"Dublin Core:Title","Dublin Core:Subject","Dublin Core:Description","Dublin Core:Creator","Dublin Core:Source","Dublin Core:Publisher","Dublin Core:Date","Dublin Core:Contributor","Dublin Core:Rights","Dublin Core:Relation","Dublin Core:Format","Dublin Core:Language","Dublin Core:Type","Dublin Core:Identifier","Dublin Core:Coverage","Item Type Metadata:Text","Item Type Metadata:Interviewer","Item Type Metadata:Interviewee","Item Type Metadata:Location","Item Type Metadata:Transcription","Item Type Metadata:Local URL","Item Type Metadata:Original Format","Item Type Metadata:Physical Dimensions","Item Type Metadata:Duration","Item Type Metadata:Compression","Item Type Metadata:Producer","Item Type Metadata:Director","Item Type Metadata:Bit Rate/Frequency","Item Type Metadata:Time Summary","Item Type Metadata:Email Body","Item Type Metadata:Subject Line","Item Type Metadata:From","Item Type Metadata:To","Item Type Metadata:CC","Item Type Metadata:BCC","Item Type Metadata:Number of Attachments","Item Type Metadata:Standards","Item Type Metadata:Objectives","Item Type Metadata:Materials","Item Type Metadata:Lesson Plan Text","Item Type Metadata:URL","Item Type Metadata:Event Type","Item Type Metadata:Participants","Item Type Metadata:Birth Date","Item Type Metadata:Birthplace","Item Type Metadata:Death Date","Item Type Metadata:Occupation","Item Type Metadata:Biographical Text","Item Type Metadata:Bibliography","Item Type Metadata:Player","Item Type Metadata:Imported Thumbnail","Item Type Metadata:Referrer",tags,file,itemType,collection,public,featured "Understanding History as Gossip",,"
Author, educational advocate, and entrepreneur David Bruce Smith discusses a transformational moment in his education, during which a high school teacher showed him the revelatory truth that history, at its core, is a collection of stories and gossip. Smith believes strongly that by presenting history to students as a series of exciting and illuminating stories, we can cultivate a more widespread appreciation for—and understanding of—history’s importance in the next generation of learners.
Curator's note: The Grateful American™ Foundation is dedicated to restoring enthusiasm in American history for kids and adults. Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in American Literature from George Washington University, and a master’s in Journalism from New York University. During the past 20 years he has been a real estate executive and the editor-in-chief/publisher of Crystal City Magazine. He is the author of 11 books, including his most recent title, American Hero: John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States. The Grateful American Book Series for children, featuring historic couples that were partnerships, debuts in the fall with Abigail and John—a joint biography of the Adams's.
",,,,,"David Bruce Smith, Founding Father of the Grateful American™ Foundation",,,,,,david-bruce-smith-history,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,"Heidi Camp","History,Teachers & Teaching",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/296/Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware.jpg,"Moving Image",,1,0 "Censoring Slaughterhouse-Five",,"In this excerpt of a talk given at the National Humanities Center, Robert D. Newman discusses an exemplary humanities moment, when Kurt Vonnegut responded to the banning and burning of Vonnegut’s book Slaughterhouse-Five by school officials in Drake, North Dakota in 1973. Newman notes that this series of historical events involving the kinds of literature we read and teach “reveals the enduring truths in a democratic culture.”",,"A letter written by Kurt Vonnegut about the censorship of his novel Slaughterhouse-Five",,1973,"Robert D. Newman, President and Director, National Humanities Center",,,,,,robert-newman-vonnegut-censorship,,,,,,"...on December 8th in 1973 when school officials in Drake, North Dakota, burned copies of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Kurt Vonnegut, of course, had served in World War II. He was captured by the Germans, held as a prisoner in Dresden when the Allies bombed the city.
For years, he tried to find a way to tell his story. And meanwhile, he went to graduate school in anthropology. He worked at General Electric. He got married, had three kids, adopted three more, and struggled to find his voice as a writer. But he finally wrote his masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five, which was published in 1969, and it was extremely popular, and for the most part, it got great reviews. But it was banned many times for being obscene, for being violent, for being unpatriotic.
In 1973, there was a 26-year-old high-school English teacher who assigned Slaughterhouse-Five to his students, and most of them loved it. They thought it was the best book they’d ever read. But one student complained to her mom about the obscene language, and the mother took it to the principal, and the school board voted that it should not only be confiscated from the students, who were only a third of the way through the book, but it should be burned. And many of the students didn’t want to give up their books. So the school searched all of their lockers and took them and threw the books into the school’s furnace, and while they were at it, the school board also decided to burn Deliverance by James Dickey, and a short story anthology.
