Course Overview: Choices, Choices...

("6th Century Icon", via Wikipedia Commons)

You may have guessed by the image that I've chosen The Gospel of St. Mark for my Week 2 reading. This is partly because I have never actually read the entire New Testament (I know, it's a shocker) but have always wanted to, but I have read part of this gospel, and was very intrigued. It's also--in very small part--because I've been reading Classical myths nonstop since I was a wee bairn, and it would be boring and predictable of me to choose something I've covered so (comparatively) thoroughly when it's one of my goals in this class to branch out and read a lot of stuff I've never read before.

So that's my choice for next week, but having poked around quite a bit in the course, I have come to the conclusion that I'll just have to do a lot of extra credit reading. Everything looks interesting! However, I did find a find units that really jumped out at me, and here they are:

The Mabinogion: Welsh myth has inspired some of my favorite books--The Raven Cycle, The Dark is Rising series, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, the Prydain series--but I haven't read enough of the original stuff to know when something's being made up by an author vs. when they're referencing something. It would be awesome, since these books have influenced my life so much, to be able to bring some of these myths into my own storytelling.

British North America: my major is anthropology, so I come into contact with a lot of Native American stuff on a daily basis. Being from the Northeast, however, where Native American cultures are not nearly as spotlighted as they are here in the Midwest, I find myself at a loss when it comes to the mythology of Native Americans, especially those from the Northeast. Which is very sad. I have read stuff here and there, but I'm always looking to branch out! I can't think of any connections to movies/TV/books here--but that probably means that I haven't been actively looking for them in the past few years.

The Decameron, by Boccaccio: I really, really love medieval legends and lore. Like, I could read them forever. I've read The Canterbury Tales, and I think that this would be an interesting compare-and-contrast read for that book, since there's a similar format to the storytelling but (judging from the description in the UnTextbook) very different subject matter involved. Also, I'm in the Medieval Fair Cast this year and our fair takes place around 1370, which is just around the time that this piece takes place in.

And that's it for now--I could probably write a description about why I'm interested in all the units--but time doesn't permit...