Tom & Alissa

What I am discovering:

- I am interested in technology only to the extent that it affects people’s lives. I am curious about how technological advances and products change social interactions and contribute to the development of a culture, but not at all interested in how the technologies work or develop, in and of themselves. This is probably why I leaned more toward software than hardware in my undergrad; software is what people usually know they’re interacting with.

- I am not interested in the minuteness of academic literary or cinematic criticism (as opposed to what you read in the newspaper). I can’t really get into dissecting each tiny bit of a passage and scaring up every bit of symbolism therein unless i know, or reasonably suspect, that’s what the author intended. What I am interested in is the social and historical context of the book/film, and how it affected the book/film - and how the book or film turned around and affected literature, film, and the greater society around it. This means I’ve done the right thing in not going directly into an English or Cinema Studies program.

- I am fascinated by history, particularly North American history - seeing as I live here - and I know precious little about what was really going on in the US in relation to writers/artists/politicians who were contemporaries, and almost nothing about Canadian or Mexican history. This I must remedy. Are there any comprehensive North American books that don’t segment the histories of the three countries?

- I am very fascinated by culture studies and media studies, which seem to focus more on how humans interact with their surroundings and each other. I love to see how ideas develop in a social context (read: coffeehouses and pubs). And I’m passionate about art, especially the performing arts, and how they have developed and grown with their historical context.

- And I am especially interested in how history, culture, art, and media intersect with religion, especially in the United States, and especially with Protestantism, since that’s something I already know a little about.

So basically, if I were to go on to a Ph.D., it would be in American studies, which tends to be interdisciplinary. And even if I don’t, I can see myself researching these things and writing books someday. Well, good to know.