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Hello. My name is Joanna Barkas and I am a sophomore Biology major, Anthropology minor at Bryn Mawr. I am a first generation American, as both my parents were born and raised in Greece before moving to New York City. From a young age, I knew that science was what I was most interested in; however, being raised in a Greek Orthodox family, I often found it difficult to reconcile both my interest in science and my Greek Orthodox upbringing. This became increasingly difficult as I entered college and my studies in science and anthropology led to my interest in evolution. During my past three semesters at Bryn Mawr, I have begun to consider that the facts,opinions,values and ideas that were instilled in me as a child can fall under the category of "stories" and I have begun to realize that it is o.k., if not expected, for these "stories" to evolve as my understanding of the world changes. In such a way I have been able to reconcile my passion for science with my upbringing. That being said, what I hope to be able to bring to the class is my experience with such a conflict, as well as an eagerness to learn about literary evolution, as I have only yet studied biological and anthropological evolution. Lastly, the three questions I had at the beginning of class were:

1) How do stories evolve?
2) How do we recognize the evolution of stories?
3) What aspects of biological evolution are manifested within literary evolution and to what extent do these aspects affect the evolution of stories?