection is organic and universal. I found this statement to hold true when I studied abroad in Europe and realized that I could still establish meaningful connections despite language barriers, history or place of origin. With that said, I feel like an insider when my ideals of family, friends and the outdoors coincide with those around me. I may be similar to others simply by one ideal or by all. Nonetheless, any sort of commonality gives me that basic human connection that I strive for. On the contrary, I feel a bit of an outsider when I have nothing in common with those around me. However, if I search hard enough, I often do find a commonality in something and can obtain a connection on those grounds.

Though this is how I identify myself, I feel that society at large has different standards that are based on the superficial, socially constructed criteria such as race, gender, sexuality and socioeconomic status. This saddens me that so many social issues/wrongdoings throughout history have been justified by these constructs, and whose consequences are long-lived in today’s society. Fortunately for me, because of my skin color I have not had to endure any of these hardships, and I think this is in part why my own personal identity has nothing to do with skin color or other societal constructs mentioned above. I look forward to this class to hopefully gain a better perceptive on what makes society “tick” in regards to these topics.

Jenna Hulton

Hey Guys & Gals

Hi there. I am Dylan Cutler, an easy-going athletic Greek girl from a big city on the west coast of Canada. Contrary to popular belief, I do not live in an igloo, I do not own a beaver as a pet, and I do not drink beer all day. These assumptions, although partly make me who I am (Canadian), are not everything about me, or where I come from. Home to me means ocean and beaches and forests and wood cabins and fishing and skiing (but I don't ski) and hiking and lastly, hockey. Oh, I do love the game of hockey. All sports are great, really. I am on the field hockey team here at SLU, and field hockey has been a part of my life for eight years now. Before field hockey, it was soccer. Before soccer it was volleyball. I also love to run long distances. As far as my Greek heritage, my entire mother’s side is from Greece. Although I am not religious, I do proudly partake in many Greek traditions that my mother has passed down to my sister and I. I hope to do the same for my children no matter where we are living. There are times where my Greek roots seem distant to me. For example, at a recent family reunion, there was Greek dancing which looked like a blur to me, and all sorts of very rich foods, which I didn’t seem to have much appeal for. I felt out of place in a way, but understandably so as I have lived in Canada all my life.

I am a sophomore and a Biology-Physics Major. I am enjoying this as I have found a perfect balance in the combination of my interest for the human body, and movement. My intention after SLU is to go to medical school and then into the field of sports medicine. My ultimate dream is to one day be the doctor of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team (Go Habs Go!). One day. Yup.

I have had good experiences so far in my English courses. Last semester I took Techniques of Poetry with Professor Hummer and I learned a lot about both poetry, and about myself. I discovered a new way that I enjoy expressing myself, as well as a new way of telling others how I feel. There was so much I learned that goes into poetry, which I never even had knew of or thought of before. Likewise, I am sure this class will enlighten me even more in a new field of literature I am quite unfamiliar with. I am hoping this class will show me not only how African-Americans were/are portrayed in literature, but also some true insights into what they went through in their struggles in the world. I do not know of any authors at the moment the specialize in this area, but I hope to be able to identify specific authors and their styles and techniques they like to use.

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I am a white female that lives in the North Country in a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. I do not like to say that I am white, or for that matter if I were African American or Native American I still would not want to say my race. I have never identified with being white and until my freshman year at college when I had to write a paper on my race and background did I ask my mom what our heritage is. I more identify with my small community and the farming people of that area. I am shaped in a lot of ways by the fact that I grew up on a dairy farm and have worked it all my life. There has been a farm in my family since the 1900’s or earlier and I know more about farming than where my ancestors came from, because that is what is important to me.

I feel like a person of the community or insider, when I can go to most places and now someone. That was one of the things my friends commented about when I took them to my home for a weekend. I knew many people and they knew me, but this has been the way it has always been for me in my community. I never thought about how connected I was to my community until I went to NYC.

