2
30
405
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Teaching with Technology
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Pixabay
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teaching-technology
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Educators
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This collection features contributions by teachers, education administrators and others involved in teaching at levels K-16.
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educators-humanities-moments
Text
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Colleague
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Kathryn Thayer, Social Studies Teacher
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August 2012
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"Greatest Love of All"
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For many years, my school district hosted an annual Academic Diversity Institute prior to the start of the new school year. At this institute, teachers had the opportunity to hear speakers and attend seminars that taught about and encouraged the implementation of new teaching strategies and methods in the classroom. The theme of the 2012 institute was "Reaching All: Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century." The keynote speaker at the 2012 institute reinforced many of the concepts and arguments that I had studied in my graduate school cohort program, from which I had graduated just three months earlier. As I listened to the keynote speaker, her words really resonated with me, further confirming my belief that the integration of technology in the 21st century classroom is critical to helping students to be academically successful, both in the present and in the future.
The keynote speaker tugged at my heartstrings through her incorporation of Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All". It is the song that my dad and I had danced to for our Father/Daughter dance at my wedding a year earlier. Although there is a very personal reason why my dad and I chose this song for our special dance, much of the meaning that he and I both share in connection with this song also carries over into my beliefs as a classroom teacher. My own analysis of Houston's lyrics further supports my belief about the importance of technology in the classroom.
"I believe the children are our future," as past and current generations have shown that they will be who shapes the workplace environment once they become the majority of the population. "Teach them well and let them lead the way" in how they will acquire, master, and utilize knowledge. "Show them all the beauty they possess inside" in order to intrinsically motivate them to want to learn. "Give them a sense of pride to make it easier" for them to find their own meaning in the standards that they must master in order to pass a particular course. "Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be" when we ourselves were students (Whitney Houston, "Greatest Love of All").
That last line in particular reminds me of how excited I was to use Ask Jeeves for the first time in my 9th grade Regional World Studies class in order to do research on the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. At the time, Ask Jeeves was a newly developed research tool on the Internet. My own memory of this experience reinforces the need for teachers to not only continuously learn about and incorporate new learning strategies and methods, but to also serve as a guide on the side of student learning and to let students find meaning in their own learning.
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"Teach Them Well and Let Them Lead the Way"
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Whitney Houston
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teach-them-well-let-them-lead
Children
Houston, Whitney
Music Appreciation
Teachers & Teaching
Technology
-
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Chimpanzee
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Adobe Stock photo
Moving Image
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Robert Newman
Player
html for embedded player to stream media content
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-TLN847LcrI" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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Title
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Sharing Language, Understanding Humanity
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1977
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Jeff Braden, Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, NC State University
Description
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For Jeff Braden, the opportunity to join the first successful project to teach chimpanzees American Sign Language at the University of Nevada, Reno, in the 1970s shaped his philosophy on what it means to be human. By bringing together perspectives in the sciences and the humanities, Braden was able to investigate how we understand our identity and our connections to other beings and minds.
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jeff-braden-sharing-language
American Sign Language (ASL)
Animal Cognition
Language
Philosophy
Reno, Nevada
Scientific Research
University of Nevada, Reno
-
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Big Bang
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Pixabay
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big-bang
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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National Humanities Center
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Jiajun Zou, 25, Graduate Student
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Maps of Time
Description
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My Humanities Moment was when I first read David Christian's Maps of Time during my 2nd year of grad school. It made me interested in some of the big questions that I have never thought are important and compelled me to converse about these topics with others and to converse with them well. There are two major academic challenges that I faced which were what makes humanities education meaningful? How can I attract an audience to listen to my expertise?
The book helped me overcome these two challenges by convincing me that whatever disciplines we work on, it always boils down to the fundamental big questions that are of concern to us all. It teaches me how to use metaphor and how to reach out to a wider audience. As a scholar of Chinese history, I always thought that only historians (indeed only Chinese historians) will ever be interested in what I have to say. But this book changed my mindset and made me realize that I was the one who was locking up the door not my audience.
It is up to us as humanities scholars to demonstrate why any knowledge or skills passed down are worth learning about. I was overwhelmed by the ability of the author to do interdisciplinary research. It is true that in his discussion of the origin of the universe and humanity, Christian is not an expert in math, science, geology, history, anthropology, etc. But what is valuable and worth keeping in mind is that this is the right approach to do humanities research because the questions come first and our ego and pride come last.