Now, Kurt Vonnegut got wind of this, and he wrote a letter to one of the members of the school board, and the letter said, “Dear Mr. McCarthy, I’m writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I’m among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school. If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It’s true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That’s because people speak coarsely in real life. If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books—books you hadn’t even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive. Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.”
Vonnegut’s letter, to which the school board did not respond, I want to argue stands as a humanities moment. These are profound moments that reveal the depths and the aspirations and the enduring human truths in a democratic culture. They stand against the cartoonish fears, the threats, the Mickey Mouse moments and appeals to our worst natures, that often pervade daily information flow and discourse.
Today, of course, we have people running for president who don’t believe in evolution, who don’t believe in global warming, who say they support gay people as long as they don’t practice being gay. They might as well also say they support squirrels as long as they don’t gather acorns for the winter, and trees as long as they stop shedding leaves for the fall.
When I was chair of English at the University of South Carolina in the late ’90s, I used to schedule myself routinely to teach freshman composition, and I would say to the other full professors, if I can do it, so can you. And one semester, I was using Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus as one of our texts, and it’s a very powerful story, as you probably know, in which Spiegelman discusses his relationship with his father, who was a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, and in which the Nazis are depicted as cats and the Jews as mice.
On the first day we began discussing the text, I soon realized that many of the students only had a vague understanding of the Holocaust and were unable to place it precisely in history. And they lacked knowledge of its politics or its consequences. And like a truly hip instructor of the era, in the late ’90s, I asked them to research it on the Internet for our next class meeting and to bring in a couple of sources that they investigated. And in the next class, I was absolutely stupefied that literally half had brought in Holocaust denial sites as their sources of information. And they had trouble understanding my consternation when I denounced these sites.
So I want to be clear that I don’t fault the students for this so much as to point to a prevailing and growing issue that we’re all facing—of information literacy—that I believe it’s incumbent upon us to address. We witnessed the democratization of information. We witnessed its prevalence, its accessibility that’s unprecedented in history. But many have difficulty validating or effectively utilizing the information available to them. To extend the computer analogy, it’s as if we had an enormous hard drive, and there is no processor for it.
Through teaching, and citing, and recognizing, and creating humanities moments, we elevate both information and ethical literacy. These are the cornerstones of social justice and of a truly democratic culture. And such education is the backbone of our defense against the terrorism of cartoonish ignorance and the lackadaisical acceptance of it, which is a slippery slope to the barbaric erosion of healthy questioning and the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"Book Burning,Books & Reading,Democracy,Drake, North Dakota,Letter Writing,Literature,Slaughterhouse-Five,Vonnegut, Kurt,World War II (1939-1945)",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/2/12/Slaughterhouse-Five.png,Sound,"Robert D. Newman ",1,0 "The Streets of New York Are Like a Library",,"In this video submission, artist Carter Thompson discusses how a recent exhibit on the Harlem Renaissance revealed some of the fascinating history of the century-old building in which he lives and helped him feel a connection across the decades with those who lived in the neighborhood before him. Thompson describes how his sensibilities as an artist are informed by the stories of those who have walked the same streets, or seen the angle of the light in much the same way. He also notes how the humanities help us to bridge differences wrought by time and vastly different life experiences, and to find the common threads of our shared humanity.",,"An art exhibition on the Harlem Renaissance",,,"Carter Thompson, artist and designer",,,,,,new-york-is-like-a-library,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"Architecture,Art Exhibitions,Artists,Harlem Renaissance,History,New York, New York,Photography,Storytelling",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/36/NY_architecture.jpg,"Moving Image",,1,0 "Visiting the Art Museum","On a school trip from suburban New Jersey when I was in second grade, I could take on the role of Claudia, admiring the works of art on display but also wondering: who made this? Why? How did it come to be here? These questions helped me realize from a young age the enormous potential of the experience of a work of art—to fascinate personally but also to open up a window onto the past. All of this activated by the curiosity to know more about what is staring you in the face. ","My family always visited art museums when I was a child. I’m not quite sure why, as we never talked about the art, and I wondered, in secret, what exactly we were supposed to be doing there. When I was about eight years old, I read a book that answered that question: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg. It is the story of two children—a brother and a sister—who run away from home to solve the mystery of a sculpture: was it a long-lost work by Michelangelo? They hide in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, borrowing coins from the fountain to buy food, sleeping in a magnificent bed in a period room, and blending in with school groups. More importantly, the sister Claudia is entranced by the Renaissance sculpture of an angel then on display at the museum, and she is determined to get to the bottom of the question of authorship: is it really a Michelangelo? And, if so, how did it end up in the museum?Esther Mackintosh explains how a single letter from her father offered solace during an especially trying period of her life.