One time that I felt like an outsider was when I went to NYC and stayed with two of my friends for a week. Everyone seemed like they were in a rush to get somewhere, meet someone, talk to someone and had no time to tell me if I was heading in the right direction. I felt out of place because I could not identify with many places in NYC, everyone was so close to each other, and had little space to move around and no one seemed to know each other. With both my experiences of being an insider and an outsider I have learned to appreciate the community I grew up in because for a while I struggled without it.

I am studying history because I want to find out about the past and in my high school some of the events in history I was interested in the teacher did not talk about so I started to take classes to find of the answers. I have also taken many classes about African history and have taken a class and internship on a farm in Gorom II, Senegal. I also felt very much apart of the community around me because of all my host family did to introduce us to their community.

One course that I learned a lot from was an intro to African literature and we talked a lot about the African community and how different people identify with that community. I am taking this course because I wanted to see how African Americans are seen in the literature as well as the literature they write themselves. I am taking a civil rights movement course this semester as well as last semester I took African American history to 1865. I wanted both the history as well as the literature that shows what the African American people were doing and going thru.

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I would describe myself as a Scandinavian-American biology nerd and track athlete. I find that that strongest feelings I have about my self described identity are related to my choice of athletics and study of science as activities that I associate with. Though there are many other traits that I can use to categorize myself, I find that I usually describe myself by the essence of my scholar athlete involvement. I have always worked to find a balance between these two areas of my life. In many places, these traits can seem incongruous- the extreme social sketches of each the scholar and the athletes paint different images. Pop culture may brand an athlete with certain social perceptions; as someone involved in the physical and not bound to examining the details of the world around them. Meanwhile, the most studious and successful student is perceived as absorbed in the microcosm of their field and work, atrophied and bound to a lab or desk. While I certainly do not see myself as either, and know few people who would fit these almost garishly simplistic sketches, I do realize that parts of me do not cross between these different worlds. For ease of getting through practice, I do not consider the flow of blood through my body as I feel my heart pump- I only see my feet move or hear the dull thud against my ribs. When studying, my body ceases to be a tool in my progress; the world becomes solely a miasma of images that are formed from layering page after page of text. In both worlds, I am an insider when I have centered myself to be so; but it would be just as simple to become an outsider in each as well, lapsing into the wrong plane of thought and becoming stranded from the reality of that situation. I identify still with my Scandinavian grandparents; my mother’s parents lived in Denmark for many years, spending their youth there and moving back to Germany in middle age for several years. However, by being American born and raised, and unable to do more than mimic the names and placed of the pieces of Danish culture passed through my family, I am forever separated form being recognized as more than of Danish descendance by my relatives in Denmark.

The juxtaposition of being an athlete and a student helps to motivate me to do more; the constant banter and switch between these parts of myself keeps fresh viewpoints on how to learn material, and allows me different perspectives on material. When I was in Techniques of Fiction, my only prior experience with English courses at St. Lawrence, these two view points were useful in blending and creating new characters for stories, that were less flat than had I needed to write them with only one lens of experience. I had a great experience in that class, and it helped me to find a love of writing that can often be worn thin by overuse in scholarly assignments. However, I do love what I study. I am I biology major, on the health career track. I settled on my major since it is situated at the confluence of everything I have enjoyed learning until now. The engineering classes at my hometown community college, the people skills from volunteering at schools, the level headedness from sports competition, all of it eventually finds an eddy to add to what I’ve learned in biology and form the basis of knowledge I would like to build my future on. I hope that in this class I can improve my analysis of literature; I have always been a voracious reader, and the chance to get a variety of new opinions on books is always interesting. No matter how many readings I could do of a book, I can only look at the text with one frame of experiences, my own. Class examination of readings offer new reference frames to examine the literature. Also, to look at the genra as a whole, the alternate experiences of people are important to consider. If I do end up being able to become a health care worker, I would interact on a regular basis with others who have an uncountable number of backgrounds. Since literature often puts the reader mentally into another person’s shoes, exposure to a genre of literature that describes the experiences of others can provide valuable insight.