Final Blog Post: My Experience in ENGL 2890

When I first saw the course description online last year, I immediately jumped at this class. As an ILR major, I'm forced to satisfy an "advanced writing" requirement, and there was no way I was taking some boring class like Workers and Migration or something random like that. I wanted to take a class that examined popular culture and allowed to to analyze violence in our society. One thing I've learned is that violence is everywhere, no matter how hard we try to escape from it, it will always be present in our lives.

When the class first started, I was a little turned-off by the Blood Meridian unit because I wasn't too interested in old Westerns. Alas, I found that I truly enjoyed the book, and I became excited for what was to come in the class. Watching Kill Bill, professional wrestling, and Buffy has taught me that our country excels in creating mainstream violence. We are a society that loves to see someone get hurt, as bad as that sounds, it is true.

My favorite unit by far was our classes study of Hip-Hop music. For the first time in my college experience, I truly enjoyed coming to class and discussing the violence in music. Studying Tupac and Eminem was riveting, and I found myself spending countless hours after class on Mondays/Wednesdays reading about these men online. I even watched 8 Mile one day after the discussion on Marshall Mathers/Eminem.

All in all, this class taught me a lot about our society in general and how we deal with violence in the media. Thanks a lot to Christopher for designing a truly interesting and discussion-enabling course at Cornell.