Ei! My name is Antônio Jorge Medeiros Batista Silva (yes—four last names!) and I'm a '25 from Governador Valadares, Brazil. My journey to Dartmouth has crossed two continents, three countries, and over 10 schools—and I'm a strong believer that everyone's path to the Big Green was unique in a way. At Dartmouth, I study Linguistics, Native American & Indigenous Studies, and Spanish. I am passionate about social justice, language-learning, and the oxford comma!
This class is an introduction to the Spanish minor and major courses and, although I did not expect to particularly like it, it not only turned out to be my favourite but it made me start considering a degree in the department!
In this class, we analysed different productions of Latinx American theatre. Prof. Analola Santana was probably the best person I met this year at Dartmouth. Being her student was a very important experience as I try to navigate my potential majors and minors.
In this class, I was able to carve time out of my busy Dartmouth schedule to study and learn my Indigenous language: Krenak. With the help of Prof. Gokke, all students were encouraged to develop a final project that spoke to their community's needs for language learning and revitalisation. It was an extremely important class for me, not only academically, but also for my personal healing process.
I had the honour of spending my sophomore fall in Madrid, taking part in the Spanish FSP. There, Prof. Martín was not only a great professor, responsible for my favourite lecture of the program, but also an incredible company throughout our classes and in-country trips. Great way to wrap up my Spanish minor, honestly!
This was my second class in the NAIS department, and thus it took me one step closer to wrapping up my major. Nonetheless, it was Prof. Powell's genuine charisma and caring personality that made it my favourite of the term!
This course was definitely life changing! Prof. Pochedley, a visiting post-doc of the Potawatomi nation did a great job at keeping the students engaged while teaching us to see the land we inhabit as a source of knowledge and spirituality. In a majority Indigenous classroom, we got to develop individual projects related to our traditional homelands, learning to navigate the world through Native world lenses.
Prof. Gómez is one of those profs I've always wanted to take a class with. His work with the Horror genre in Modern Spanish literatures amazes me, and it was an honour to guide in-class discussions and develop my own research on the themes of science, testimony, and fear.
LING54 is an umbrella course: the actual content of the course may vary each year, but it is the common letter-number code to refer to the course taught abroad by your accompanying Dartmouth Linguistics professor. In this year's Linguistics Foreign Study Program (FSP), LING54 was a 'Language Documentation' class, wonderfully taught by Prof. David Peterson.
Before this class, I had no idea what visual and cultural studies actually encompassed. Every chat with Prof. Broner opened my eyes to a different analysis or method for interpreting literature, and for that, I feel truly lucky! We got to discuss films made by Indigenous women from all over Latin America, exposing the class to distinct ways of interacting with and stewarding the environment.
Hi all! It's me again, for one more post—can you believe this makes it a total of 71 so far? Wow, three years of blogging have really flown by!
You may not know this, but the posts where I introduce my classes to you, the People Places Pines reader, is always one of my favorite posts to write. As much as I love talking about campus traditions, social life, and my study-abroads, the thing that first got me attracted to Dartmouth was the academics. I feel like every class I took here has opened my eyes to something new. While this may not be true to every college student out there, never did I regret signing up for a course. And, if you are curious, you can actually check out what classes I took for the Winter term of my first year here, and for my second year Spring here.
Now, for the Fall term of my fourth and final year of college, I've signed up for courses in Linguistics and Spanish—my usual combo. What I'm most excited about isLING86—Honor Research. As a major, I've submitted a proposal to develop an independent research project throughout the next two terms, and I am honored to have been granted the opportunity. For the thesis, I'll be looking into how my family's ancestral Indigenous language encodes ecological knowledge, which I'm really excited about.
In Spanish, I'll be taking my last class: SPAN55.09—Revoltosos/as, which looks back at the political revolts that happened under imperial Spanish America. I may or may not have intentionally saved this one to be my final class, for I really like the theme and the instructor, Prof. Cirnigliaro.
Lastly, as a bit of a surprise to myself, I'm enrolled in GEOG1.02—The Natural Environment. After GEOG9.01–Geographical Information Systems last Spring, this will be my second geography class, and the two in a roll. I can't complain, honestly. I've been loving to get to know the department. But, as you may know, this isn't my field, and thus I often find things hard (ie. assignments, tests, problem sets). The reason why I signed up this time, however, was to complete my SCI requirement, one of Dartmouth's distributive requirements—and the only one I am missing, for everything STEM tends to freak me out. But, genuinely, I am looking forward to it. While learning things outside my comfort zone can be tricky, I like putting myself out there, up for the challenge.
I know this Fall term seems to be a lot, almost overwhelming, but I am sure it will be great. Come back to the blog later to check out how it's been going!
Academics can be challenging at Dartmouth. But there are lots of groups across campus here to support you through your academic journey. Read on for my experience asking for help and a few organizations that might be helpful to you!
Every Dartmouth student is required to demonstrate proficiency in a language other than English. Here's my experience navigating the language requirement!
