Connecting the Dots: From Eden to Joyce to Home

One would be hard pressed to find a senior on the Loras College campus who has not witnessed the interconnectedness of the liberal arts education. For instance, my introduction to Christian Theology class studied the writings of Elie Wiesel during my first semester at Loras, and then the same man appears in a documentary for my Positive Psychology class senior year. But the connections between courses go much deeper than odd human rights activist popping up in various classes. Themes, subject matters and ethics cross disciplinary boundaries in that the lessons learned in a psychology class can supplement the information gained in an English class and so forth. However, the interconnectedness of my Loras education was not merely an interesting quirk about the college. It was life changing. Due to so many courses having overlapping premises, I ended up accidentally pursuing a third major. No doubt this seems an odd thing to claim; after all, how could someone not know shes majoring in something? But its true. While the correlations between English and Public Relations are obvious (both are writing-based majors) it was surprising when I realized that I had simultaneously taken classes that counted towards the International Studies major. During my first year at Loras I suffered a slight panic attack second semester. I worried I wouldnt be able to find a job with just an English degree so I started shopping for a second major. Out of curiosity I took two core classes for the International Studies major but ultimately decided the program wasnt for me. However, little did I know that many of my literature classes and courses I took abroad in Ireland would fulfill most of the requirements for the major. One such course taken in Ireland was Dr. Kochs Nature of the Nature of Ireland in which we had to write two creative essays. The second of the two was a literary journalism piece

about a historic site in Dublin. For my essay, I chose St. Stephens Green as the topic, chronicling the parks metamorphosis from leper colony to inner-city oasis. The history was told through the eyes of the people who witnessed St. Stephens transformation, as established in the opening paragraph: If you listen closely you can hear them talking. If you close your eyes and shut out the city, they will tell their story; stories of trials, pain and triumphs. These are the people whose footprints remain on the paths of St. Stephens Green. For some of them, this park was heaven on earth. For others it was a hell that came to soon. While researching this site I found myself becoming more and more invested in the storied history of Dublin. Though it wasnt always a glorious account, it was no less intriguing. The park truly did undergo several face lifts over the centuries, going from a leper colony to a park for the gentry to a barracks for Irish nationalists during the Easter Rising. As such, upon returning from Ireland I wanted to know more about the country I just left, so I took Dr. Wilsons Twentieth Century British Literature class. During this semester, though most of the authors studied were of English decent, we studied The Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man by Irish author James Joyce. Not only did this class count towards both the English major (and later for International Studies as well) but it also allowed me a glimpse into the work of one of Irelands most prolific writers. For me, however, it wasnt necessarily Joyces works but the author himself that I found fascinating. During one of Dr. Wilsons biographical lectures, he mentioned that the Joyce disdained his homeland and so exiled himself to France. However, while in France Joyce could write about nothing except Ireland. This disdain was evident throughout the novel, as alluded to in the essay I wrote for this novel:

For Stephen, to live in quiet submission lest he anger the Powers that Be, is not life. Rather the guilt and institutionalization which the Church presents is an oppressive force which inhibits the human disposition of sensible and intelligible matter to an esthetic end. (224) Fear is neither sensible nor intelligible; therefore it cannot be or inspire art. Dr. Wilson suggested that Stephen Dedalus was a thinly veiled caricature of Joyce himself, the character parroted many of his authors opinions. As such, Joyce felt about the Church and (in a greater sense, Ireland) as Stephen did: it was a place of oppression, both physically and psychically and thus hindered his creativity. And still he could write about no other place. Although, after the research I conducted for Constructing Eden, I did touch on the time period during which Joyce was a young man in Dublin. Though the author himself did not make an appearance in the essay, the horrific events that took place in the city (such as the Easter Rising in 1916) were a prominent portion of the piece. As such, I can understand the sentiment behind Joyces resistance to his homeland. However, I still found Joyces attachment to his homeland fascinating. This phenomenon of the authors psyche stayed with me well after I completed Dr. Wilsons course. Consequently, this question of homeland ties carried over into my senior year. When I finally decided to declare the International Studies major I then had to decide on a research topic for my thesis. I contemplated several options, but eventually my mind wandered back to Joyce and his strange connection to Ireland. Why would he continually write about a place with which he seemed so disgusted? What was the hold home had over him? Thusly, I decided to devote my International Studies thesis to exploring the geographic imagination of the exile and the psychological significance of the homeland. To better

contextualize the project, James Joyce became my primary case study. In my literature review for this project I wrote: A deep disdain for Ireland fueled Joyces imagination of home. Upon exiling himself, Joyce only returned to his homeland three times after his expatriation. Eventually, though, the writer severed all physical ties to home, visiting Dublin solely through his writings. Both through my research of James Joyce and my own experience of living in another country, I understand the writers divided emotions towards his homeland. On the one hand it was an oppressive place to live (especially for an artist) but on the other it was the setting that shaped his own character into the celebrated enigma we study today. This in-depth understanding could not have been reached without the pervasive interconnectedness of my Loras education. The expansive research that went into Constructing Eden provided a great deal of insight into the culture and history of Dublin. My ethnographic experiences contextualized some of the information in Dr. Wilsons class, but on the whole his course enriched m y knowledge of both Ireland and English literature. And finally, my International Studies thesis is the sum total of both my co-curricular and academic endeavors. In short, I cant imagine a college career without the Liberal Arts component. During my four years as a Duhawk I had the opportunity to not only take various and intriguing courses, but also to immerse myself in a new culture. As such, I can now more readily appreciate how seemingly exclusive or separate ideas work to complement each other. Without the interconnectedness of my experiences at Loras, my education would not be as well-rounded as it is today, nor would these last four years have been nearly as fulfilling