Title
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How Maps of Time Made me Rethink the Significance of Education
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how-maps-of-time-made-me-rethink-education
Books & Reading
Christian, David
Cultural History
Education
History
Maps of Time
Self-Realization
-
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Statues
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statues
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From one of my graduate students at Penn State (Morgane Haesen, whose "Moment" you published)
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Willa Z. Silverman, 62, Malvin E. and Lea P. Bank Professor of French and Jewish Studies, Penn State University
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Spring 2021
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<em>Night and Fog </em>(1955)
Description
An account of the resource
“Nothing distinguished the gas chamber from an ordinary blockhouse,” writes Jean Cayrol in the screenplay for Alain Resnais’ iconic filmic meditation on the Shoah, Night and Fog (1956). “Inside, a fake shower room welcomed newcomers. The doors were closed. The newcomers were observed. The only sign – but you must know this (il faut le savoir) – is the ceiling worked over by fingernails. Even the concrete was torn.” At this point in the film, like an insistent investigative eye, the camera pans to the ceiling of the gas chamber, revealing the telltale scratch marks. The image of fingernails clawing into concrete in a desperate attempt for survival recurs in another work about Holocaust memory that we read this semester, Georges Perec’s W, or the Memory of Childhood (1975). Recalling an exhibit he had visited with his aunt shortly after the war – the same one, in fact, that led producers to ask Alain Resnais to create the film that would become Night and Fog -- the child survivor narrator writes: “I remember photos showing the walls of the ovens, lacerated by the fingernails of those who had been gassed.”
Il faut le savoir. The phrase has haunted me throughout the semester. You must know this. Because it happened. Because many would deny that it did, depriving the victims of dignity and history of truth. Fingernail scratches in the crematoria walls of Auschwitz, asks the neo-Nazi website The Stormer? “Jewish mythology says ‘yes.’ Science says ‘no.’” You must know this, because soon there will be no more survivors, and those still alive often find it too painful, or shameful, to share their testimony, or else they have learned to suppress it so as not to trouble others. “No one wanted my memories,” writes Birkenau survivor Marceline Loridan-Ivens in But You Did Not Come Back. You must know this, because 2/3 of young Americans, according to a 2020 national poll, lack a rudimentary understanding of the Holocaust. “Where did the Holocaust happen?” educator Rhonda Fink-Whitman asks a Penn State student in her 2012 documentary, 94 Maidens. “I have no idea.” You must know this, as Cayrol writes in Night and Fog, because “war is sleeping, but with one eye always open.” As I write, genocide continues to be perpetuated against the Muslim Rohingya people by the military in Myanmar. “Who among us keeps watch from this strange watchtower to warn of the arrival of our new executioners?”
But to know – and this is a second meaning of il faut le savoir -- one must be ‘in the know,’ know where to look, how to be on the lookout, how to decode the signs. You have to be tipped off to find the “Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation” (1962) tucked in a small square behind the behemoth of Notre-Dame Cathedral, just as you must be ‘in the know’ to be disturbed by the memorial’s identification of those deported from France as willing “martyrs” to a cause rather than victims of state persecution by both the Nazis and the Vichy regime. The French State headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain is nowhere mentioned in this memorial monument, yet it deported over 75.000 Jews from France to their deaths, along with, in smaller numbers, Roma, the disabled, Jehovah’s witnesses, gay men and lesbians, and other ‘undesirables.’ Stroll around to the main façade of Notre-Dame to contemplate the two female allegorical figures framing it; only if you’re ‘in the know’ about the anti-Semitic underpinnings of European Christianity through the mid-20th century will you understand that one figure represents the Church triumphant, while the other, with downward cast, blindfolded gaze and broken Torah tablets at her feet, symbolizes the Synagogue. As only one photograph of this event remains, you need to be on the lookout for the tiny plaque at the foot of a bustling Parisian office building marking the site of the former Vélodrome d’hiver, an indoor bicycle track where over 11,000 Jews, including over 4,000 children, were packed for several sweltering days in July 1942 before being herded to their deaths. “A peaceful landscape,” writes Cayrol, “An ordinary field with flights of crows, harvests, grass fires. An ordinary road where cars and peasants and lovers pass. An ordinary village for vacationers – with a marketplace and a steeple – Can lead all too easily to a concentration camp.” Il faut le savoir.
