Friday, June 3, 2016

Experiential Blog 9

The most meanigful thing I learned from this experience is that we (us and people from different countries) are very similar. I always thought that we were very different compared to everyone else but we generally all enjoy the same things and want the same things. We just live in different places. This information wouldn't have really affected a situation I experienced in the past because I haven't come across many people from Europe or other countries in the states. When I have seen people from other countries in the states I always thought that they felt that we were very different from them and that America is very unique. Granted I don't know how they think or feel about it but that's how I always thought they thought about us. This new information and this experience definitely will allow me to be more welcoming and friendly to any person I meet from a different country in the US. Though I never have been mean or rude to anybody from a different country I feel I will be able to relate more to them than I had before. I've always enjoyed interacting with others from different places because I enjoy learning about different places and talking about a common interest in soccer (usually) but now I have more to relate to them with. With the experiences I've had on this study abroad trip I've realized that there are more similarities between people across the world than there are differences and that these similarities should be made a priority over the differences we have.

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Experiential Blog 8

In this study abroad program I've learned a lot about what the gothic is and how and why it is still relevant in a lot of today's movies and other entertainment. Before this class I wasn't able to pick up on things and spot them out as being gothic. I wasn't able to identify where things came from or why they were popular. The biggest example of this is Batman. Although I'm not a huge fan I still knew a little about it like that Batman lives in Gotham city. I never before realized that there is a specific reason behind the name of that city and the look of Batman himself. Now that I've learned more about gothic literature/entertainment I am much better at picking up on things like this. I feel I am able to pick up on the ideas a little better on this study abroad trip than at home because of the tours and excursions we are going on. I find it easier to learn about a topic when you have examples in front of your face rather than from a textbook or just pictures on a powerpoint. This study abroad program has given me first hand experience of the topics I'm learning about. The important new knowledge I've learned from this trip is about how our culture is pretty similar to the rest of the world in terms of interests, even though we look much different than everyone else. I've seen that the gothic thrives in not only american culture but also in many European cultures as well.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Experiential Blog 7

I have recieved almost all postive attitudes during this study abroad trip. All of the locals have been very friendly and have been very curious and interested in the United States. I've been asked questions about the politics and about certain places as well. They've all been very helpful with any kind of language barrier too. In Vienna, Prague and Paris the locals have all been very friendly. Before I came I didn't know what to expect from the locals. I was told that a lot of people hate American tourists because we seem too arrogant and stupid almost but I have not noticed any of that in my experiences. Based off my experiences I've learned that most Europeans are very friendly and accomodating to other's needs. This may be because of how many different cultures they come across so frequently. In the US we don't interact with many other cultures because of the size of our country. Here in Europe you could be in a different country/culture in 2 hours and I feel that that contributes to their friendliness and openess to other cultures and ideas.

Friday, May 27, 2016

Midterm Powerpoint Pictures













Experiential Blog 6

The main thing I noticed about London, and England in general, is that they had a few different words for things than us. Although we can understand each other completely, the terminology can be just a little confusing. The main one I can think of is the word loo. This is what some people call a toilet and I was very confused by it. I couldnt find a bathroom anywhere because they weren't labeled as toilet or bathroom, they were labeled as loos or as a WC, which stands for water closet. The latter I was able to understand because of my time in Vienna. Other than some terminolgy differences, I didn't see much of a difference in other aspects. When I was in London, it basically felt like any other big city I've been to in the states. I didn't think that people acted any differently in London than they do in Chicago or New Orleans. I expected there to be more differences but the terminology is the only thing that I could pick out.

Experiential Blog 5

My emotions for this trip could be described as ecstatic. I love being in an unfamiliar place and exploring the city and what's around me. I think the fact that the language is completely different excites me as well. It just adds to the experience for me. I feel like the rest of the group is just as happy as me when exploring the city and seeing new things. People have had their ups and downs obviously but overall the group has been able to deal with these emotions effectively and in a positive way. I also have noticed that the locals seem to be happy with us. The ones I've talked to are always excited to talk to an american and ask them questions. Many just want to practice their english with someone who knows the language, which I completely understand. This adds up to a pleasant experience for both sides involved.

