I am an English and History major, something that has vastly influenced the work for my research project in this course.
Ever since I graduated from High School and started university half a year later, I have searched for some meaning in my studies, or rather some meaning that goes beyond a meaning for myself. What literature means for myself couldn’t be clearer to me.
I grew up being a passionate reader in a big house where all the book shelves never seem to have enough space for everything me and my three siblings would like to read. Nearly my only memories I have of my first few years in life before my younger sister was born consist of me reading on my own or together with my brothers. I remember that one some Sundays, when I wasn’t brought along to attend church with my older brothers, my dad and my grandmother, I’d lie at home in the bed next to my mum who would still be sleeping and read while snuggled next to her. There are comics that I remember “reading “ at times when I couldn’t actually read, but instead I’d make up my own stories for them and I still remember some of them when I reread the comics now that I am actually able to read.
Ever since I was old enough to read, I was allowed to read my way through all genres with, much to the joy of my parents who were keen on instilling feminist ideals in me and my siblings early on, Pride and Prejudice being one of my favourite books for many years
Both of my parents have written novels. Most of them are unpublished, but I helped my mum for nearly a decade with her work on her first published novel and my dad has written a children’s novel for which he took me and my three siblings as inspiration for the main characters (if my sibling’s and my first letters of our first names are taken together, they form the order A, B, C, D -Alexander, Berenike, Christopher and Damiane-, which is why he decided to name the group of heroes in his novels “The Alphabetics”) and he used to read a chapter to us each night. Reading at night time is something our family has kept up for decades, and with me being 21 now and my youngest sister being 16, we still often meet up, cuddle up together with hot chocolate and listen to our father reading to us. I live in a family of story tellers, so naturally, I became one myself. I am volunteering for a reading project that allows me to visit my old kindergarten each week and to read to the children for an hour each week. My official title there is a reading godmother, and I like to believe that I can be like the fairy godmothers bringing some magic to children’s lives with literature. Furthermore, I have been working as a journalist for nearly 4 years now, a part-time job that allows me to tell stories and to inform other people and being paid for it, something that hasn’t ceased to baffle me.
So far for my personal connection to literature. To explain why I decided to pick my research topic, I’m going back to the beginning: I am always searching for some meaning behind what I am doing. For me, personally, it is enough to know that I am enjoying what I study because I know I have the skills to find some sort of work after university, so people who tell me that I should have studied something that might be more valuable in terms of finding a job later on might mean well (and sometimes, they don’t) and I appreciate their input, but I disagree with their attitude. So I don’t mean that I need to find some meaning as sort of justification, I need to find some meaning because I believe that I can make a difference in the world and how we care for other people. I know that I grew up very sheltered and that I was very lucky to be able to get the education I have received so far, so I want to find some way to use what I am learning in history for our present and our future, preferably in combination with my passion for literature because I believe that passion has to be the driving force between everything in order to truly make us and others happy.
My research topic has given me the opportunity to combine three things dear to my heart: A topic in history that had incredibly vast influences on life at the time and still continues to touch lives today, a topic that allows me to explore the use of literature and to explore the power of it in terms of how people expressed themselves and a topic that has an incredible importance to it in terms of the importance of mental and physical well-being and how we can react to trauma. Especially the reactions to trauma, both by the people who experienced it and the people who should have been I charge of taking care of them are incredibly important to life today seeing as wars have not ceased to be waged and the numbers of traumatises refugees that not only need shelter, but also medical and psychological support, on the rise.
This is where I could find the meaning so important to me and my studies and this is where you can find me in my research paper.