As a graduate student facing an uncertain future, Mackintosh took refuge in her father’s written words, which described his own challenges as a newly married farmer during the Great Depression. His letter concluded with a question posed to his daughter: “Would it help you to know that things usually turn out alright?” Thanks to her father’s words, Mackintosh, herself a scholar of stories, could contextualize her own unfolding narrative in light of her family history.
",,,,,"Esther Mackintosh, President of the Federation of State Humanities Councils",,,,,,esther-mackintosh-things-turn-out-alright,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"Family,Family Histories,Fathers & Daughters,Graduate Students,Great Depression (1929-1939),Letter-Writing,Letters,Storytelling,Vocation",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/94/farm-in-winter-960.jpg,"Moving Image",,1,0 "A few lines of poetry might be all we need...","My students were so engaged in this lesson, and I am sure some of these words and images continue to affect them today. I certainly hope my humanities moment enriched their lives and changed the way they thought about our world then and now. ","I remember seeing the images on the television, in newspapers, and in magazines. It was such an epic event. The Berlin Wall was coming down, something I never imagined would happen. As a child in the 50s and 60s, I remember bomb drills during elementary school.
Several of my friends had fallout shelters in their homes. I used to be afraid of bombs, of communists, of Khrushchev. I tried to understand how a wall could divide the city of Berlin into two very different places.
And then, in 1989, the unbelievable happened. I had just accepted an interim job teaching Senior English at Mooresville High School, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with such a momentous moment in history. Just a few lines from Stephen Vincent Benet’s John Brown’s Body made everything crystal clear and powerful.
Sometimes there comes a crack in Time itself.
Sometimes the earth is torn by something blind.
Sometimes an image that has stood so long
It seems implanted as the polar star
Is moved against an unfathomed force
That suddenly will not have it any more.
Those six lines provided so much focus for our classroom discussion and reflection... and awe.
My students were so engaged in this lesson, and I am sure some of these words and images continue to affect them today. I certainly hope my humanities moment enriched their lives and changed the way they thought about our world then and now.
Author, educational advocate, and entrepreneur David Bruce Smith reflects on the manner in which his parents encouraged and valued his engagement with visual art while growing up. Years later, while working as a property manager and developer, he realized that his ability to analyze his surroundings and to create efficient, balanced, aesthetically appealing environments was directly connected to his lifelong familiarity with artistic compositions.
Curator's note: The Grateful American™ Foundation is dedicated to restoring enthusiasm in American history for kids and adults. Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in American Literature from George Washington University, and a master’s in Journalism from New York University. During the past 20 years he has been a real estate executive and the editor-in-chief/publisher of Crystal City Magazine. He is the author of 11 books, including his most recent title, American Hero: John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States. The Grateful American Book Series for children, featuring historic couples that were partnerships, debuts in the fall with Abigail and John—a joint biography of the Adams's.
",,,,,"David Bruce Smith, Founding Father of the Grateful American™ Foundation ",,,,,,david-bruce-smith-looking-seeing,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"Aesthetics,Real Estate,Vocation",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/299/Dutch_painting.jpg,"Moving Image",,1,0 "Finding “the Truth” in Music","Reflecting on the interview with William, I realized that he was describing the very learning experience my students were having as they created their documentary. By investigating the relationship between individuals and the music that shaped their lives, the students were in fact developing deeper understandings about the history of neighborhoods, their city, and American society—and seeing connections across time and place. Like William, their interest in music led them to think like historians. That day reaffirmed my commitment to interdisciplinary learning and, specifically, to using music and art wherever possible to help students make meaningful connections in my classroom.","In June 2017, I found myself in a cramped, sweltering apartment in New York’s East Village. I was there with three high-school students to interview William Millan, founder of the seminal 1970s Latin band, Saoco. The students were working on a documentary film about the history of musical communities in New York City. After playing several Saoco albums for us, William described how his interest in the roots of Latin music led him on an intellectual journey to understand the cultural history of the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa. Then he said something profound: “I wasn’t a very good history and geography student when I was in school… it wasn’t until I really got into the music that I realized it’s not that I don’t like history and geography—I really love history and geography. It was the information they were giving me in school that I couldn’t relate to because it had nothing to do with what I was living. If you go into the music, and you check out the artists’ lives, that’s going to give you a truer picture of history; and in their body of work you’re going to see what the truth is.” In 20 years of teaching, I have never heard a better articulation of music’s power to engage students in the study of history and culture. Reflecting