Giving Value and Thought to the Imaginary
<em>Roxaboxen</em>, a book by Alice McLerran
During the 2019 NHC GSSR.
Katelyn Campbell, 24, PhD Student in American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill
value-thought-imaginary
First Archival Visit
I hope I am not the only person who struggled to narrow their moment to a single episode. I am grateful for the prompt, though; in a summer full of dissertation writing and classroom prep, this prompt provided me an opportunity to appreciate how many times daily I interact with a humanities scholar or a piece of art, music, or literature. <br /><br />Certainly a moment that stands out among the rest happened when I was twelve years old. It was the summer of 2002 and I was home with my Mom and my younger sister. We lived in a rural part of southern Ohio and we were between visits to Winters Public Library so naturally I was bored out of my mind—the kind of boredom I find myself longing for now. I am certain that I spent the morning begging my Mom to take me to the public library again—though I know that we had already been that week. <br /><br />My Mom knew better, of course. As a consequence, I found myself re-reading a YA historical fiction book I had devoured the previous week. During this latest re-read, I must have focused on the latter half of the book because I remember reading the source page. And, that must have been when I saw it: the author had cited primary sources, a journal, from the Greene County Historical Society—that was in Xenia! That was within an hour’s drive! <br /><br />I do not remember what I said to my mother to convince her to go. I would like to think I was persuasive but I imagine I was just loud and persistent. We took her 1992 Subaru Justy—already ten years old. <br /><br />It would take me years to realize that her choice to take me to the archive that day was a risk and that it meant a sacrifice. We were, as I would learn later, one car repair away from “serious trouble” and this car was not in great shape. When she turned the key in the ignition, there was a sigh of relief: it had just enough gas to get us there and back. We only had one income at the time. I don’t remember the drive to the archive but I remember nearly every second of the visit once we stepped inside. I remember climbing the steps to the third floor and the warm smile on the librarian’s face who showed me how to fill out a call slip. She made me feel so welcome in that space, like I belonged there. And, like every good librarian wore a fantastic sweater, an orange cardigan to be exact. <br /><br />I also remember how my heart raced as I watched her disappear behind the shelves. I also distinctly remember imaging what the diary would look like and being surprised when the contents arrived in a manila folder. I stayed until closing and my mother waited patiently on the first floor for at least three hours, looking up obituaries in the microfilm collection. <br /><br />I think this moment stands out for two reasons: History seemed possible, it seemed comprehensible in that moment. It also stands out because over time and with coursework, I would come to understand how the book that brought me to the archive had flattened Ohio’s complex nineteenth century history—it had reduced this story to one of virtuous settlers and villainous Shawnee warriors. With coursework in history, English, and library and information science, I learned the vocabulary necessary to critique that book and how to find better books, better sources, and to tell more complete stories.
An Archival Trip
Summer 2002
Mary Wise, PhD Candidate in History at the University of Iowa
first-archival-visit
Unexpected Lessons in Empowerment
My Humanities Moment involves a connection between two individuals that might not initially seem to have anything in common: Jane Austen and Quentin Tarantino. One of the first places I found inspiration for the tenacity that has always kept me going through numerous personal and professional challenges was in the novels of Jane Austen. The rather conventional Austen can hardly be called a feminist since her strongest characters ultimately bend to the social and gender expectations of their time. When I was in middle school, however, I didn’t know that. I read for pleasure, rather than analysis, and had a greater desire to accept a much more romantic vision of the world. This caused me to see characters like Elizabeth Bennett and Elinor Dashwood as strong women who faced difficult circumstances with grace and determination and spoke up for the things they believed in. I remember admiring their ability to put actions behind their words and positions—they seemed to fight hardest when things got tough. <br /><br />Flash forward about fifteen years to the first time I saw Tarantino’s <em>Kill Bill</em> series. Ironically, The Bride (Beatrix Kiddo) spoke to me in the same way as the Austen characters. Kiddo is attacked by people she considered her allies and left for dead in a way that pretty much should have assured her demise. The most inspiring scene for me has always been in the second movie, which depicts her escape from a grave in which she has been buried alive. I found her will to survive circumstances that would have destroyed another person—both literally and figuratively—incredibly motivating. <br /><br />Getting my masters’ degrees and my PhD has been a struggle to say the least. When I began my quest for an advanced education, I was a young mother who lived in a tiny rural town, fighting for a way to effectively express my value system in an environment that was much more conservative than I was. But whenever I felt like giving up—like when I was overwhelmed with work, life, or whatever—I tried to remember these fictional women. They refused to wallow in self-pity, but simply picked themselves up, reorganized, or even crawled out of the dirt to face the next moment with purpose and resolve. I still think of them when I find myself faltering and credit them for giving me the willpower to fight my own battles. They truly have made me the person I am today.
