Final Conclusions (extra credit blogpost)

Writing blogposts for this class has been very different than for Transnational Feminisms in a REALLY fun way. I’ve enjoyed thinking of our spies in a more creative lens and pulling from MY world around me. In Transnational Feminisms sometimes I just wrote about whatever I wanted LOL, but this time, I always found a way to connect the two. It actually worked really well in forcing me to think of my daily life analytically as well as encouraging me to let some creativity into my studies. It became like an English class in that way, which was SUPER fun. I really enjoyed making the playlist for Gertrude Bell, which I spent HOURS poring over. Writing about her through music helped me understand her life and espionage almost literarily, and also begrudgingly made me feel less biased against her. Same with Lawrence! By seeing these spies as, yes, actors, but also human beings, I think my notes became less critique/taking a strong stance (which is sort of what studying English has trained me to do) and more understanding/connecting dots in the lives of the spies as well as to the modern world. It was always shocking because I’d come to a conclusion, craft an idea about each spy, then go back and connect it through the class readings. Maybe it’s just a lack of confidence, but I was always shocked to find evidence that supported my non-academic connections. I was also shocked at just how much using non-academic sources to fine tune my thinking helped my academic perspectives (ESPECIALLY Lawrence as Sookie LOL). In general, I’d like to know more about modern-day spies, or keep building on the research skills I used to write my midterm play. In class and in Lawrence in Lahore, we talked a lot about everything being interconnected, but as I did my own research on more modern politics, I was shocked to find just HOW true it is. Overall, I want to continue to learn creatively and research with an artistic lens because it opens up entire worlds of thinking that my English-influenced instinct to always take an arguable stance prevents me from doing.