on the interview with William, I realized that he was describing the very learning experience my students were having as they created their documentary. By investigating the relationship between individuals and the music that shaped their lives, the students were in fact developing deeper understandings about the history of neighborhoods, their city, and American society—and seeing connections across time and place. Like William, their interest in music led them to think like historians. That day reaffirmed my commitment to interdisciplinary learning and, specifically, to using music and art wherever possible to help students make meaningful connections in my classroom.",,"Interview with William Millan, musician and founder of the band, Saoco",,"June 2017","Ben Wides, age 46, social studies teacher, East Side Community High School, New York City",,,,,,finding-truth-in-music,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Art,Cultural History,Documentary Films,Geography,History,Interdisciplinarity,Latin Music,Millan, William,Music,New York, New York,Saoco,Teachers & Teaching",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/7/95/Willie_Millan.jpg,Text,#Humanitiesinclass,1,0 "There is No Singular Experience",,"The study of contested territory for me has alway been a story of land and/or ideological dispute between colonial powers, regional peoples, religious factions, or other distinctions that come into play as humans acquire land and promulgate cultural traits and ideologies. Contested territory is more than a story of “us versus them” or “them vs. them.” In fact, “them” is not a singular entity. During a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, we had the pleasure of hearing from UNC professor Gang Yue, Chair of the Department of Asian Studies. He opened a lecture on Communism Today by sharing the experience of his parents, both doctors, during mid-twentieth century China. In 1950, Chairman Mao announced that there would be a, “complete unification of Chinese medicine” (qtd. In Levinovitz’s article, Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine). Despite being educated in cutting edge medicine in one of China’s top hospitals, both Professor Yue’s parents were reeducated in traditional medicine which westerners have come to identify as synonymous with China. Yue’s mother and father were sent to rural, outlying provinces for several weeks to treat the countries remote population. Through his story, it became clear that his parents had vastly different opinions of their experience both with their training in traditional Chinese medicines and practicing in the rural provinces of China. While his father looked down at his reeducation experience, Yue’s mother found many practical purposes of traditional practices which she incorporated in her field of gynecology. In addition, she remembered her practice in rural China as the most rewarding service in her career, providing medical care to those in need rather than with the elites in urban China. Upon hearing this story, my romanticized view of a China, steeped in tradition, that continued to remain a practicing culture of traditional medicine, was shattered.. More disturbingly, I realized that I had bought into the cultural myth and view of the “mysterious Orient,” ignoring my own first lesson to students to not “mythisize” or “otherize” people. More importantly,Yue’s personal narrative opened my eyes to the complicated task of curating stories to try and define a singular experience of contested territory. People have differing memories despite being from the same side of the same coin, even those individuals who are a part of the same family. As with any narrative, there is no singular experience of a contested territory. ",,,,"July 23rd, 2018","Lesley Jane Mace, 40, Social Studies Teacher",,,,,,there-is-no-singular-experience,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Humanities Center","China,Communism,Medicine,Teachers & Teaching,World History,Zedong, Mao",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/220/Traditional_Chinese_Medicine.jpg,Text,"Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75",1,0 "Le Magic School Bus",,"No, it wasn’t the real Magic School Bus from the books and TV. But one of my most poignant humanities moments did happen on a bus. And I did learn a lot from it. And, yes, the bus was French. I grew up in Arizona in a monolingual family. I studied French in my last years of high school because I needed it to graduate. I loved it. I loved it more than I loved any other subject ever before. So much so that I majored in French and History in college. I aced my French classes. Then I started taking Spanish and Italian. Languages came really easy to me. Growing up with a brother who had known he was going to be a pilot from the age of five, I thought that maybe I had finally found ‘my thing’. In 2010, I took a job opportunity to move to Lyon, France as an English Teaching Assistant through a bilateral program between French and American embassies. I arrived and had the normal struggles adjusting to a new city and to how quickly people spoke French. I left the U.S. with my straight A grades and the language in my mind as a bunch of binary code of 0s and 1s that could be pulled out of my mind to fit any situation. Except for the bus. About two thirds of the way into my one year contract was when I had my humanities moment that still serves as a reference today. As is required in a French memory, I was on my way to meet my friends at a cafe and was running late. I was speed walking through the main square in the center of town growing more and more anxious about being late, proof that I was still not as French as I had liked to think. As I was rushing, getting my heart rate up, and tensing up all of my muscles to try to walk even faster, I noticed an idle bus facing the general direction I needed to go. As I walked up to the door, the driver opened it and I came gusting into the bus out of breath. In the process of making eye contact with the driver, I asked in French, ‘Does this bus go to [name of cafe’s street]?’ The bus driver sat up straight and looked at me for an extended moment before saying very seriously ‘Mademoiselle, we say hello to each other first. We don’t just ask. So, let’s begin again. Bonjour Monsieur.' His attempt to instruct me on how to be polite can be very easily considered rude, but that didn’t faze me because I had already felt the weighty guilt of making cultural missteps. The bus didn’t go where I needed to go, so I got off and the driver drove on. I was very late to meet my friends. However, I stood on the street corner for a minute or two thinking about what happened. I thought about how I took my knowledge of the French language and framed it in my American habits of often being quick and in a rush. I began to realize the real world of language and cultural competence is just as important, if not more important, to learning a language. There are different styles of formality, salutation, turn-taking, interactions with strangers, etc. It wasn’t just the 0s and 1s that my French degree gave me. There were also 3s, 8s, 5s, and maybe even a few exclamation points mixed into the code. It was a rich world of human interaction that was accessed by travel. This has led me to language and its social implications. This has led me to sociolinguistics and researching language and belonging. So, this magic school bus did actually end up taking me somewhere I needed to go and it got me there just in time.",,Travel,,2010,"Ashley Coogan, 34, PhD Student in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, Arizona State University",,,,,,le-magic-school-bus,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Cultural Awareness,Cultural Relations,France,Language & Culture,Travel",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/507/HM_Bus_Image.jpg,Text,"Graduate Student Residents 2021",1,1 "Facing History is Not a Walk in the Park",,"I recently returned from a two week mini ""Grand Tour"" of Europe. The last stop on our itinerary was the Bavarian capital, Munich. As a World History teacher, I had to sign up for the Third Reich walking tour of the city. Along the two hour walk, we saw many significant sites like the Nazi Headquarters, Dodger’s Alley, and Hofbrauhaus. However, the most remarkable moment for me was actually the very end of the tour. As we stood in Marienplatz, the last stop on our journey, our guide asked if we had any questions. The ten of us looked around at each other and remained silent, except for one man who asked, “How is Nazi history taught in German schools?” Our tour guide explained that when he was in high school in the 1980s, he learned about Nazi history for about two weeks. After a tumultuous year, teaching online during the pandemic, I only had about two weeks to teach most units which spanned hundreds of years, rather than a few decades. He added that his children who are currently in school spend about two months learning about the Nazi period. Additionally, every student in Bavaria is required to visit Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp in Germany. I was in awe listening to how the German education system teaches the darkest period in the country’s history. I thought about how I learned about slavery in the US when I was a student. I grew up in Northern Virginia, an area rich in Civil War sites and mansions owned by slaveholders. However, our field trip to Mount Vernon in 1st grade and trip to a Civil War era mansion in 4th grade completely ignored the lives of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the grounds. Then I considered how controversial teaching accurate history in the US has become, especially the last few years. I reflected on how I taught. I try to provide students with a more detailed understanding of often oversimplified topics like slavery, colonialism, and imperialism but was I doing enough? What perspectives was I missing? Germany’s commitment to providing a thorough and accurate understanding of one the most inhumane and difficult topics to teach motivated me to improve upon my instruction for the upcoming school year. I hope to reframe many units to highlight the experience of the oppressed and those who tried to enact change, rather than focusing on the elite who fought to maintain control. ",,"Third Reich Tour in Munich",,"July 2021","Natalie Glees, 25, teacher",,,,,,facing-history-not-walk-park,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Europe,History Education,Holocaust,Teachers & Teaching,World History",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/4/516/kz-2063348_640.jpg,Text,Educators,1,0 "Using Language to Humanize Healthcare",,"In this video, Dr. Michael Stanley celebrates a philosophy of healthcare that sees patients as more than the sum of their medical symptoms, drawing from the rich legacies of philosophy, mythology, and literature to understand individuals and their circumstances. Sir William Osler, one of the earliest proponents of such logic, articulates the manner in which the hospital can so often become a stage for the drama of interdependent human existence: ""The comedy, too, of life will be spread before you, and nobody laughs more often than the doctor at the pranks Puck plays upon the Titanias and the Bottoms among his patients. The humorous side is really almost as frequently turned towards him as the tragic.... yet it is an unpardonable mistake to go about among patients with a long face."" In reflecting upon the influence of Osler and other mentors, Dr. Stanley suggests that a humanistic perspective plays a key role in helping doctors to be personally engaged in fostering interpersonal recognition and community through their work.",,,,,,,,,,,using-language-to-humanize-healthcare,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"Doctors & Medicine,Illness,Language,Medical Personnel,Medicine,Philosophy,Teachers & Teaching",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/380/Cropped_Stanley_HM_Image_Osler.png,"Moving Image",,1,0 "How Korean fan dancing helped me connect with my adopted son","This was a humanities moment because learning the dance of another culture transformed my perspective and my life.","As a middle-aged American Caucasian woman with an adopted son from South Korea, I had a longing to understand my son’s heritage and feel more connected to him. I decided to immerse myself in the local Korean community by enrolling in a class to learn traditional Korean fan dance. Through this class, I not only learned different types of Korean dance but also the Korean culture, history, music, wardrobe and language. Within a few months of taking the class and many hours of practice, I was invited to perform with the “Imperial Jewel” Korean fan dance group at my city’s annual International Festival in front of 30,000 people. This experience touched me in a profound way and has brought me closer to my Korean son. This is my Humanities Moment.",,"The ""Imperial Jewel"" Korean fan dance",,2011-2013,Anonymous,,,,,,korean-fan-dancing,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Adoption,Festivals,Korean Folk Dancing,Raleigh, North Carolina",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/22/Fan_dance_HumanitiesMoments.jpg,"Still Image",,1,0 "Are we Important?",,"Werner Heisenberg in his book ""Physics and Philosophy"" wrote: “It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human culture, in different times and different cultural environments or different religious traditions, hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments will follow.” And thus what does important mean? Are we important in relationship to whom and to what? By important we mean any conversation, observation, fact or theory about the human experience that describes, explains or substantiates our affect and influence in the world. What is the evidence to demonstrate that our construction of what is called civilization has resulted in importance to both the scientific way of looking at life and the world, but also the philosophical? We explore today both the claims of both scientists and philosophers that if people are rational actors on the world stage, what evidence is there to conclude that we have a hold what are importance means for the future of the human species, and how the scientific or philosophical account writ large may inform us of just how important we are. The problems that Physicists and Philosophers wrestle with of course needs no introduction. Scientists, theologians and philosophers have wondered how to interpret our relationship with the material world (as well as other definitions of our experience) and the kinds of vocabularies we employ to understand who we are and how we should situate ourselves physically, and psychologically and ontologically. If the sum of our accomplishments include a definition of progress that rests on achievement, what are the ways in which we can identify how we can see ourselves as unique, and therefore “important” (or not important) with and through multiple experiences. Various accounts, including historical, sociological, theological and scientific/philosophical have provided a narrative framework for explaining how to construct our importance or insignificance. Insofar as history give us examples of how people have affected change, we want to ask how various explanations and interpretations have aligned with the assumptions we have about our place in the world. For example, if people are “thinking animals” how have they evidenced behavior that reflects uniqueness within scientific, social and political contexts? Within the discursive landscape of science and philosophy this reflection will address the questions of our importance insofar as it will identify some of the ways in which alternate narratives explain how we understand our importance and, furthermore, how scientific and philosophical thinking may share, or not share, paradigms for who and what we are. For example, if science concerned with what is verifiable and testable, how might we understand its epistemological rigor in terms of identifying our overall importance? Furthermore, if the claims of philosophy offer a counter-narrative of what is explained as reality and truth, how does this stand in contrast to scientific truth? If the meta-narratives of religion (cultural values) tell us something about what and who we are, can we rely on this as a way of explaining our significance? Alternately, can we depend on the scientific account (i.e. the laws of science) in the hard sciences, such Physics, to properly explain the role of humans and their interaction and influence in the world? While we want to acknowledge the length and breadth of the questions posed above, our project is investigating the role of self-reflective/objective positions in unfolding (exposing?) how we ARE or NOT important/special through the lens of scientific and philosophical inquiry and what implications this has for teaching and learning. So in this respect, our attempt to consider this subject is not exhaustive but exploratory. Since the time of pre-Socratic philosophy, early scientist/philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Anaximenes speculated about the origin of life and what the world consists of. What is the nature of change? And what are we to understand that which appears to be constant or changing in the material world in relationship to ourselves. Indeed the questions that physicists ask today are ones that that early philosophers asked as well. Who are we? Why are we here? What motivates us to act the way we do? Similarly early Greek tragedians such as Sophocles and Aeschylus posed the question: if we are free to make our decisions as autonomous subjects, how is it that the will of the Gods also controls the way we act and see ourselves in the world? Or as Socrates asks: if we consider ourselves important are our actions good because they are approved by the Gods or whether the Gods approve of them because they are good. Certainly we can see this revisited in the Faust legend