Bianca Duarte's Blog

       Over the past couple of years, I have been a large fan of baking. It started out with buying the box cake and brownie mix at the store, but I eventually found myself making recipes from scratch and sharing with those I love. For some reason, I found a fascination with discovering new recipes, and I began researching recipes to make varying from snickerdoodle cookies to chocolate macarons. Baking cookies may be easy, but when it comes to more intricate baked goods such as French macarons and tiered cakes, you must be very precise or else the result will not be what was expected. Over quarantine starting in August 2020, I decided that I wanted to share my love and passion for baking with my community in Gilroy and the surrounding cities as well as family and teammates. I began running a small baking business named Bianca’s Baked Goods(@Biancas.bakedgoods on Instagram), and I ran each and every part of this small business.  It was challenging at first as I h...

    The trip to archives and special collections on Thursday was very interesting and informative. I learned how sacred and important some works can be, and I also find it fascinating how the books and texts downstairs must be kept to a certain humidity and temperature to preserve the pages and overall wellness of the books. One part of the trip that I found to be very engaging was the fraternity incident because Kelci stated that some articles and pieces from that incident became public very recently. Kelci mentioned that if we would like to read about it now, we definitely could and maybe uncover a story or simply read it to be informed about the history of a fraternity at Santa Clara. I also enjoy how much of a variety there is regarding the texts because I was expecting there to only be books, but from Kelci’s tour, we saw that there were photographs, a few paintings on the wall, and even an old gun which was very surprising to me. One thing I loved learning about is how t...

     I have been thinking about many topics for the intertetuality final project, and I have decided that I would like to base it off of literary texts that depict a defiant female protagonist. I find many real life feminist figures and cultural leaders to be very intriguing, so I believe this topic will be very interesting to me. In this class specifically, I definitely find Aneeka to be very bold in Home Fire. I also give props to Antigone for being so strong headed and persistent with her beliefs even though she knew that she would be killed for sticking to them. I tend to admire many female protagonists that go against the status quo, and I would definitely like to do a deep dive on other texts that include this same plot structure and include a character like this. I would like to focus more on women of color who battle against certain rules or face different challenges who are also headstrong and stick to their core beliefs. I have not read many books with a strong ...

       I seriously can not believe that we are halfway through the fall quarter. These past five weeks have flown by so fast, but within these five weeks I have enjoyed an abundance of class activities and projects. One of my favorite activities in this class is the blog post assignment that we must complete and comment on each week. It is a great way to connect to the work of our classmates and we are able to explore the different formats everyone uses for their blog posts. I enjoy reading the comments on my blog posts from my classmates because it adds to my own understanding of the work we are reading at the given time. The research excursions are very helpful and allow us to deep dive into a certain topic which is why they are also one of my top favorites. It is very fun looking into other people’s research excursions, especially on a topic similar to the one I did to see how other people interpreted the topic and what important issues they dove into in compariso...

       I am not quite sure who Tiresias’s parallel is in Home Fire, but the best character that I believe could be a parallel to him is Terry Lone, Karamat’s wife. Although I know that the  parallel of these characters may not be obvious at first, I do believe there are many small similarities specifically in the end of Home Fire and in Antigone. Both characters show up towards the end of the play/novel, but they are very impactful in a way to one of the main character’s. In Home Fire, Terry stands up to Karamat towards the end and essentially threatens Karamat to go to her, and he eventually chooses her. She is very intelligent and tries to steer Karamat away from getting into complicated situations and making an even worse rep for himself. She also criticizes Karamat for making Eamonn look like a fool to the entire world. Terry tries to change Karamat and make him a better person, but in the end, Karamat does not have the strength to completely change for the ...

      After reading the beginning of Antigone and after finishing Home Fire , I noticed many similarities and differences between the parallel characters in both pieces of work. There is a direct connection between Isma and Ismene, Antigone and Aneeka, Creon and Karamat, Parvaiz and Polyneices, and Haemon and Eamonn. The names of these characters are fairly similar, but the similarities and differences I found to be compelling was the parallelism between Isma and Ismene. To state the obvious similarity, Isma and Ismene both have a brother who is shameful and is deemed as a traitor. They both also have a sister that is very headstrong and passionate, which differs from Isma and Ismene’s personality. Isma and Ismene are both very careful with following rules, and they tend to stay safe rather than go against the law. Both of the characters are also willing to suffer the consequences as well. One minor difference is that Isma is more sensible than Ismene and although Is...

  After viewing the second lecture of Antigone, I was left with an abundance of knowledge regarding the print and publication history which is very useful to my overall understanding of the play. Like Dr.Burnham mentioned in the lecture, it is very fascinating to me that a performance that is performed in the festival of Dionysius in 441 BC can evolve and become a PDF version of the play that we are reading in class. It reminds me of ancient Greek dramas or tragedies that went from the original version to the pdf version that others analyze and enjoy. Another thing that intrigued me was that the first findings of the original play Antigone was found in Oxyrinchus, Egypt. The earliest scraps of papyrus were found here which included the earliest content from antigone, and those scraps were found nearly 600 years after the play was performed. This information truly interested me because I find it fascinating how a play can be carried on for so long, and although the current plays may...