Another student picked for profiling was Gaia Cloutier, a graduate of Trinity’s Guided Studies program. I recorded her responses to the questionnaire I sent her here.
What in particular attracted you to history?:
I initially became interested in history through fiction. I would read historical fiction and end up being more interested in the worlds the authors were describing than the plot or the characters. I started reading about Revolutionary France or the Tudor family or Egyptian Pharaohs, and I realized that what actually happened and the different cultures throughout time were more interesting than any of the historical novels I was reading. Then I started to learn about how the events in one place or one time period impacted events that initially seemed completely unrelated, and I just found all the connections to be so interesting. I wanted to learn more about them, so I decided to study history.
And why did you choose to study at Trinity College?:
I was looking for a small liberal arts school in New England because I was coming from a high school with 500 students. My father went to Bates, so I already knew about the NESCAC schools, and they seemed to fit with what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to study history with a focus on Europe, so I looked at the history programs at all the NESCAC schools. Looking through the course catalog I saw that Trinity had a lot of courses dealing with European history, but it also had a lot of courses about topics that I never even thought about studying but instantly intrigued me. I was also invited to the Guided Studies Program which combined a lot of the things that I wanted to study including history, religion, and literature. Guided Studies made up my mind for me.
What elements of history are appealing to you?:
My favorite part about history is learning the stories of individuals and how they were influenced by larger societal and historical factors. The larger patterns are important and interesting, but I am most interested in grounding those overarching patters in the lives and stories of individuals and communities. It’s amazing how much you can learn about larger patters by studying the life of a single person. During the summer I work at a local historical society in Maine researching in the archives, and by reading one person’s letters or diaries you can find out so much about them as individuals as well get an idea about how broader topics (like the War of 1812, how a community’s economy developed, gender roles, and how colonists and Native Americans interacted) influenced real people on a day to day basis. They act as good touchstones to see how the world today is both similar and different than in the past.
What particular subjects within history do you find appealing/do you find especially relevant to the world/you? Why?:
I personally prefer European history. I think that the political history has a lot of interesting factors at play. Ideologically and culturally a large portion of western culture comes from Europe, so you can see how what you’re studying directly and indirectly impacted the formation of the world we know today. One of the most fun courses that I have taken was on the history and development of the book, specifically the Bible. As a person who loves books, especially old ones, it was fun handling them and learning to see more than just the object. It’s also nice to not learn about war in at least one history course. A large part of studying history is using what you learn to better understand the modern world and the background of current events. Right now one of the more relevant things is understanding how and why the aftermath of the World Wars literally changed the map.