Category Archives: Extra Credit

Lady Bugs – Halloween Extra Credit

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For Halloween earlier this semester I decided to dress up as a Lady Bug for our class! Literature & the Environment has went over humans and our relationship with the natural world, along with our perceptions of the conceptual wilderness. Lady Bugs, like humans are a part of this natural world. They exist in these spaces with us, and although they are small- they are mighty and are a huge help to farmers as natural pest controllers. In our class, the discussion of beauty has been brought up in relation to mermaids and femininity, mermaids and their alluring looks have been used to craft narratives. People are drawn to beauty. Lady Bugs are part of the beetles family, and yet they often get treated more kindly compared to other bugs all in the name of beauty! Lady Bugs have become aesthetics, with their bright red colors and polka dots. Pretty privilege transcends the human world and is applied to how we treat other living organisms as well. Lady Bugs come in other colors, such as all black, orange, yellow, but it is the red and black polka dotted ones that get the most recognition through media and conversations. Similarly, mermaids are usually depicted as hyper-feminine, pale, white and human-like despite there being rich histories of culturally different mermaids all around the world. My comparison might sound like a stretch, but it’s not!

Extra Credit-Halloween Costume

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For Halloween I dressed up as a werewolf because like mermaids they are considered both a hybrid and a monster. Werewolves have a symbolic nature of the animal or the “uncivilized” part of humans that still lurk in the dark corners of the psyche that can still be summoned by events of the natural world. The topic of distancing from nature and how that is a human concept I believe is reflected in the werewolf. It is fear of the animal or inherit nature taking over and destroying the barriers between the domesticated and the wild. Werewolves are often depicted as male and with torn clothing, almost as though their lunar transformation was unplanned or unexpected. I chose to wear a (red) dress as an almost extra-feminine interpretation, while in “werewolf form” to show that the link we have to the natural world does not need to end when we are going about our daily lives.

Halloween Extra Credit

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For Halloween, I wanted to dress as a sailor since they are a critical part of mermaid stories and folklore. As we’ve discussed in class, stories about mermaids were often circulated by those who were constantly at sea. In order to make sense of what they had seen while at sea, they used mermaids to explain the myriad of sea creatures that they encountered during their time on the water. Plagued with tiredness and isolation, it was easy for them to mistake certain creatures for mermaids – making them believe that animals such as a manatee could be a mermaid. Sailors then become the eyewitnesses who recount their tales to those they come in contact with. These stories and folktales told by sailors are then the basis for some of the mermaid tales that we know and love today. In turn, stories such as “Odysseus and the Sirens” are possible because they are composed of the accounts that sailors had while on their voyages. While mermaid tales were being circulated long before it was simply a “sea tale,” sailors still hold a pivotal role in continuing the tradition of passing down these stories as a warning and explanation of what they have seen on their journey.

Arts and Letters Open House & Master’s Seminar

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In the Arts and Letters Open House, I was able to learn so much about the Master’s program here at San Diego State University. I got to engage in conversation about the transition from a BA to an MA, learning about the workload difference and the discipline needed to achieve an MA.

Within the Open House, I was able to talk to various of my professors and learning about their journey to San Diego State University, and the motivations that got them through. One of my favorite questions is to ask what they studied, and I got to learn about so many different avenues of literature professors here at SDSU adventured off to.

My biggest takeaway from this open house was how everyone’s journey is not linear; it takes time to find a place that feels like it’s meant for you. And sometimes it’s important to just take a gap year and reset to find what you truly are seeking.

Pic Creds: Professor Bailey

Halloween Costume: Sailor

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For Halloween, I dressed as a sailor! Throughout the mermaid stories we have discussed in class a sailors have been a recurring character. Sailors are said to be lured into the waters by the mermaid’s beauty, and even more sinister, her hypnotizing voice.

Sailors are characters used to push narratives about women’s sexuality and demonize women who freely express their sexuality. Thus, only promotes women’s sexuality as something dangerous and should be kept away or hidden.

Though what if the sailor was a woman? Would they be able to hear the voice of the siren? Would they be lured? Or would women be the only people who would care to hear what the siren is truly communicating to us?

Feat. my car as a prop for the ocean…if you look closely, there is a stingray inside.

Aerial Spirits and the Natural World–Halloween Extra Credit

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While thinking of our relationship with the natural world, I wanted to embody something less tangible than animals or plants–but as something we oftentimes take for granted and can’t live without: air! Air, in its invisibility, surrounds and sustains every living thing in this world, yet we rarely notice it until it’s either gone or polluted. That invisibility feels symbolic of how easily we overlook what’s essential, how often we ignore the unseen forces that hold together our world–and our emotions. Dressing as “air” became my way of representing both that invisibility and necessity.

In Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, the idea of air takes on a spiritual and moral weight. After all of her suffering and transformation into a human, the little mermaid becomes an “aerial spirit,” a daughter of air, freed from the physical confinement of the sea and her body. She can no longer belong to the water, nor can she belong to the human world–so she transitions into something of the between, a breath, a presence that moves unseen. That transformation struck me as deeply environmental. Air exists between worlds: the sea meets it, the earth breathes it, and it circulates through everything. To me, dressing as “air” was a way of acknowledging that liminal space, that delicate threshold and boundary where transformation and connection all coexist.

In the ending of Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, the mermaid’s transformation into an air spirit is bittersweet. She loses her voice, her body, but gains a kind of transcendence–a second life of observation and care, unseen yet intimately involved with the world. That mirrors our own relationship to nature today because of the way we impact what we can’t see. It also reminds me of the moral undertone Andersen ties to the air spirits–they earn their souls by performing good deeds, by aiding humankind. I thought about that while putting together my costume–how air, in its quiet omnipresence, is always giving, sustaining, even when we don’t notice.

So, in choosing to dress as “air,” I wanted to embody that unseen grace of Andersen’s aerial spirit–the aftermath of longing, the cost of transformation, and the quiet power of something that exists everywhere but is rarely seen. It’s all about presence without visibility, giving without reward, and how even what seems weightless can carry the heaviest of meanings.

Screenshot

Oh Deer

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In discussing our intertwined dynamic with nature, I think deer might be one of the most obvious and imperative examples. Obviously, they’re an animal pretty closely connected to man because we encroached so deeply into their habitats, and because they’re such a commodity in hunting culture. Not only have they become such a universal symbol of innocence, they are so engulfed with our language, the way we continue to discuss.

Deer makeup and costumes recently became quite popularized for their allegory to a loss of innocence. This connected to this overwhelming comparison of them as innocent animals, as incapable of harm. From Disney stories like Bambi, whose family posed no threat and became an easy target, to juxtaposing horror movies that make them the villains because it’s so unexpected by the audience. On social media, it became a trend to dress up as a deer, then utilize red makeup to portray a target directly in the center of their forehead, an ode to hunting and how deer are so often the desired outcome. It played on the same idea as so many people connected it to their experiences with losing their innocence, through grief, through sexual assaults, through abusive instances within their lifetime. In my mind, it connected deeply with stories like that of Melusine. Her experience with a “loss of innocence” of sorts when she’s forced to become this monster, and again when she experiences that extreme betrayal by her husband choosing to directly ignore her instruction to stay away on Saturdays. She goes from this youthful, gently-spirited woman, to a devastated woman who seems to lose herself; she transforms from the docile deer to the mutilated carcass at the hand of man.

When it comes to language, we utilize even the simplest phrases of “Oh dear!” or making it a pet name amongst people. While it all seems quite trivial, throughout our discoveries, it has become more and more clear that nothing about our choices when it comes to language could be considered trivial. Their gentle nature, their ability to be such peaceful creatures made them something people compare to loved ones, those they hold closely because of their inner beauty. It only emphasizes the idea of innocence when we look at the usage of it amongst parents; they consider their children so dear because they’re innocent, young and agile the way deer continued to be represented and perceived. The biggest language choice that stands out is that of “doe eyes”; it’s this label we use for that big, wholesome look in a person’s eyes, the one place it’s nearly impossible to hide emotion. The term comes with this connotation of sensitivity, of gentleness and represents how we view these people, speaking as someone who has been labeled by doe eyes my entire adult life. It truly rounds out this image, this belief in deers as this beautifully simple part of lives, and how we often forget this when it comes to the real thing.

The Seal Woman

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I really enjoyed getting to celebrate Halloween in class with everybody who dressed up. As an homage to the origins of this beloved holiday, I chose to dress up as a Selkie from the legend in our Penguin Book of Mermaids. Upon reading these stories, which cover both Scottish myths and Irish legends, I was struck at the way these women, either as mermaid or seal, are taken against their will and forced to become mothers, especially in the case of Tom Moore and his Selkie bride.

Although this version ends with the seal woman kissing her children goodbye, and returning to the ocean, there are versions in which she drowns her children in her attempt to take them to sea. This reminded me of the story I grew up with, La llorona, about a weeping woman who is abused and abandoned by her husband, and in a sort of mercy killing, drowns her children in the river and herself. She haunts lakes and watery spaces and weeps for her children.

These two myths from completely separate parts of the world, position the water as both a danger to humans, and a power beyond our comprehension, that a mermaid could prefer returning to it, than to life on land. These stories discuss the limited options that women have in cases of abuse, forced marriage, or marital rape, which is to leave by any means. It deeply contrasts to the Grey Selchie (male) having custody of his child, but the mothers having to leave their children behind in an act of desperation.

I appreciated that in the Penguin version, when she leaves, her children and descendants are marked by webbed feet and the ability to swim. Through her, the Ocean becomes a part of their DNA. Their relationship with their mother becomes one with the Ocean. This physical mark of the relationship with sea creatures on humans bodies, reminds us of the deep connections with the Ocean we are capable of having, if we respect it´s autonomy.