Hi everyone! My name is Alicia Henriquez. I’m a junior, double majoring in Latin American Studies and Film and Media Studies. I’m an international student from Nicaragua, which is where I grew up and then I went to school in China for two years before coming to St Olaf. I have four older siblings who now live in different countries, so I don’t get to see them as often as I’d like to. I also have two bulldogs, their names are Luna (Moon) and Gea (Earth) and they are the cutest dogs on the planet. I am currently staying with my boyfriend’s family in Nicaragua because my parents live in Costa Rica now, and they have Mafalda, who is a weird mix between labrador and poodle and she’s the third cutest dog on the planet.
I am taking this course for two reasons, the first one is because it fulfills the WRI requirement, which is one of the last ones I have left to finally be done with the BA degree, but also because it was the one that interested me the most from the list. Since I was little, me and my family have had a strong connection with art in all of its forms. Me and my brothers learned how to read music before learning how to read words because my parents insisted a lot on us learning how to play an instrument. I started learning how to play the violin when I was five. My dad, my brothers and I are fairly good at drawing and illustrating and I also like doing embroideries and photomontages all the time. But something that pushed me to be more creative and to create things more consistently was a social uprising after a 13 year long dictatorship in Nicaragua in 2018 that consisted mainly of artistic expressions as a way of changing the way in which people see conflicts and ways of demanding their rights without violence. Since then, most of my embroideries and photomontages have been focused as a way to demand for the Nicaraguan people’s rights. I think this relates a lot to the class and specifically to the question of why democracy needs the arts.
Something that excites me about the class is to understand how films as artistic expressions have been related to democracy, but I also want to learn more about democratic and creative processes in the US because I didn’t grow up here. I’m also excited about the Washington Performing Arts and the Smithsonian American History Museum consultations!