Books and Films
Throughout my life
Melissa Young, Archivist and Historian
unexpected-lessons-empowerment
What About the Jesus Movement?
My humanities moment came with my conversion from Islam to Christianity. It opened a wide world for me and enabled me to see that my new faith was distinct, but shared some of its humanistic values which we find in religious traditions around the world. I began to see areas of difference and convergence with my African roots, my former religious community, Islam and decided that I will do graduate work in the human sciences. <br /><br />Ideas communicate the vision and often inspire people in ways that one did not expect. One of those ideas was the slogan of Rice University that talked about “unconventional wisdom,” which in the Department of Religion at Rice University invites a robust conversation about religions around the world. The quest for unconventional wisdom suit my goals, and the School of Humanities offers several opportunities for critical interdisciplinary research that will prepare me as a scholar of global Christianity in a multi-religion world. Christianity is rooted in Judaism and first developed as a Mediterranean religion which later spread to Africa, Europe, and rapidly became a world religion. <br /><br />I find studying religion within a global context meaningful because the Christian tradition’s emphasis on the humanity of Jesus humanizes religion. What Jesus did was to work with the community around him. Indeed, scholars describe his followers and their humanistic message as the Jesus movement which started within the Jewish community, but by the time of Jesus death, it had grown to a multi-ethnic humanistic program centered beliefs about God. This movement later developed into what is known as Christianity around 40 AD when the so-called pagans or gentiles coined this name in Antioch, nowadays Turkey. <br /><br />Christianity remains for me a humanistic journey and studying the humanities today will prepare me to research some of the issues people around the world face. For me, specifically, it means that I should strive to understand the relation between Christianity and economic development. The economy is not merely a dismal science because it is a necessary component of human development and well being. Studying in the school of humanities will strengthen my research as I examine what faith communities have done and what they can do for individuals and humanity as a whole, not only they are targets of conversion, but because the Christian tradition follows in the footsteps of Jesus who taught his followers to care about other human beings. <br /><br />However, I am in no denial of the negative role that religion played and continues to play in human relations with destructive wars, all forms of violence, and its corollary of human subjugation. But it is worthy to notice that studying the human dimensions of the movement, demonstrates that Christianity is indeed a humanistic journey. For me, religion in general is part of our humanity, and Christianity gives those who follow its path an opportunity to prioritize the human so that people can build a humane world. This is what humanities as a scholarly pursuit means to me.
The Cross of Jesus Christ
August 2016
Azizou Atte-oudeyi, 50 years, PhD Student at Rice University, Department of Religion
Jesus-movement
"The Town that Freedom Built": Preserving Zora Neale Hurston's Eatonville
This plaque, and several others, are sprinkled throughout Eatonville, Florida to guide a walking tour of America's first legally established self-governing all-African American municipality. Eatonville was established in 1887. The town gained popularity from its depiction in Zora Neale Hurston's novel, <em>Their Eyes Were Watching God</em> (1937), and her autobiography, <em>Dust Tracks on a Road</em> (1942). <br /><br />Sadly, 100 acres of Historic Eatonville has been lost due to expansion of the Greater Orlando area and Interstate 4. However, The Historic District of Eatonville was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 3, 1998. The Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community has been working to make Eatonville an internationally recognized tourism destination, to enhance the resources of the town, and to educate the public of its cultural significance and the community's heritage. <br /><br />I came to Eatonville because of my research and love for Zora Neale Hurston. Inspired by scholars such as Alice Walker, who worked to find and mark Hurston's final resting place, I too am aspired to keep Hurston's legacy from disappearing. The dilapidated plaques that are supposed to guide and educate the public about the importance of Eatonville are impossible to read. <br /><br />The sight of these plaques awakened a call-to-action inside of me. Since this moment, I have been working to digitally preserve Zora Neale Huston's Eatonville through geospatial technology and augmented and virtual reality technology. This technology has the capability to tell these stories in ways that are immersive and accessible. By digitally preserving these stories, future curious minds will be able to explore and share the experience.
