"Would I have taken a course in which I would read 1,000+ pages of Russian literature, plus another 1,000 of military and cultural history, without the Honors Arts and Humanities requirement? No way."
"A Big Book" is the Honors course I always bring up when asked about the interdisciplinary honors program. Would I have taken a course in which I would read 1,000+ pages of Russian literature, plus another 1,000 of military and cultural history, without the Honors Arts and Humanities requirement? No way. That said, I actually loved reading the book and returning to the kind of literary analysis I hadn't had the chance to try since my AP literature class in high school. But this course was much more than a fun diversion from my coursework in my majors: I've drawn on themes from War and Peace in political science and philosophy classes as well as conversations on these topics with my friends and family. Tolstoy packs a lot of meaning into those 1,000 pages, and unpacking some of it has left me with a deep appreciation for the ways literature can help us understand and interpret real life through fictional narrative. Below is one of my final essays on Tolstoy's exploration of history and politics that further discusses this idea.