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!
On January 2, I began the second day of the year by boarding my flight back to the Northeast from Chicago. Although Dartmouth starts the winter term earlier than most other schools, the 6-week length of the winter break from Thanksgiving to New Years definitely makes it worth it. In this post, I want to share a 'day-in-my-life' easing back into school after a long 6-week break.
After arriving to campus at 10pm after a 2-hour flight and 3-hour bus ride, I focused on unpacking and organizing my room before calling it a night. Since I didn't have class on my first day until 3:30pm, I had plenty of time to see friends and get used to campus again before class.
I started my day at Novack, one of the popular cafes on campus, enjoying breakfast with one of my friends while setting up my calendar and to-do lists for the term. While catching up on what my friend was up to during winter break, I did some of my readings for the first day of classes. After getting some work done, we headed to the mailing center on campus to pick up some packages.
Afterwards, we grabbed lunch at the Collis (center for student involvement) on campus, which happened to be chicken and rice. After lunch, I went to my first class of the term, which was Ethnographic Film. We began to talk about some key ethical questions raised by documentary filmmaking before watching and analyzing "Nanook of the North", the first documentary of all time made in 1921.
Once class was finished, I immediately logged onto Zoom for drill instructor training as part of the Rassias Method for language learning at Dartmouth. Since I help tutor Arabic on campus, I need to be retrained at the start of every term so that me and the instructors are on the same page about what I'll be teaching this term. After that session, I went to the weekly Hop Fellows dinner meeting—it was great to see many of my friends and enjoy a delicious meal from Base Camp, a Nepali restaurant in town. To learn more about the Hop Fellows program, check out this post I wrote about the program!
After dinner, I went back to my dorm to relax, get a bit of work done, and prepare for the next day. I definitely have to hit the ground running at the start of a Dartmouth term, but it's a lot of fun, too! I am excited to continue updating the blog as I navigate this winter term.
It's easy to forget how easy it is to access walking trails during the hustle of a Dartmouth term. As graduation nears, I am reminded of how special it is to step off campus and enjoy quiet moments in nature.
With a solar eclipse sweeping across North America for the first time in nearly seven years on April 8th came a road-trip with hundreds of other Dartmouth students to a zone of totality near campus: St. Johnsbury, Vermont!