Experiential Blog 4

The first thing I thought when walking through Old town Prague was that it looked like Aladdin. I think this was because of the small alley way type roads, and the very tall tan/sand colored buildings. I couldn't help but picture Aladdin riding on his magic carpet as he weaves around corners. Coming to Prague I really didn't have any expectations. I knew it was going to be very different from the United States, England and Vienna but I didn't know how. I also felt that the city was a mix of Chicago and San Francisco. I thought it felt like Chicago simply because of the river flowing through the middle of the city. I thought the environment and landscape was more like San Francisco. The landscape was beautiful with the hills and the architecture to match it. I feel this kind of landscape and view added to the culture of the city. Just like San Francisco, the people were very concerned with preserving the culture and beauty of their town. I felt that this was the reason there were a lot of hipsters there. I viewed it as basically being the San Francisco of Europe.

Experiential Blog 3

The main thing I noticed in Vienna is that it is very, very busy. The buildings are all very tall but they are consistent with each other. What I mean by this is that they are all blocked shaped and many of them have a palace like, dome top. I expected the tops of the buildings to look like this but I didn't expect the block like modernized look. Even though they have a modernized look I thought that they kept their culture in their architecture very well and that they didn't let the western culture influence them 100%. I also noticed that the people and the culture is very nationalistic. They seem very proud of where they come from and they show this in their buildings and their pride in their food and drinks. I also noticed that their transportation is very, very efficient. All subways run on time and are very quick. I thought that this might be due to the culture of the empire over the years.

Kafka's Contribution to My Understanding of the Gothic

Kafka and the museum dedicated to him gave me a very good understanding of the gothic. After reading a few of his writings I started to see what the gothic was more about. Gothic literature is creepy and it's supposed to envoke mysterious thoughts about what's going on and the purpose of things. The museum reiterated this concept very well in my opinion. Gothic literature is usually very dark and the museum portayed this by dimming the lights a lot and not having any windows to the outside world. Perhaps what stuck out to me most was the almost maze like, winding path you had to take to navigate through the museum. Most museums I've been to are pretty straight foward with where you go next but in the Kafka museum there was like a sense of mystery as to where you're going next. When you read Kafka's work that's almost how you feel. I thought that the museum did a very good job of creating a real life Kafkaesque feel and environment.

Ossuary of Kutna Hora

The Ossuary of Kutna Hora or reffered to as the bone church is an old cathedral near Kutna Hora, Czech Republic that is decorated with the bones of over 40,000 people. That fact alone makes it very, very gothic since you are reminded of death as soon as you walk through the door. The one thing that makes me confused about it is that the church thought it was ok to dig up the bones of people resting in peace and decoarte the interior of their church with them where people will worship god. I feel this is kind of ironic but this is also very sublime to me simply because of the fact that over 40,000 people's bones are used as decoration. It just seems insane and basically unreal to me that something like this is possible and actually happened. It's not like these people were buried in a mass grave site from like a war or the plague but these people were dug up from their graves specifically to decoarte the church. It's mindblowing and that's what makes the Ossuary very creepy and sublime.

Konopište as a Gothic Location

Konopište, which was the palace/hunting lodge of Franz Ferdinand, and the story behind it all has many gothic elements. When talking about the location of the palace, it's gothic because it is placed in the middle of the woods, in the hills surrounded by lakes and a lot of wilderness. Even though Franz lived in a nice big palace out by all of this, nature shows that it cannot be tamed by the empire which makes the location itself very gothic. Another gothic element of the palace is the amount of death and the excessive hunting that took place on the grounds. He didn't just kill a few animals but he killed more than 275,000 animals and had them as trophies lined up in his hallways. All of this death surrounding the palace definitely gives it a gothic feel and look. The story of Franz Ferdinand as well is also gothic. He didn't die a normal death. Instead he was shot point blank and assassinated, along with his wife Sophie in Austria. This event triggered WWI.

