I believe that I made the most
progress on the following course goal:
Demonstrate knowledge
regarding the interplay of comedies and the historical, political, literary,
and cultural contexts in which they were written and performed.
The blog posts were really
helpful to read and see what other people in the class thought about the
texts. The most beneficial blogs to me
were the ones that incorporated history and what was going on in the world when
the plays were published. I am not a big
history buff and have only taken two history courses while in college, so some
of this information was new to me. By
reading what other people had to say, I was able to form a more well-rounded
view of the text.
Another aspect of the course
that I found helpful was the ‘What-If’ discussion questions. What if all the genders in The Broken Jug were reversed? Would that have made a difference in our
attitudes towards the characters? What
if Alceste and Celimene from The
Misanthrope used social media? I
found it helpful to discuss these questions in our small groups, because
everyone had different opinions. These
conversations led me to think deeper about the texts we read and make
connections to previous texts.
Overall, I feel like I was
successful in this course. Even though I
sometimes struggled to write the blog posts, I think that I gained a lot of
factual knowledge about comedies and how they are used to make statements about
society. Before this class, I thought
that the purpose of a comedy was strictly to entertain and evoke laughter, but
now I see that comedies are effective ways to convey ideas about social order
and make an audience think about the world around them. This class was a good change from my usual
STEM-related coursework.
