When I taught the very first version of this course one year ago (it was a Modern British Literature course), I started a conversation with a student that extended beyond the end of the course. This student loved the romance genre and would proudly defend the value of her favorite books in arguments with fellow English majors. When I created the assignments we\u2019re going to be using this semester, I showed her the revised assignment and asked her what she\u2019d do with it. She said she’s still write about the same romance novel she chose the first time, but she’d share much more about her experience of it. What she shared about her experiences was very helpful for my thinking. She described taking great pleasure in a happy ending for a character she identifies strongly with\u2014and occasionally being terrified that a story she\u2019s deeply invested in won\u2019t have a happy ending, which would leave her emotionally distraught. Our conversation made me want to think more about a story that I had that experience with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ll admit that I haven\u2019t read the romance novels that are all the rage on BookTok, but I have certainly enjoyed some romances that I loved for all the same reasons I hear from my students who love the genre. And so I want to think about one of those stories as we start this class, because I haven\u2019t yet taken the time to think about why I connected so strongly with it. There are lots to choose from\u2014all that came out right when I was finishing up high school and heading off to college (I could actually start with Anne of Green Gables<\/em>, which I loved in middle school, or My So Called Life<\/em>, which I was obsessed with in high school, or I could talk about Felicity, Gilmore Girls, or even Grey\u2019s Anatomy, which I loved in college and graduate school. All of these stories are female coming of age stories and they all include very dreamy romantic interests. But I can\u2019t do them all, so I think I want to start with Felicity, because I just heard Keri Russel interviewed on Smartless<\/a> the other day and it\u2019s top of mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, so to start. What was my experience of watching Felicity? I imagined myself as Felicity, which I realize now means I was experiencing identification<\/strong>. I felt like every problem Felicity dealt with was similar to problems I was dealing with. The experiences glossary<\/a> on our course website defines identification as \u201crecognizing, in a character\u2019s experience, a conflict that you have experienced.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also was in love with Ben (and a little bit sometimes in love with Noel\u2014Felicity\u2019s other love interest). So another emotion I felt was love<\/strong>. The experiences glossary<\/a> defines this as \u201caffection, attraction, and emotional attachment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also felt really confused<\/strong> when it wasn\u2019t as easy as I wanted it to be to map my own experiences onto Felicity’s experiences. Of course, my first boyfriend in college was a lot like Noel\u2026but there was no guy at the start like Ben (the one she followed to college\u2026because I didn’t do that). I guess my point is, I felt like I wanted to see what would happen to Felicity because my life was SO SIMILAR, the same thing would maybe happen to me. I was thinking of this story as a sort of guide to my own life, which I realize now in retrospect was treating it a bit like a parable<\/a> when it wasn’t that (why did I do that?). It’s interesting to me that I gave it so much power. I think this is something our brains do naturally with story and I want to understand better how that works. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll figure it all out for this draft, but I\u2019ll be thinking more about this before the revised version.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, so what were the features about the story that made me identify with Felicity? I\u2019m going to start by sharing things from memory and then I\u2019ll go back to the story and check what’s really there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Felicity came into college and was awkward and pre-med and then she changed her major to art. She had a HUGE crush on Ben (they went to high school together) and basically follows him to New York because of a brief conversation they had at their graduation. All we know about Ben at first is that he\u2019s handsome. And he doesn\u2019t really know who Felicity is when he realizes she\u2019s come to his school and yet somehow as the show unfolds, they wind up together (this part is what kept me watching\u2026It seemed just too good to be true that he actually liked her back when he was seemingly oblivious to her existence at the start).<\/p>\n\n\n\nDescribing My Experience<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Features of the Story<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What I remember<\/h3>\n\n\n\n