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Postmodernist History of Uni?

Earlier this week in class we were discussing what a postmodernist history of Uni might look like. There wasn’t really an answer, the closest we got was that there can’t truly be a postmodernist history because that would have to involve every possible narrative. History can be seen in so many different ways, it’s impossible to know what narrative to tell (or if it even has to be in the form of a narrative!). For Uni alone there are infinite possibilities of ways to tell its history. We could focus on an overarching issue of budget or look at the smaller student problems like pizza sales disappearing or the way that those connect to each other. We could look at Uni’s history in statistics of grades/ test scores or athletic achievements or the art created here. I think an interesting way of seeing the history of Uni is to look at how history itself is taught at Uni. Of course we all remember learning the flowcharts sophomore year, and I was thinking about those and I think Mr. Butl...
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Is Gregor still Gregor?

At the beginning of Metamorphosis Gregor is a giant insect physically but he still has very human thoughts. He’s worried about work at first and then a little later he’s worried about how his family will live without him as economic provider. In fact, he is extremely glad to hear that his new condition won’t hurt his family that much because of his father’s “unexpected thrift and foresight” of keeping some of Gregor’s money each month (Kafka 85). These are all still very human thoughts and concerns. As the book progresses he starts to enjoy more bug-like aspects of life. He starts to enjoy scurrying around the room and eating trash rather than his favorite human foods. Yet, all his thoughts and descriptions still sound like Gregor. He thinks in a very optimistic way about himself and his family at the beginning, but later when he’s thinking about things that only an insect might care about he continues to have his human personality. For example, when his sister is bringing him his f...
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How to Cope Like Billy Pilgrim

In Slaughterhouse Five I was shocked to read that some of the Kilgore Trout books had similar plots to what Billy has been describing about his experiences on Tralfamadore. Throughout the whole reading and our discussions in class I had taken up front that Kurt Vonnegut was telling us that the alien abduction and Billy’s experiences on Tralfamadore were real within the context of the novel. At first it seemed clearly NOT real that there would be aliens in book but hearing that Billy Pilgrim was unstuck in time, and hearing the Tralfamadorian interpretation of time, the story started to add up and I began to believe it was real (in the story, probably not real life).             Once we were told about the book plots that followed the same storyline as Billy’s time in outer space, I felt kind of silly for just accepting Tralfamadore plotline as truth (honestly I wanted it to be real). But it was a truth of some sort, it may not ...
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