Empire and its Ruins Course Blog

Thinking back on Winter Quarter of Humanities, as a writer, I feel as though I’ve only improved by a little bit. I learned more about how to use sources, and, whether it be primary or secondary, the class has built upon my previous understanding on how to use these sources. Despite that improvement, I don’t feel like I have improved on my vocabulary or writing style. Personally, I resort to simple words that I typically encounter often and I think my writing style does not flow together nicely and seems amateurish. While I don’t think I improved greatly in writing, I think I have become better at thinking, more so in thinking about what I am seeing, rather than numbly watching. In my free time, I usually watch a lot of anime or play video games. With the Winter Quarter, I have begun to look more closely at the stories and the elements that these media types possess. It’s not in depth analysis of these medias, but because of the Humanities class, I begun to see what common themes or st...

During a seminar, we discussed elements of The Tempest movie by Julie Taymor. While we were discussing a scene towards the end of the movie, I saw another scene that looked like the painting, The Birth of Venus . Based on how I thought of the painting from Caliban’s posture and the background, I believe that I recognized the painting because I think the scene was meant as an allusion to the painting. Venus is the Roman goddess of love, sex, beauty, and fertility, appropriated from the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. The story of The Birth of Venus is that Uranus, the god of the sky, was castrated by his son, Saturn, who was a leader of the Titans. The genitalia was thrown into the ocean and the blood (or in some versions, the semen) mixed with the sea foam from which Venus was born out of a seashell. The story of Venus’s birth correlates with The Tempest since it was at the end of play. From the beginning of the play, Caliban plans on revenge against Prospero, w...