kristy bowen | writer & book artist

The penultimate semester of my undergrad career in fall of 1996, I found myself driving to campus one night a week for a 4 hour long seminar in Tudor-Stuart history. While I had had many evening classes, this was the first one that was formatted entirely as a lecture class, which was a different 4 hours than the ones I had spent in more workshop courses. I don't remember which Henry we started with, but my only memory was the several weeks where we talked about Henry VIII and all his wives. It was equal parts scholarship and gossip, and I looked forward to it, and would show up eagerly with a giant coffee and a notebook and pen. History was a humanities requirement at RC, so I didn't really take any classes in it beyond a semester of contemporary history (ie 1945-90s) during my community college semester. I was required, however, as an English major, even one who took far many more classes in American Lit and Drama than English ones, to take at least one British history seminar...