Sisi as a Gothic Heroine

Sisi is very much a traditonal gothic heroine. The first reason is because she is a very emotional woman and has deep feelings about the things she is going through and around. As stated previously, Freud considered this to be hysteria which he thought only applied to women. This sense of hysteria gives more passion and emotion to the personality and the character of Sisi as a gothic heroine. Another reason is because she is trapped in a lifestyle that she doesn't want to be in. Although she cared for Franz she was forced into marriage against her will and forced to live a lifestyle that didn't suit her persoanlity. Because of this she developed many problems including mental health disorders such as depression and also physical health issues such as anorexia. These ideas of being too emotional and being trapped against your will are two big components of a traditional gothic heroine.

Compare and Contrast Palaces

The palaces we visited were the Schönbrunn palace and the Hofburg palace in Vienna, and the Kew in London. In my opinion these three palaces had more differences than they did similarities. The size of the estates, the interior, the purpose for them, and the exterior were never the same between all three. When comparing Schönbrunn to Hofburg, I noticed that the size of the personal rooms in Schönbrunn were much smaller but that the dining rooms and meeting halls were much bigger. This was because the Schönbrunn palace was designed as a summer home and to hold important political meetings away from the public. The need was there for these great halls in Schönbrunn where as Hofburg was more of a home environment. The main similarity between these two was the size of the palace itself. Both were enormous buildings that took up a lot of space. Although they were both very big the actual size of the estates were very different. This was due to the location of the two though. Since Hofburg was located in the center of the city it was very enclosed and didn't have as much space to spread out like the Schönbrunn palace did. This palace spread across acres and had a big garden that wrapped around the palace. This is where Schönbrunn is very similar to the Kew in London. Both of the estates that these palaces were on were huge and could've easily fit a ton more buildings. But the thing that separates the Kew from both Schönbrunn and Hofburg is the size of the palace itself. The Kew was very small compared to the other two and it could've been placed in the middle of the city and you wouldn't have recognized it as a "palace". Since it was a much smaller building it naturally felt much more like a home than did the other two in Vienna. It was designed this way because the purpose of it was to raise a family and be far away from the public eye. There were never any political meetings held here, instead they all took place in Buckingham palace in the city of London.

Compare and Contrast Cathedrals

For the most part these old cathedrals had a lot of similarities. The cathedrals were St. Stephan's Dom in Vienna, St. Vitus and St. George in Prague, St. Wulfrum's in Grantham and Trinity Cathedral in Stratford upon Avon.  The main one is that they were all gothic in nature. The architecture of all of these were exteremely gothic with the pointy arches and just the worn down look of them all. Also all of these cathedrals had grave sites inside of the cathedral often in the floors or in the crypt of important members of the church or of the city itself. The Trinity cathedral included Shakespeare's and his family's graves. Many of the statues inside the cathedrals were also very gothic. The mysterious looks on the faces and the curvy shape of these statues is something else that many of these cathedrals had in common. Perhaps the most obvious similarity between them all is the height of the ceiling although the actual height of them did vary. All of these cathedrals were towering and forced you to look basically straight up towards heaven. This was designed this way to remind you of the power of god and to keep you humble. That's another reason why the designs on the celings were so intricate so that you had another reason to look up towards the sky. Another similarity that was shared between all but one of the cathedrals was the stain glass windows all over the walls. The only one that didn't have an abundant amount was St. George's in Prague. I'm not sure why this was the case but the rest of the cathedrals were covered in these beautifully designed stained glass windows that gave the church a very elegant and religious look to it.