Eatonville Walking Tour Plaques
February 2014
Valerie Rose Kelco, UNC-Greensboro, Literature
zora-neale-hurston-eatonville
Damaged Goods? Learning about (Mis)information about Sexuality in the Clinic
<p>My humanities moment connects to a book, titled <em>Damaged Goods: Women Living With Incurable Sexually Transmitted Diseases</em> written by Adina Nack, a sociologist and women’s and gender studies (WGS) scholar writing about health, sexuality, and society. This book is about women’s experiences living with HPV. I read this book in my undergrad in a WGS course about medicine, right around the time I was starting to learn more about WGS and before I decided to double major in this discipline. In particular, one of the book’s themes focuses on provider-patient interactions and the misinformation that spreads surrounding women’s sexuality and who can be affected by HPV, which really stood out to me at the time. Women reported being told inaccurate information about their risk of contracting the disease based on their sexuality.</p>
<p>Flash forward to the end of my first year of graduate school, where I was at the gynecologist for an annual pap smear. In the back of my head, I was always curious about the themes from this book and about how providers might share inaccurate information with their patients. Unfortunately, as it turns out, I was not disappointed. I don’t remember how the conversation started per se, but I know that I initiated a line of questioning about STIs and the risks of contracting HPV as a queer woman and that my gynecologist did not. In response to my inquiries, my gynecologist responded saying that women who have sex with women are not as at risk as others, saying something along of the lines of “it doesn’t go in as far” — whatever that means.</p>
<p>This moment was important to me for two reasons: 1) in the moment, I remembered from Nack’s book that this type of (mis)information contributed to women’s misunderstandings of their risk of getting HPV and subsequently their contraction of this STI; and 2) later, I would reflect on and unpack whatever “it doesn’t go in as far” means and the types of ideologies about gender and sexuality circulating there. This provider held a lot of assumptions about gender and sexuality that informed this response: assumptions about the types of sex people are having; about how sexual identity and behavior relate to one another; and about binary sex/gender. These assumptions contributed to inferior care and did not take into account people’s lived experiences of their gender and sexuality.</p>
<p>Nack highlighted women’s perspectives on their health and sexual selves in her book to capture a more complex understanding of women’s sexuality. As demonstrated by my provider, the complexity of people’s lived experiences of their gender and sexuality are incompatible at times with a biomedical framework or understanding of gender and sexuality, and misinformation about health, sexuality, and gender can flourish in this space. These types of themes of this incompatibility between biomedical and WGS informed understandings of sexuality and gender and the stakes for patients have turned into questions that guide my research. With my research, I am interested in how gender and sexuality get transformed in the clinical encounter and how doctors teach and learn about gender and sexuality. Within the classroom, how is a patient’s gender/sexuality, and the complexity inherent in these lived experiences, understood? Physicians, in some ways, elided the sexualities and gender identities of women in Nack’s book, and my own. To me WGS perspectives on gender and sexuality make room for possibilities to transcend gender and sexuality binaries. These understandings of gender and sexuality from the two sources — biomedical and WGS — do not necessarily map onto one another, and I want to know why and how WGS perspectives can impact medical education to be able to provide care for LGBTQ identities in a nuanced way.</p>
Adina Nack, <em>Women Living With Incurable Sexually Transmitted Diseases</em>
Jessica Herling, 27, Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies graduate student
damaged-goods
Be What You Want to Be
In this audio recording, graduate student Jingyi Li describes how a late twentieth-century academic study of the book in Japan upended her expectations by rejecting the Eurocentric and Orientalist bias of many comparable scholarly works. Her experience with this text inspired her to move beyond her own linguistic insecurities and to continue with her research on premodern Japan.
<em>The Book in Japan</em> by Peter Kornicki
2016
Jingyi Li
be-what-you-want-to-be
The Day I Decided to Major in History
Graduate student Justina Licata explains how a junior high school teacher's passion and influence led her to embrace the study of history as a lifelong vocation.