“Every hour of every day,” writes Hélène Berr, a young upper-class French Jewish woman who survived a year in deportation before being beaten to death in Bergen-Belsen, “there is another painful realization that other folk do not know, do not even imagine, the suffering of other men, the evil that some of them inflict. And I am still trying to make the painful effort to tell the story. Because it is a duty, it is maybe the only one I can fulfill. There are men wo know and who close their eyes, and I’ll never manage to convince people of that kind, because they are hard and selfish, and I have no authority. But people who do not know and who might have sufficient heart to understand – on those people I must have an effect.” Let us – we who in Primo Levi’s words “live safe in [our] warm houses,” armed with all we have learned this semester, make the “painful effort to the tell the story” to all those who will listen, “those with sufficient heart to understand.” Because the world must know. Yes, il faut le savoir.
Title
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“Il faut le savoir:” Reflecting on France’s Holocaust History and Memory
Creator
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Jean Cayrol, Alain Resnais
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il-faut-le-savoir
Documentary Films
Emotional Experience
Film and Movies
Historical Memory
History
History Education
Holocaust
Memorials
Memory
Teachers & Teaching
War
-
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Rare Books
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Pixabay
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rare-books
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Educators
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This collection features contributions by teachers, education administrators and others involved in teaching at levels K-16.
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educators-humanities-moments
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From the FCPS Inquiry Curriculum Development Project I am doing this summer
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Natalie Hanson, 36, History Teacher
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July 2021
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<em>People of the Book</em>
Description
An account of the resource
I read <em>People of the Book</em> by Geraldine Brooks a few days ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. This book combined many of my loves: reading, historical fiction, and stories of survival and humanity.<br /><br />As a history teacher, with two young kids, I don't get much time to read for pleasure during the year. And this past year of the pandemic was the hardest of my career and I had even less time for reading. I have been so happy to slow down and relax this summer and to escape into the world of this book that was so captivating. <br /><br />This book had been sitting on my nightstand for months and once I picked it up, I couldn't put it down. It was such a powerful novel about imagined and embellished stories about a real live artifact, the Sarajevo Haggadah. The stories that the author created felt so real and I grew so attached to the people who helped protect this book. I learned so much about history and religion that I didn't know before. I also learned so much about the human condition. <br /><br />This is why I love my job. You can always learn more. I was so inspired by this book to keep reading others and keep learning more. I can't wait to travel and eventually see the real Haggadah. I want to share its story and hope others will get the opportunity to read this book!
Title
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<em>People of the Book </em>Reminds Me Why I Love the Humanities
Creator
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Geraldine Brooks
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people-book-reminds-love-humanities
Books & Reading
Brooks, Geraldine
Fiction
History
Learning
-
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Flower in the desert
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Pixabay
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Heidi Camp and Nora Nunn contacted me some time ago, told me about the project, and asked me to write this essay.
