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SarahMalayaSniezek's picture

the story of evolution and the evolution of story

This course is a wonderful example of how to apply a certain line of thinking from one topic to a second topic in order to more thoroughly analyze that second topic. It is amazing how sure we are of ourselves in our thinking, when in fact, we may be totally off. I believe that this “thinking outside of the box” approach to any subject matter is important to maintain its intellectual integrity. In this class, I felt we made great strides in our thinking about evolution and literature by cross analyzing each topic with the other’s fundamental methods of analysis. By thinking about evolutionary theory as a story, we were better able to escape the confines of accepted evolutionary thinking, which allowed us to better question its validity. Similarly, by thinking about literature as an evolutionary project, we were able to analyze literature from a unique perspective that most of us hadn’t considered. Ultimately, this type of cross-analysis allowed us to think more creatively about certain topics that allowed us to arrive at more original conclusions. While this type of thinking creates hypothesis that are more spread throughout the spectrum of less wrong and more wrong, it is this type of thinking that allows individuals to come up with groundbreaking work. While it is still important to include the more traditional teaching and learning that includes the momorization of current theories and building upon them, it is just as important to question those accepted theories now and again. It is this type of thinking that I feel has been lost in modern academia, and it was great to experience a class that brought it back.

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