Reflecting on the Journey
“By giving myself the goal of presenting an interpretation of the Aeneid in a public form, through the medium of music, I wound up pushing myself to figure out what the Aeneid means to me far more than I would have if I had written the paper. We think it’s really important to examine our own country through the same critical lens we use to look at history or narratives like the Aeneid. This performance referenced a bunch of American musical traditions; different types of folk music, bluegrass, blues, jazz, hip-hop, rock and R&B. We hoped that by giving a nod to these different traditions we could help musical American stories that aren't part of the ‘mainstream’ to be told.”
Paul Bloom CC'17
“Linguistics is something that people don’t realize is around us all the time. “‘Haha’ and ‘LOL’ are modal particles. They don’t mean anything; they just set the tone for whatever is being said. It’s fun to be at a party and say, ‘Do you know that when you text ‘haha’ or ‘LOL’ you’re using a modal particle?’ It’s a nerdy fun fact, but it’s interesting. Because nouns in English have neither cases nor genders, I wanted to see what happens to them when they are borrowed into Polish. A solid base of knowledge in a lot of different areas before specializing — that was really important to me."
Zuzanna Fuchs CC'13
"Soon after I arrived on campus, I discovered the Columbia Maker Space, a newly-dedicated workshop on the 12th floor of Mudd with top-of-the-line woodworking tools that allowed me to continue pursuing my woodworking passion. As I pondered ideas for a potential essay [as a final project in Lit Hum], however, a construction came to me instead. I envisioned the rotund form of Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s faithful sidekick in Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, seated on a throne. And so, for my project, I decided that I would make Sancho Panza a throne of his very own, something that would complement his modest nature while reminding him of his own sage wisdom and the time he spent as governor. After numerous sketches, I turned my proposal into a full-scale formal blueprint for my professor."
Scott Sonnenberg CC'18