The Historical Documents We Should Read and Analyze.
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I only mention three (3) of them.
I have returned to the University after many years. Well, the truth is that all my university life was in Europe, and when I came to the USA, I didn’t think about studying but about getting a job and stabilizing my life as all people usually do.
I would have liked, anyway, to get to know an American university, but the occasion had not presented itself. To my surprise, at the beginning of this summer 2022, I was invited to take 8 credits of Humanities subjects — that is, Literature, History, Philosophy, Art, and Critical Text Analysis — and I accepted very willingly. Besides, these two years are going to be free. After that, . . . it remains to be seen whether they will continue to offer more courses and they will also be free.
Because of a final Assignment, I spent Saturday afternoon carefully reading the options for doing the “Extended Writing Response,” from the Critical Analysis of Texts class. For weeks we had been reading and discussing different writings by well-known American authors, plus some political documents from the 1800s.
Because I had not been exposed to modern and contemporary American culture, I love learning about things are part of the distinctly American cultural heritage. I am “discovering” America with respect to its historical and literary creations.
The aim of this assignment is mentioned by the Teacher at the beginning of an email she sent to all of us, and it was key for me: “. . . to reflect on the readings and conversations we have had so far and to practice writing longer texts”.
During the 4 weeks we had been analyzing texts and documents, we had expressed our opinions about them in conversations during class and in written assignments, but this final Assignment was to be longer.
“Okay” — I said to myself -, “I can do literary analysis, but not all topics excite me”. However, I studied in great detail the directions and explanations given by the Teacher in the email mentioned above.
After much thought, I opted for option 2, Creative Writing.