Freud's Contribution to Gothic

Freud was a very influential and intelligent psychologist that gave very good insight on how to understand the gothic. One way is by describing it as uncanny which almost gives gothic literature another element to work with. By saying the literature is uncanny he's saying that it is very mysterious yet so familiar at the same time. When this kind of familiarity plays into the creepiness and darkness of a traditional gothic story it gives it more depth and another way for the reader to enjoy it and grasp onto the story itself. Along with this idea of the uncanny Freud contributed with the idea of the id, ego and super ego. The idea of these three levels of the mind contributes to the nature of gothic literature because the id is really being worked. The people who read gothic literature are enticed by the stories and the darkness that comes along with it. The id is the pleasure seeking state and people want to reach out for things that please them which is what gothic literature does for a lot of people. The super ego, which are the rational/moralizing thoughts, play a part in gothic literaure because many people are attracted to darkness/creepiness/mysteriousness, even though their super ego might be telling them otherwise. This is where the ego comes in to mediate between the pleasure seeking ideas of the id and the rational thinking of the super ego. A third idea that Freud contributed to the gothic was the idea of hysteria. Hysteria was defined by Freud as "an inner conflict between a wish and it's repression." This essentially means that one is too emotional. It's important to note that Freud thought this hysteric state could only apply to women. Being emotional and having strong repressed feelings, such as Sisi experienced, is a big characteristic of a traditional gothic heroine.

Saturday, May 14, 2016

Freud's Uncanny

I agree with Freud's analysis of the uncanny. The main reason is because it adds to the sense of creepiness that a gothic story has and wants to convey. When something in a gothic story is uncanny it makes it that much more mysterious to the reader and provides another element to the story. When something seems very familiar but still mysterious in a sense it gives the reader a different kind of feeling that the other elements of a gothic story can't give the reader. If this uncanny-ness is utilized properly along with other gothic elements then the story can become very creepy and mysterious which is a big part of a gothic story. That's why I agree with Freud's theory on the uncanny and the gothic.

Friday, May 13, 2016

A Madness of Angels

"A Madness" is very successful in creating a 21st century gothic aesthetic. I say this because it has the element of a "ruined abbey" which is represented by the dirty streets of London. Also, it has the element of the supernatural by using the trash monster encountered by the main character and also when the main character uses something close to magic to protect himself. The setting also uses the theme of darkness by taking place only at night. Also, the main character feels trapped by his past and wants to find answers for himself about who he was.

Gothic Graphic

The image above shows and explains the similarities and differences between a few of the more popular gothic works in the last few centuries, starting with the 18th. I've also included my predictions on how future gothic literature will be written.

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Experiential Blog 2

I'll start with my somewhat "unpleasant" surprise. Although I wouldn't have considered this as an unpleasant experience but more of a shock in a way (something I definitely didn't expect). But this was how Grantham is set up and how it looks. I expected it to be cleaner and more organized looking. Kind of like more structured I guess is the right way to put it. The first time I went there it wasn't very clean, the streeets were littered with trash and it didn't seem like an organized very structred city. My pleasant surprise is how friendly the locals are. They are very welcoming and are happy to help you and accomodate your needs. Something that is very different from the USA. People here actually notice you and don't act like you don't exist when walking past you.

Kafka

Kafka was a very modernized gothic writer who was very succesful in doing so. The main way in which he did this was by using metaphors to communicate traditional gothic themes. For example, in The Judgement, he uses words and things modern people can understand and relate to. Specifically the word traffic is something that people nowadays can understand but hundreds of years ago before there were cars, people might not have understood what Kafka meant when he stated the character saw a motor coach that could drown out the noise and the unending stream of traffic that followed. To us, this makes sense but it also can translate to a deeper meaning when it is brought together with the rest of the story. Also, using a modern story of a father being disappointed in his son is something people can relate to. In The Castle as well, Kafka uses very modern language that is easily relatable to people nowadays. He talks about "ringing up" the land surveyor on the telephone which, once again, is something that people hundreds of years ago would not understand, yet we do because we are surrounded by this technology. The setting of both of these stories is also a way Kafka modernizes his gothic stories. He uses a very modern setting for his stories by describing villages and bridges that look like what we have in today's world instead of the settings hundreds of years ago.

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Sisi Blog

Sisi was a very gothic character in "The Lonely Empress." Perhaps the biggest indicator of this is the fact that she is surrounded by death. Death brings the feeling of sadness, depression and sometimes even hopeless confusion. This along with the feeling of being trapped and overwhelmed by the empire contributed to her poor mental health and it deprived her of her potential for being truly happy. These problems also later led to eating disorders as well. Along with her poor mental health, she was also surrounded by things that she didn't feel represented her. She never felt that she belonged in the empire and that she was always out of place in her spot as the dutchess. This sense of confusion and nostalgia towards the whole situation gives off the feelings of a gothic story/character.