A teacher's lesson
When I was 12 or 13 in the eighth grade.
Justina Licata, 32 years old, Ph.D. Candidate
day-I-decided-to-major-in-history
Votes for Women at Mystic Seaport
The year 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote in the United States. I don’t think I truly grasped the reality that (white) American women have only had the right to vote for a century until I met a woman living in the year 1876.
I’ll explain. I met Louisa at Mystic Seaport- an outdoor museum in Connecticut. I first met her when I was watching a cooking demonstration in a historic house. Louisa came by and chatted with the cooking demonstrator. Before she left, she invited everyone to join her at the Seamen’s Friends building at 2:00. When she flitted away, the demonstrator said to us conspiratorially, “Louisa is such a nice woman. But be careful, I hear she advocates for women’s suffrage.”
It was a perfect hook. I dutifully arrived at the appropriate building at 2:00. After Louisa’s performance, the rest of the audience left and Louisa and I were alone.
“So, Louisa, I heard you have an interest in women’s suffrage,” I prompted.
“I don’t know where you heard that,” she answered, looking around.
She was good. She pulled me in.
We started up a conversation. She told me about how unfair it was that she couldn’t vote even though she owned property and paid taxes on that property. She also talked about how difficult it was to voice her opinion, much less actively engage in the suffrage movement, in her small town. We talked about women’s suffrage, her life in Mystic, and her past experiences.
My humanities moment came as we finally left the building. By this point I had started to suspend disbelief, and I wanted to leave Louisa with a sense of hope for her future. So I turned to her and told her not to give up on the dream of women’s suffrage. And then I realized that I was being ridiculous. Not because I was acting like I was actually having a conversation with a woman from 1876 (well partly because of that) but because there was a high chance that she would never actually see the right to vote in her lifetime. And that was my humanities moment. The moment when something I knew became something that I knew- white women have had the right to vote for 100 years in the country. Many people of color only gained the right to vote (in all practical ways) in living memory.
This new understanding led to a shift in how I engage in civic life. But before that moment, I was regrettably one of those millenials that didn’t vote because I didn’t think my vote mattered or that I was knowledgeable enough to vote. But since that conversation, I started voting in all levels of elections partly because of the past. I vote now because of how many women fought for me to have this right.
A first person interpreter at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut
2016
Katie Schinabeck
votes-for-women-at-mystic-seaport
The Power of Oral History
I think I’ve always been an oral historian, but I didn’t always know to call myself one. When I was a young kid, I used to spend countless evening hours bombarding my father—always at the end of his long workdays—with questions about his life in India. He was the only person in my family who was born and raised there. He and my American-born mother decided that life would be easier for my siblings and I if we grew up learning and speaking English alone, and as such, our knowledge of Punjabi was reflected through a scattered and very limited vocabulary. There was a clear cultural gap between my father and his children. My ethnic identity was tied to a place that he had called home for the first twenty-six years of his life, the same place in which I had spent perhaps less than twenty-six days up until my twenties. I wanted to know more about my dad, his life before he had kids, and the part of my own history that remained unknown to me. So I asked him questions…ad nauseam.
As a college student I majored in American Ethnic Studies with a history focus, and in the time leading up to my graduation I came across a few books that would change the direction of my young adulthood and the course of my life more broadly. One such text was Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and its Legacy by Paul Hendrickson. Hendrickson is a journalist by training, but this particular text is a history of the integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962. The author tells this story by interviewing some of the major players involved in that tense and violent moment, including James Meredith—the first African American to enroll in the school—as well as a number of sheriffs who coalesced from around the state to prevent Meredith from entering the university. For me, one of the most fascinating aspects of the text was Hendrickson’s conversations with the children—now in adulthood by the time of the book’s publication—of some of these sheriffs, as he examined how they made sense of their parents’ role in this history and their own relationship to this past. These were questions of political inheritance- questions with which we are all confronted at particular moments in our lives. How do we make sense of our familial legacies- the good and the bad? What do we choose to acknowledge, celebrate, reject, or forget? They are inquiries without simple answers, to be sure. Upon finishing Hendrickson’s text, however, I was left with the urgent feeling that, particularly for historians, it is our responsibility to become aware of the histories we are born into. And in many cases when the archives are silent, we may do well to turn our attention to the very people who helped create the past, even if our inquiries are met only with memories.
Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and its Legacy
During the end of my time in college, about 13 years ago.
Kiran Garcha; 35 years old; PhD candidate in the Department of History at University of California, Santa Cruz.
power-of-oral-history
Rolling with Difference
The image I chose for my humanities moment is representative of how I have come to understand myself, society and the cities around the world. While many might see poverty and struggle in Africa, this man is a waste-picker (recycler) in Johannesburg who plays a critical role in the overall sustainability of the city. After my early career as an urban planner in South Africa thinking through many ways of reducing urban poverty I have had to unlearn the developmental approach to cities in the 'global South'. This image is representative of the shift I believe urban specialists need to make. That is, following normative global trends in urban design, policy and planning is not always the most appropriate change to make in a particular context due to its situated differences. In Johannesburg a waste-picker's lane or a shared bike/waste-picker's lane would address environmental and economic sustainability more holistically. In a postcolonial world teachers and researchers of urban-related disciplines need to be critical of extant theories and practices that disenfranchise cities through entrenched mechanisms of spatial violence.
More personally, this relates to a life-long journey of understanding 'difference'. As I white child born at the end of the Apartheid era, having anti-racist liberal parents but also born into an Afrikaans family, I am exposed to stark identity juxtapositions. Being sent to one of the first multi-racial and multi-cultural schools in South Africa I grew up fortunate enough to build strong, life-long relationships across social borders. Without knowing it, from a young age I embarked on a process of unlearning unjust, societal norms. In my career and personal life I continuously work to understand differences that exist within me; those that are and that which is different to me.
My doctoral research delves into understanding and articulating the tensions that exist from stark differences found in urban space and how this may change the meaning making and conceptualization of 'place'.
Walking through the busy streets of Jo'burg, South Africa - my home city.
Summer 2018
Lené Le Roux, 34, Urban planner, Urban Geography PhD candidiate, South African
rolling-with-difference
From a Cultural Perspective
In this audio recording, graduate student Margherita Berti describes how an ordinary encounter while studying abroad gave her a new outlook on cultural differences, practices, and perspectives.
Living in a new culture
2008
Margherita Berti, PhD Student
cultural-perspective
All Thanks to Olivia Pope
I decided to go into academia at a panel about Scandal. It was 2015 and I was a college senior.
Like millions of other fans, one weekly joy was Shonda Rhimes’ Thursday night primetime takeover: Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder. The thrill of these Thursdays was not only the juicy and ridiculous plots, but the chance to see dynamic stories of Black women on television. Between my friends, my mom, grandma, and Black Twitter as a whole -- we all had something to say. Yall remember the episode when Olivia is kidnapped, locked in a basement of sorts, but her hair remains frizz and kink-free?
The Shondaland symposium, hosted on my campus, brought together Black women scholars from an array of academic disciplines ( History, Women’s Studies, Law, Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Black Diaspora Studies, and Media Studies) to discuss this beloved tv takeover. As speakers framed the moment, I learned how historic this cultural production was. There hadn’t been a Black woman lead on primetime TV in more than forty years. That day I entered a great cipher (as Gwendolyn Pough would call it)… brilliant Black feminists came together in the intellectual and honest riffing of ideas. The discussions were, of course, genius. No stone went unturned. These scholars took up everything from what it meant to envision a Black woman with the power to run the State, how Rhimes’ complex characters transcend archetypes of Black womanhood, to Black women's still unprotected status under the law. The panelists engaged in the more pressing issues too: Fitz or Jake?, favorite sex scenes, hand-bags, petticoats, and iconic Poppa Pope speeches. Between giggles, I feverishly jotted down notes.
In the humanities, we take up questions pertinent to the dynamism of personhood and complexity politics. Yet, Black women are often left out of the mix. By senior year of college, I had come to know that I loved the humanities. This moment was the moment I learned that the humanities could love me back.
ShondaLand Symposium
2015
Sarah Scriven, 26, PhD Student in Women's Studies
all-thanks-to-olivia-pope