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Nathan Nielson, 44 years old, writer and director of Books & Bridges, a humanities nonprofit organization
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A few decades ago
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"Flower in the crannied wall," a poem written by Tennyson and also an experience I had observing nature in the desert southwest
Description
An account of the resource
During the past several weeks I've been drafting some thoughts I've had for a number of years regarding the way we learn from nature and from other people's thoughts and writing. My Humanities Moment is a poetic description of a memory I had that was prompted by a poem from Alfred Tennyson -- "Flower in the crannied wall." The moment when this poem, this memory, and this essay came together is an example of the boundless and unpredictable infectiousness that operates between the minds of people and the objects and symbols of the natural world. I explain how the little flower in Tennyson's poem prompts my own memory of a little tree resiliently hanging onto its life in a canyon wall. While writing, this tree acquired more meaning for me when I addressed it in a personal way, almost as if to both a teacher and interlocutor. Prompted by Tennyson, I came to see in this tree the meaning and expression of human life and the nature of our struggle in defying the forces that oppose us and bring us to despair. I wrote this essay resembling the form of free verse, as I thought that was the best way to convey the tone and intimacy of my humanities moment. My moment is about the multi-lateral connection that is preserved by words and memory between the past and the present, between the natural world and the human world, and between human minds separated by the centuries. <br /><br /><strong>A Poem Remembered, a World Created</strong> <br /><br />I read a poem by Tennyson the other day. A very short poem. Only six lines: <br /><br /><em>Flower in the crannied wall, </em><br /><em>I pluck you out of the crannies, </em><br /><em>I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, </em><br /><em>Little flower—but if I could understand </em><br /><em>What you are, root and all, and all in all, </em><br /><em>I should know what God and man is.</em> <br /><br />Sometimes a very short poem can capture the desire of the human race. This flower took my mind to a tree I once saw growing in a rock. So I wanted to try what Tennyson did: <br /><br />Little pinion growing in the cliff, how you hang, how you droop, parch and slant. How you survive. I watch you crouch so high at the sun, and defeat it by your years. The needles of your humility still stay green. Each day you face the fall. And each day you cling to that sheer rock. The peace that city dwellers seek emanates not from you, but only the repose that comes from fear. The pain of the wilderness speaks in your sun-bleached bark. Without consolation is this heat. You preserve the mystery of existence and give no assurance that nature is my friend. The grandness of your story is found in the scarcity of your speech. Words from you are dumb, reminding me that I am not home in this world. I must be honest in your presence. You dare even as you stick. The passage of time, with its change and continuity, never escape your sight. You may tire of the cycles — the filling and drying of the winding creeks, the wetting and burning of the sand, or the traces of green, then yellow, of the trees and grass below. But you abandon them not. The hope you have comes only in these colors. For you do not see water itself. In you is that long war against gravity, against wind and the breaking of ice, against the fracture of rocks that choke a little more of your soil each year. In you is the secret of striving. Something whispers that what God would tell me he tells me through you. The clench of your roots teach me that the world is not meant to disintegrate, but to fight, to withstand, to last. Together we testify what will adds unto nature. You are the ambition of our poetry, the conceit to capture meaning behind the surface. We need you to see ourselves, and we need you to point us beyond ourselves. Little pinion, I speak to you in my memory. When I saw you those decades ago, a seed from your cone blew toward me and planted in my heart. That seed has grown into a sequoia of significance. I had neglected you until I read a poem by a man over the ocean, a man who lived in green and did not know this arid west, nor these mountains of rock. His soft flower became the pluck of your pine. And so across time and across this globe, the union between your kind and mine has solidified. Before you were a tree, but now you are a world.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Poem Remembered, a World Created
Identifier
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poem-remembered-world-created
Books & Reading
Environmental Humanities
Flower in the crannied wall
Memory
Nature
Poetry
Tennyson, Lord Alfred
-
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Title
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Sargassam & Barbados
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
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A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
Text
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Andy Mink
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Chris Bunin
Date
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Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
At the heart of humanities are humans. This moment encapsulates the unintended consequences of human interactions with our environment. The picture was taken at Bathsheba, Barbados that shows the impact of Sargassam seaweed on the island nation of Barbados. It is believed the seaweed bloom is related to deforestation and agribusiness in along the Amazon River in Brazil. The source of this moment was seeing a painting of Bathsheba in St. Nicholas Abbey plantation. It affected me by realizing the ripple effects of our actions and the importance of Environmental history and geography.
