Two Broads Abroad | Visiting primary sources brings a new level of understanding

Molly Finkelstein Columnist

Some people are born dorky, some achieve dorkiness, and some have dorkiness thrust upon them. I’d like to think that maybe this new level of academic dorkiness I have achieved has been thrust upon me and is not my own fault. To wit: I went on a pilgrimage. To France. To see some tapestries. Of unicorns.

One of the benefits of going Junior Year Abroad (JYA) is being able to see things that you study firsthand. This works quite well if, for instance, you are studying German architecture and you go to Germany and look at buildings. Or even if you’re studying French and you go to France to listen to people talk. I, however, am studying English. I’m in England, so yes, they’re speaking English, but there’s only so much I can learn from that. People in Europe are really confused when I say I’m studying English. I have to remember to say that I study literature or “littérature.” When you’re studying literature, the only stuff you can go see are old books, the graves of famous writers, and the old houses of famous writers.

But first there was a certain tapestry I had to go see. Last semester I took English 381: Woven Stories, a.k.a. “that tapestry class.” We learned about weaving, we wove on our little looms, we went on field trips to see tapestries, we looked at pictures of tapestries on PowerPoint, and we read texts to go along with the tapestries (thus making it count as an English class).

Last week I had a break from classes for “Reading Week,” as they call it. However, I didn’t have any
reading to do, so I decided to go to Paris to visit some friends. And that was how I met up with Martha Knauf ‘08, my tapestry classmate and associate in super lameness, to go on our tapestry mission.
We took the Metro to the Musée du Moyen Age a.k.a. the CLUNY a.k.a. the Museum of Medieval Times. The CLUNY has the distinct honor of housing the Lady and the Unicorn tapestry series. They depict five ladies representing the five senses and one lady just chilling with a unicorn. Martha and I paid our five Euro, wandered through the boring medieval pots and pans, and approached the tapestry room. We held hands and held our breath. We walked into the darkened room. And there they were, just like we studied in class. Except this time, they were real, not just JPEGs in a PowerPoint presentation, and they were huge. We could see firsthand the faulty restoration work at the bottom and all the little woven bunny rabbits that we spent so much time discussing in class. It was quite the magical moment. And then we bought postcards of the tapestry to send to our professors.

While still in Paris I decided to hit up the Louvre, getting in for free with the student Louvre card of a girl that looked like me. So yes, I am that girl who used a fake I.D. to get into an art museum. I was on another academic artifact mission, but this time for my correlate sequence in Classics. The Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo are great and all, but I was there for something older, and thus, better, the Code of Hammurabi. It’s this big rock with ancient laws written on it. I wrote a paper on it for one of my Ancient Societies classes. So I looked at the big rock. Tourists took pictures of it. Fine, I took a picture of it, too. It was less exciting than I thought it would be.

While still in Paris, I also saw the grave of Samuel Beckett. Pretty exciting, I know. Fellow columnist Acacia O’Connor and I made an attempt to see Ezra Pound’s grave in Venice, but, as you know, that was thwarted. In any case, I had to go back to England for three more months of studies in lameness. So far I’ve made pilgrimages to Charles Dickens’s house, which is only two tube stops away from me, Jane Austen’s house, and the house where Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon. Basically they’re all just old houses full of time period appropriate furniture, though Jane Austen’s house definitely had on display the dresses that our former classmate Anne Hathaway wore in the new Jane Austen biopic. I also saw the thatched cottage of the real Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s wife. Neat, right?

But there’s still so much stuff I’ve studied to go see! Up next, I’ve got Samuel Johnson’s house (DeMaria, expect a postcard), William Morris’s house, Jane Austen’s other house in Bath, the writers corner in Westminster Abbey, and loads of other exciting boring stuff! So that about covers my major. As for my correlate, I’m off to Greece and Rome for spring break (the entire month of April) to see all the cool and exciting antiquities and ruins!

The system works both ways, though: Here at my British university, I’ve had to study Paul Muldoon and Salman Rushdie, both of whom I saw speak at Vassar last semester. My peers were clearly impressed and my professors seemed to sort of appreciate my thoughtful additions to the class (on Muldoon: “He was so cute! He signed my book! He lives in New Jersey now, just like me!” On Rushdie: “He made fun of the French! And The Da Vinci Code! My school paid him a lot of money and everyone was pissed! He was kind of an asshole.”)

I guess some people would call this hideously lame, and I don’t deny it. But still, isn’t that what JYA is all about, gaining firsthand knowledge about your academic interests? And seeing cool stuff that you can’t see in Poughkeepsie? (You definitely can’t see Harry Potter’s genitals in Poughkeepsie.) Now I can be that kid in class who gets to raise their hand and say “I totally went there. Um, it was cool.” By traveling the world I am spreading knowledge I have gained at Vassar and when I come back, I will spread all my valuable life lessons (and hopefully no diseases) to all you guys back at school! It’s like this great web of knowledge or whatever. Besides, maybe I contribute to the world by stealing the Elgin marbles out of the British Museum and smuggling them back to Greece so I can stick them back in the Parthenon. It’s like our homegirl Lucy Maynard Salmon always said, “Go to the source.”