where one scholar is blinded by his desire to over emphasize his importance. Machiavelli takes up this theme with greater rigor, arguing that rulers need not actually be virtuous, but appear to be so …thus diminishing, as some might argue, our importance as guides of virtue. And yet scientists like Galen, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Plank, and others let their information guide the re-construction of our importance in relationship to the coherence or correspondence theory of truth, then, unlike the theologians and mystics of the past (Boethius, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Meister Eckart and others) who drew their relationship to God as a way of signifying the importance of the supernatural in defining who and what we are, science draws on the tradition of Descartes, Hume, Locke and later philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell to re-establish the Greek tradition in observation and ""following inquiry where it leads."" So what we may be left with is an example of an ongoing epistemological struggle that makes us aware of the competing truth claims of both sides of the conversation. While it may be accepted that the discoveries and facts of scientists may be radically different from those of the philosophers, we know from the historical account, and even today, that both physics and philosophy wrestle with the same speculative questions which invariable lead us, once again, to ponder our importance. And so we ask the overriding question: Are we important? As a physicist might ask: in relationship to the physical world how we might match to other material processes, evolutionary changes and other scientific discoveries that may make us pause and wonder about our importance as a species, as organisms controlled by entropic forces, and as evolving beings. And, as philosophers have wondered as well, what kind of beings are we to make claims of ontological importance to what we have accomplished and lived by. Has the counsel of the wise about our importance really turned out to be wisdom itself? and do the values and institutions that make up the power structures of society point to our overall importance in a metaphysical sense? Are the facts that one learns through looking through a telescope such as the moons of Jupiter, more important than the shape of a snowflake or an electron? What is the role of our importance in this respect? Similarly, do the capital T truths of Philosophy outweigh the truths acquired through hypothesis, experiment and conclusion? Has the creation of truth been more important than finding truth and importance? And what does our own impulse for certainty suggest about our importance personally and collectively? Colin McGinn once wrote in his book “The Making of a Philosopher” that “ There are extremely general concepts that crop up everywhere—time, causality, necessity, existence, object, property identity. No scientific discipline can tell you what these concepts involve, because they are pre-supposed by any such discipline; we need philosophy to understand these concepts. For example, is causality just a matter of mere constant conjunction of events of “one damn thing after another” as A.J. Ayer used to put it—or does it involve an element of necessary connection? These are all questions human beings naturally ask. Children spontaneously ask philosophical questions, much to the frustration of their parents. The philosopher is just someone with a particularly strong interest in these age old universal questions; she is the embodiment of one kind of human curiosity—the kind that seeks the general, not the particular, the abstract, not the concrete. Of course it is easy to be impatient with such questions, because they do not admit to scientific resolution. However, we should not run away with the idea that a question is either scientific or nothing.” And yet the supposed insignificance of our accomplishments in relationship to the size of the universe, the power of nature to change how we live, the triumph of selfishness and ignorance throughout the ages, the reality of people behaving more like beasts endowed with intelligence more than anything close to a saint makes us ponder. The wheels of history show that our desire to overcome ourselves and our troubles throughout the language of the science and the humanities point to one shining beacon of hope: creativity. It is our creativity that allows for the hope of change in our education system, our governments and projects and plans within the artistic trajectory of technology and scientific inquiry to lead to new ways of thinking about ourselves. Along with the philosophers, it will be the creativity of the scientists as artists and the imagination of the mathematicians to assist us in seeing how important and therefore how seriously we should take ourselves in the ""here and now"" and in the ""there and then."" Our creativity helps us to know that our desire to re-invent, re-examine, and re-focus our values of what we identify as important is what guides us to interpret the problems ahead. New systems of thought in all walks of life that re-invigorate our importance by relying on our imaginative instincts to enable us to envision a better world in which we are not systematized, and to re-invigorate a new way of seeing that the union of creativity and analytic thinking will mean new freedoms for our life worlds as people overcoming the stagnation of intellectual orthodoxy, Phillistinism and seeing the true meaning of our importance not based on hubris…or mis-placed values…but stalwart emphasis on the hope than we are better than what time has done to us. The new world order may call for the increasing technological paradigms as to how to run our lives, yet the creative impulse to solve problems through the language of scientist/philosophers will collaborate to emphasize our importance despite the overwhelming reality of our planetary insignificance. Austrian-British philosopher of science Karl Popper, Generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century once wrote “The best thing that can happen to a human being us to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears. Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.” It is for this reason that we ask in the context of the study and teaching of Physics and Philosophy: are we important? ",,,,,"John Cleary, 60, Associate Professor of Philosophy",,,,,,are-we-important,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"E-mail contact","Interdisciplinarity,Philosophy,Philosophy Education,Science & the Humanities",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/406/Greek_statues_HM.jpg,Text,,1,0 "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,,,,,,"Hello, my name is Justina Licata, and I am a Ph.D. student studying history at UNC-G. And my humanities moment relates to how I became a history major many years ago, and it dates back to my eighth grade year. I think I was 13, I may have been 12. I went to school in Southern California in a town called Yorba Linda, it's actually where Nixon was born. Anyway, side-note. And I was very excited to take history, particularly U.S. history, I loved, loved history because my parents really made it a big part of my childhood by buying my sister and I lots of great books about history and art history. So I already had a really great foundation for loving history, but my eighth grade history/social studies teacher really kind of cemented it for me. Her name was Mrs. McClain and she was a fabulous teacher. She did a great job of making history feel alive and present, not just something that happened in the far past. One way she did this was, I was in eighth grade during the 2000 Bush V. Gore election. And she took the time to, on an almost daily basis, kind of update us as that recount was occurring and explaining to us what was happening, how the Supreme Court participated in that election's decision, and she just really made the present feel as if it's a historical moment that we were living through and kind of appreciating that moment, whether we liked the outcome of that election or not, as a historical moment to pay attention to and that something people in the future will be reflecting upon, which is kind of poignant because the dissertation I'm working on is actually quite contemporary, something that's happened in the 90's mostly. And so it's been interesting to think back on how her, kind of, encapsulating that the present is a historical moment as well was really poignant for me. One other thing I wanted to mention is that there was a particular lesson that she gave that really kind of made me realize that you could study history as a career and not just study, you know, the math and the science and the English, you know. That actually history could be something that you spent much of your college career dedicated to, which was something I didn't realize even though I loved it so much. So one day she, I don't actually recall what the lesson was about, but I'm assuming it was the Civil War because of what I will tell you in a minute, but she took the time to tell us a little bit about a paper she wrote in college, and I remember that she was writing, she was asked to write a paper about two years in the Federal Congress, so to examine two years in which of the House and Senate and what they did during that one session. So, she, I remember she told us that she chose to write about the 37th United States Congress which was the Congress that was sitting during the Civil War, so half of the Congress was not actually attending, half the members were not actually attending the sessions and going to Congress and D.C. because they had seceded. And I just remember being so fascinated by this, and I couldn't even explain why I was so fascinated, I just thought wow that sounds so fascinating, and I wanted to write something similar. And, I remember thinking, well, that must, I don't think everyone's probably having this reaction to her explaining a paper she wrote in college, but I did remember also thinking that in that moment, realizing, oh, you can actually choose to major in history, and you can focus and learn, you know, in depth, about this topic, and that that was, in fact, what I really wanted to do, that I just loved history so much, and the idea of making this thing that I loved a career was truly remarkable and really poignant for me. And so pretty much after that day, I told anyone who cared that I was going to, in fact, major in history and that I wanted to do something related to history as a career. I didn't know what that would be yet, but I did, in fact, go and do that, and I was really, I'm just so grateful that Mrs. McClain made that something that felt accessible to me, that she made it so that it felt like you can absolutely go and do this, and she kind of also gave me further insight as to how colleges worked which was really helpful as I was entering high school and starting to think about college in a more serious way, so I am very very indebted to Mrs. McClain, and I haven't spoken with her in a while, so I hope to try and maybe track her down and tell her how much I appreciated what she did for me way back then. So, thank you so much, I appreciate it, and that is my humanities moment. Okay, thanks.",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,"During the Graduate Student Summer Residency Program ","High School Students,History,Presidential Elections,Self-Realization,Teachers & Teaching,Yorba Linda, CA",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/15/321/HM_White_House_image.jpg,Sound,"Graduate Student Summer Residents 2019",1,0 "Perspective from Waiting for Superman",,"When I was in high school, there was an incredible amount of buzz around a new documentary, Waiting for Superman. The documentary focused on the struggle some students faced to get a quality education in major U.S. cities, like Washington, D.C. For many the film was enlightening, but for some the idea of ""lottery schools"" were controversial.