What's up! My name is Brandon and I'm a '25 from a small town outside of Chicago. I am passionate about Middle Eastern culture, politics, history, and languages; I'm particularly interested in studying gender/sexuality, politics of exhibition, and counterculture in the Arab Gulf. My current hobbies are reading, playing the mandolin, audio design, eating spicy foods, and streetwear. Please enjoy these snapshots of my life in Hanover!
This was definitely my favorite class of fall term—the readings were heavy, but they all felt incredibly relevant to the coursework. For each class, we read both Jewish and Arab perspectives throughout history. Moreover, Professor Avishai has a vast network of connections with important members of Israeli government, and even figures who we read about in the history books (including former prime ministers!). Overall, that class was a lot of work but very effective in helping me understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Professor Smolin's lectures were always something for me to look forward to. In this intro class, a wide variety of subjects regarding the Arab world were covered. Topics such as culture, Islam, literature, poetry, politics, and history were covered from the pre-Islamic period to the more recent Arab Spring. The readings were fascinating, and the professor also incorporated a wide variety of video resources to accompany the readings. I loved this class!
I found myself regularly engrossed in Professor Fishere's lectures in Arab Political Thought. Tracking the development of political ideologies from the 1800s until today was fascinating, the discussion-based classes helped me get to know tons of my peers.
While in Morocco this summer, I had the chance to take intensive Arabic 21 and Arabic 22. Working with a local teacher, Ilham, I had the chance to study both standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic .My favorite part of the class was the opportunity to engage with the language in cafes and shops.
Ancient Greek & Roman Philosophy was definitely a class that took me out of my comfort zone. Having never taken a class on philosophy, I had lots of fun studying readings of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Furthermore, I liked that the class focused heavily on group-work, with weekly group meetings and write-ups being a critical component of the class.
This class made me think critically about how we use different media, and how different media use us. I always considered media and technology as tools we use to navigate life, but never thought about the ways that media influence us and perceptions of the self. Taking this course inspired me to be involved more with digital humanities in order to think critically about how different media can alter the meaning of a message.
I had a great spring term living in Kuwait while interning at the American University of Kuwait! Working as an intern with the Oral History Project and International Relations departments, I met many amazing friends and gained experience with oral history and digital humanities. As someone who wants to continue doing research on the Arab Gulf, this experience was incredibly valuable.
Filmmaking & Visual Culture was about the intersection of filmmaking and anthropology, and I really enjoyed the course. The course looked at film through a post-colonial lens, thinking about how it can be used as a tool to tell stories, empower communities, and challenge structural violence. As a final project, we were required to make our own films with the broad requirement that they had to tell some kind of story or narrative. Having this sort of creative freedom was lots of fun: I did a short film project about a farmer in the Upper Valley.
This was the first science course that I had ever taken at Dartmouth, and I actually really enjoyed it. The course was focused on being able to identity the names and functions of the bones and muscles in the human body: we covered a lot of ground in a short 10-week term. In addition to studying human anatomy, we also studied the anatomy of monkeys and chimps, comparing their evolutionary trends to those of humans. We also had the chance to visit the Geisel School of Medicine cadaver lab on multiple occasions to review for exams, which was definitely a unique experience. Overall, I'm glad I took the opportunity to go outside of my comfort zone a little bit with this class!
Over the course of my first three years at Dartmouth, I've taken so many interesting courses. Many classes that I took on a whim or to fulfill a Distributive Requirement unexpectedly ended up being some of the most enjoyable ones! In this post, I want to share my three favorite courses I've taken, and why I enjoyed them so much.
My favorite class that I've taken up to this point was Modern Media Theory, a comparative literature course I took my sophomore winter. I initially took the class to satisfy a Western Culture requirement for graduation (since the class is largely focused on the work of German theorists), and the class was thoroughly enjoyable and pushed me to further explore my interest in film and digital media. It was a discussion-based course with only 5 students, which allowed us to get to know each other and explore the material and readings in-depth together. Furthermore, the readings were all focused on looking at the impact of media technology on the way that we see and navigate the world, spanning inventions from the typewriter to the smartphone. The class really made me consider the various ways in which media technology changes what it means to be human.
Another one of my all-time favorite classes was Filmmaking & Visual Culture, a course in the anthropology and African & African American Studies department. I took this class during my sophomore summer, and it was another discussion course with about 16 students. In particular, the class focused on the radical history of visual culture, how power operates through symbols and visual motifs, and the power imbalances present in filmmaking. The course readings were excellent and engaging. In addition, the final class project was to create a film that demonstrates understanding of some theoretical concepts from the class – having the opportunity to work on a creative final product for the course was very rewarding!
Another class I really enjoyed at Dartmouth was Human Functional Anatomy. The class was totally out of my comfort zone and was the first and only science-based course I have taken, but it was very interesting and rewarding. The course looked at the anatomy and physiology of the human body in depth, with particular emphasis on function and evolutionary history of the bones and muscles in the human body. Another interesting component of the course was that it was focused on evolutionary anatomy, looking at the changes in human anatomy over time and comparing them with the anatomy of chimpanzees and monkeys. The class was a great way to get out of my comfort zone, and I feel like I have a much better understanding of how my own body works.