"Ruins" and "Barbara" Blog

The "Ruins" and the "Barbara" were very gothic in many different ways. Some characteristics of the gothic are darkness, supernatural, seduction, evil people, being trapped by the past and resistance. Both of these stories had many of these qualities. "Ruins" had the characteristics of the supernatural, darkness, seduction, evil people and resistance. These showed up in the plot with the lady coming back as a supernatural being, Uplandtower being the evil man who seduces, the resistance of the lady to the normal expectations of women from that time and just the overall dark feeling that the situations and events provide. "Barbara" was also very gothic in a sense that it had a maiden in distress, seduction, and resistance. These showed up with Barbara being a maiden in distress stuck between two lovers, seduction by the men to try and court her and the resistance to the normal expectations of a women of that time shows up as well. All of these characteristics are what make these two stories very gothic.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Experiential Blog 1

One of my main goals while I'm here is to learn about the culture of the various places we are going and to learn about how they think and what made them this way. Being a psychology major I am very interested in people's minds and why they do things. I realize that your environment is one of the main things that influeneces that so learning about the culture and the environment itself, will really help me to understand the people's minds better. The best way for me to do this is to take every chance I can get to explore the cities and travel. Just walking around a town or visiting the local pubs can teach you alot about not only the specific place you're at but about the people that go there and the people that live in the area. Another big goal of mine is to just experience everything I've always wanted to experience. I've always dreamt of going to a real football match and experiencing the environment and the wonderful atmosphere. Doing this also teaches you about how the culture behaves during certain events and what is considered acceptable that may not be acceptable in the states. This goal along with experiencing some English pubs all ties back to the idea of me wanting to learn about the culture and how people think and act.

Monday, May 2, 2016

My understanding of the Gothic

My understanding of the Gothic is that it is more than just literature or talking about death. Goth is a movement that wanted to rebel against the classical styles of not only literature, but of architecture as well. Gothic style can be described as creepy and maybe even suspenseful. Anything that can bring out "dark" emotions and feelings or even feelings you can't really describe. Something that brings out mysterious emotions and thoughts.

Saturday, April 30, 2016

Clothing/Behavior that would make us stand out

The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about how we'll stand out is definitely in our clothing. I'm not entirely sure how different they dress from us but I would imagine that any kind of american brands would make us stand out. An example of this would be wearing Jordan shoes or maybe even a North Face jacket. I'm not sure how popular those brands are overseas but I know they are definitely considered an american thing in fashion. I don't think this would necessarily be a positive or negative thing but people will definitely be able to spot us out as americans based on how we dress. Some behaviors that might make us stand out would be any kind of american stereotypes. Some would include being louder than the rest, or maybe being ignorant to our surroundings. I don't think this will be a problem for our group though since we are all pretty open people looking forward to taking in and embracing other cultures but these are some things that other cultures would expect from our group since we are american. But like I said, I think our group will set a good example of who americans really are.

Friday, March 4, 2016

My Take on the English 2095 class; The Literary Gothic from Horror to Surrealism

I will be taking the English 2095 class (The Literary Gothic from Horror to Surrealism). I don't know very much about gothic literature except for the fact that a lot of it was based on things like death, horror and other depressing things. I know that popular literature, among many other things, can tell you a lot about the culture and what was important to a specific time period. I'm looking forward to learning about how the culture of the time period impacted the literary topics and also how the literature itself impacted the rest of society and how people thought about things like life and death. Popular literature can have a significant impact on how people think and behave, and being a psychology major, I'm excited and looking forward to learning how these writings impacted people's thoughts and behavior.

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Study Abroad Trip Preparations

To prepare for this trip, I have gone to all of the required meetings and I have given the instructors all of the required information to book my spot on this study abroad trip. To secure my funds for the trip, I have talked to my family members that committed to helping me out a few months back. I have also talked to my managers at work about this trip to make sure that I am able to take the time off that is needed.