Title
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Sargassam & Barbados
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sargassum-barbados
Bathsheba, Barbados
Environmental History
Geography
Paintings
Photography
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/282/4912901360_c4971a58e6_o.jpg
b423cfc87f88e915c5b26adbf13737c2
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The Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh
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School
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Sydnie, 18, Student
Date
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2010/2011
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<em>The Starry Night</em> by Vincent van Gogh
Description
An account of the resource
My humanities moment took place over a few years. It all started one day when I was in the 4th grade. This was one of my favorite days in elementary school because we had an assembly that day. That meant that after lunch recess we got to do something fun instead of doing math or history or science or something else that was uncolorful and boring. I was really excited to find out that it was an art assemble, which meant that afterwards we would get to paint or draw for the rest of the day. Taped all over the walls of our gym were many colorful, bright, and interesting paintings. When we were all seated on the floor I was able to get a better view of the paintings on my side of the wall. It was very interesting to look back and forth between the different sides of the gym. On the far side the paintings looked just like standard paintings but on the side near to me I could see all the little details. <br /><br />The art teacher went on to explain why the paintings looked different from a distance. These were some of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings and that he used a very unique style and technique. She explained that he is best known for his use of pointillism. This means that he painted using thousands of dots or strokes to create a very detailed and bright picture. My favorite picture that she showed us was of a little town at night. It had blue rolling hills and a swirly starry sky. <br /><br />After learning about his style and looking at more of his paintings we went back to our class and got to try out painting like him. I had so much fun learning about and painting in Van Gogh’s unique style. It was by far my most favorite assembly. In middle school I kept seeing the painting with the swirly night sky and so I decided to look more into Vincent van Gogh’s life. He was born on March 30, 1853 in Zundert, Netherlands to Theodorus van Gogh and Anna Carbentus. Van Gogh was introduced to art very early in life when he worked with his uncle as an art dealer. During his early adulthood he had trouble figuring out his purpose in life. He worked many jobs trying to figure this out; he worked as an art dealer, a bookseller, and even became a preacher at one point. On his preaching mission in Borinage, Belgium, a mining region, he would give Bible readings to the locals. While this was all happening he would write to his brother, Theo, about his journeys. In these letters he would draw little sketches and drawings of what he saw. Which caused Theo to advise him to pursue his passion for art. Van Gogh agreed and soon got art lessons from Anton Mauve. Since Van Gogh didn't have a paying job anymore, Theo would send him money. Later in his painting career, as compensation for Theo taking care of him, he would give Theo some of his paintings to sell. Vincent van Gogh’s mental health fluctuate all throughout his life. He began a relationship with a former prostitute Sien Hoornik. Together they rented a studio where they lived along with her baby and five year old daughter. The relationship broke off and Van Gogh moved to Arles, Paris to focus on his art. There he rented one of his rooms to fellow artist Paul Gauguin. Paul and him had very different art styles and would often get into heated arguments with one another. This along with the stress of his painting career being unsuccessful caused his mental health to deteriorate. At its worst, he cut off his ear then gave it to a prostitute wrapped in a newspaper. After his recovery in the hospital he went back home to paint. Then feeling his mental health declining again he admitted himself to the psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy. While there he experienced a period of extreme confusion and ate oil paint. It was at this asylum that Vincent van Gogh painted The Starry Night, the swirly painting that I had liked so much. With everything becoming too much, on July 27, 1890 Van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He was able to walk back to his house and was found, but it was to late for him. Vincent van Gogh died on July 29, 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. Over his lifetime he drew over 850 paintings and about 1,300 works on paper. <br /><br />Sadly, it was only after his death that his paintings found any success and popularity. This has influenced me personally because it taught me to not take everything at face value. You might not know what is going on underneath the surface. With Van Gogh his paintings seemed so happy and playful but behind that he was struggling financially and with his mental health. It taught me to be aware of those around me and to remind myself that not everything is pretty. After learning more about Vincent van Gogh’s life and his struggles it made the painting have a deeper meaning. It was both sad and beautiful to learn about the man behind the paintings. I learned that even in the worst situations people can create eternal beauty.
Title
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The Brightest Star in the Night
Identifier
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the-brightest-star-in-the-night
Art
Beauty
Inspiration
Painters
Paintings
Pointillism
Salt Lake City, Utah
Students
Teachers & Teaching
The Starry Night
van Gogh, Vincent
-
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Front-page news on Muhammad Ali
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
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The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
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Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
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contested-territory
Still Image
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NEH: Contested Territories
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Melissa Barnhouse, 38, exceptional children's teacher
Date
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June 21, 1967
Description
An account of the resource
Muhammad Ali was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1966. Ali did not believe in fighting in the war and he was willing to sacrifice everything based on those principles. “My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” he said. “And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. … Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? There are only two kinds of men,” Ali continued, “those who compromise and those who take a stand.” Ali told Pacifica Radio he was “proud to say that I am the first man in the history of all America, athlete and entertainer-wise, who gave up all the white man’s money, looked the white man in the eye, and told him the truth, and stayed with his people." Ali was sentenced to 5 years in jail, fined $10,000, stripped of his title and lost his boxing license for 3 years at the height of his career. In spite of detrimental and pervasive consequences, he sacrificed his way of life to stand strong in his beliefs. The theme of “sacrifice” permeates every aspect of the history of contested territories. All the people involved, no matter what their nationality or culture, made sacrifices related to the contested territory.
