Hello from one of few undergraduates taking this course! Still working on my Bachelors, with a history major and a literature minor. I spend a lot of my free time reading and writing, notably running a website for collaborative creative writing that’s won a number of awards within the hobby culture. I consider myself technologically savvy and have been the webmaster of a number of websites on a variety of subjects, some of them reaching tens of thousands of hits a month.
I’m a lover of literature, passionate about my writing, and an armchair historian. My favorite areas of history are hard to pin down—I often tell people when asked I have a favorite for every continent, so I may as well tell you those.
Africa—the Wagadou Empire/the Empire of Ghana, and post-colonial Africa, particularly 1960’s Senegal.
Antarctica—The Scott expeditions/the race for the Pole.
Asia—Pax Mongolica, the Qing Dynasty and the Bakumatsu.
Australia—Maori resistance to colonial rule.
Europe—Rebellions against Roman rule, particularly Boudica, Muslim Spain/the Reconquista, and the fall of the Roman Republic.
North America—Pre-Columbian Mexico, particularly the Nahua city-states and the Mexica Empire, colloquially called the Aztecs.
South America—The Inka/Inca.
Bonus, seafaring: Ching Shih and South China Sea piracy.
Currently reading a number of books, including Court and Cosmos: The Age of the Seljuks. On a bit of an Islamic Empire kick—also reading some fiction of that time period, including Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree by Tariq Ali.
I’m hoping to get the chance through this course to learn more about the resources available to me for increasing my own knowledge of history, and to wet my feet and see if a Masters in History would be something I’d enjoy.
As for me as a human being with a place and a space in the world, I was born on the same street I lived on my whole childhood, up until coming to college. We have a hospital on the end of our street that my mother, when pregnant with me, decided to walk to to give birth. She got as far as the front stoop, sat down, and told my father to call an ambulance.
I’m a very active volunteer who believes in giving back to the community as much as possible. I signed up to foster dogs for our local shelter, the Washington Humane Society. I promptly foster failed and ended up keeping my then-foster, now adopted dog Sasha. Sasha is a pitbull mix with brown and white cow markings and only three legs. She was attacked by another dog and nearly killed, and the humane society was forced to amputate her rear leg because of the damage.
She gets around just fine, though, hopping like a rabbit, and my boyfriend and I love her with all our hearts.
The final thing of note about my life is my relationship with my boyfriend, Mark, who I call Duo. Duo and I met when we were five years old. We hated each other. He pushed me over in the sandbox. That relationship extended until the age of seven, when Duo and I became friends. When we were eleven, we evolved from friends to best friends. When I was thirteen, I got the biggest crush on him. We spent the next two years crushing on each other and telling anyone who would listen that boys and girls could just be friends, okay? On July 4th, when we were fifteen years old, we held hands for the first time while watching the fireworks.
I told him he had until the end of the summer to ask me out.
He finally got the courage that winter, and we’ve been dating ever since.
And there’s a synopsis of interesting facts about me! I look forward to working with all of you throughout the upcoming semester.