Administrator January 30th, 2010
It is strange that I ended up my education with a Ph.D. in English literature. It could have been in American literature, which I have completely studied also, but it turned out to be in British literature with a specialty in Anglo-Caribbean and African literature.
I remember starting out, years ago, with a Bachelors in Anthropology and Psychology, going on to obtain my Masters in Library Science and a second Masters in Folklore (both literary and anthropological). But being a “book nerd” it wasn’t enough; my quest for a higher degree took me to the prestigious University of Chicago in the 1990s where I obtained a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Library Science, a kind of midway degree between a Masters and a Doctorate.
Just as I entered my 50th birthday, my dear wife, Dolores, coaxed me into applyiing to a Doctoral program in English literature at the University of Puerto Rico. I applied and I was accepted. It was a new, innovative program in Anglo-Caribbean literature. At this moment, two Institutions in the Caribbean are totally dedicated to the study of Anglo-Caribbean literature, i.e., The University of the West Indies; and The University of Puerto Rico. This program prepares scholars to teach and do research in this field. Many graduates have been hired by universities around the world.
I finished my program, focusing on the Trinidadian author, V. S. Naipaul, of East Indian descent and Nobel prize winner in 2001. It took me 3 years to prepare my dissertation, but it was a great accomplishment. I obtained an honorable mention from my dissertation committee.
So it seems, that I have travelled during my life from the natural sciences to the social sciences and ended up in the humanities. The humanities are a wonderful field, especially literature, fine arts and history. They focus on placing Man, not only as a biological, pensive, and behavioral being, but as a spiritual and ethical creature, one that aspires, as Pico della Mirandola once wrote, to a position midway between God and creation. //Dr. Serafin Roldan
