Hi everybody! I hope that everyone’s semester is wrapping up nicely, and that y’all have been a lot more productive than me!
Like a lot of people have said already, I did not anticipate enjoying this class as much as I did. I had no clue who Rabelais or Bakhtin were, so I had no idea what to expect. I thought the grotesque just meant gross things, and honestly it scared me a little. When Alice told me about the class, I figured that it probably wasn’t for me.
I got way more out of it than I anticipated, and I think this class ranks pretty high on the list of favorite classes I’ve taken in college. Not only did I get to read texts that I probably wouldn’t have read before, I also got to read texts in new ways.
I really loved the appetizer presentations because it was so cool to see other people’s interests and how they applied the concepts learned in class to how they saw and experienced the world. I enjoyed facilitating my two appetizers presentations, because I really had a chance to focus on topics that I found interesting. My second appetizer presentation, where I talked about how mascots exemplify the grotesque and carnivalesque, was a lot of fun. It was really cool to think about spectator sports through the lenses of the grotesque and carnivalesque and examine why sports are effective at bringing people together and creating community.
Also, never before in any of my classes (or my life in general) has my ridiculously extensive and completely useless knowledge of film adaptations of Oliver Twist proven useful, so it was pretty cool to be able to do a project about it in this class.
After the shift to the online format, this was really the only class that I looked forward to. The second half of the semester has been super stressful for everyone, and seeing everyone’s comments in the reading diary and seeing everyone’s faces and having class discussions on Thursday really was a bright point in my week.
I usually really hate talking in class but I never felt too bad in this class, which I really think goes to show the wonderful group and classroom environment that we cultivated over the course of the semester. Thanks to everyone for an awesome semester!
(Also, whenever I was putting together my mascot appetizer I was deeply upset that there wasn’t an image of Gritty photoshopped into a Bruegel painting. My photoshop skills are very weak, but this is the best I could come up with:
)