Title
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Sacrifices and the Consequences of Dissent
Identifier
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sacrifice-consequences-of-dissent
Ali, Muhammad
Civil Rights
Conscientious Objection
Human Rights
Radio
Sacrifice
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
-
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Title
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Books
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books
Text
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School Assignment
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Hailey Rogers, 18, High School Senior
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<em>Love You Forever</em> by Robert Munsch
Description
An account of the resource
<p>One of my earliest childhood memories is of a sweet voice reading sweet words to me from a simple children's book. The voice belonged to my grandmother and the words were ones of pure love. As for the book, its title is <em>Love You Forever</em> and its memorable blue cover has followed me from childhood to my young adulthood, saving me repeatedly.</p>
<p>A child may not be able to comprehend the notion or importance of unconditional love but the comfort linked to it is easily understood and craved, love is a universal language after all. The affection my grandma held for me then was easily found within her every action, her hugs and excitement to see me, spending her nights watching movies with me, and of course, reading to me my favorite, little book. The words “I’ll love you forever/ I’ll like you for always/ As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be”, will forever invoke the purest, most childlike feelings of love and happiness. This love and understanding between my grandma and I is so important, and has become an important lifeline in times of trial.</p>
<p>Eventually, like we all do, I grew up and my memory of the book faded. My relationship with my grandmother did not fade, however, circumstances caused us both to move away from our home state of Arizona. While she was in Texas for work, my family was in Ohio to be an aid for my aunt during a hard time in her life. There I was, crammed in a house with ten other people, living in a state I’d never been to before, and on the other side of the country from everything and everyone I knew. It was, to say the least, difficult for me at 13 to cope with. My parents tried to make the best of it by taking day trips and getting occasional treats.</p>
<p>One small day trip in particular had us on the road to a little town I can’t remember the name of. As we explored, we found a quaint little bakery that sold donuts, so of course we went in. As my dad ordered, I found myself in the corner where there were some dusty books shelved up next to a fireplace. I glanced at the books and one blue cover caught my eye. At this point in my life, I was struggling to find peace or any kind of comfort. I know my family was doing their best but everyone was struggling to feel loved. This is the moment where I realized the importance of not only nostalgia but that eternal love I keep mentioning. All the warm, gushy feelings hit me at once as I pulled the familiar book from the shelf.</p>
<p>This book, on a dusty bookshelf, in a small bakery in Ohio had just changed my life, all because of the love a grandma has for her grandchild. To be brought back to such a perfect feeling of love in the midst of my unending depression was so staggering. This sudden change from despair to hope changed my life and my outlook from there forward. I was going to be okay because no matter what I did or who I became, there is someone out there who will always love me. This thought carried me through trials throughout my life to this point. Everyone needs somebody to love them without conditions. This is the reason for some people’s cruelty and others kindness, and I understand that now. This is why I will always choose kindness. This is my humanities moment.</p>
Title
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A Love That Follows You
Identifier
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love-that-follows-you
Books & Reading
Children's Literature
Emotional Experience
Family
-
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Lightbulb moment
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Pixabay
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ColiN00B, https://pixabay.com/en/light-bulbs-light-bulb-light-energy-1125016/
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Title
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Response to a response
Description
An account of the resource
I was in my English class and we were talking about humanities moments for extra credit. We talked about <a href="http://humanitiesmoments.org/moment/robbins-finding-freedom-from-familiar">a woman who disagreed with the "mimetic" effect</a> and she claimed that people have a desire to be different. I agree with this idea but I also believe that each human has a purpose in this world. Each individual is born with a burning desire inside of them to fulfill this purpose and live their lives to the absolute fullest. This gives me hope that one day each individual will discover something that makes them feel alive each day and causes them to live with purpose.<br /><br /><em>Curator's note</em>: This contribution refers to the Humanities Moment "<a href="http://humanitiesmoments.org/moment/robbins-finding-freedom-from-familiar">Finding Freedom from the Familiar"</a> by Hollis Robbins.
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The Humanities Moment "Finding Freedom from the Familiar"
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Hollis Robbins
Date
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10:30 am Feb, 21 2018
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Jacob, Johnston 20 years old. College student at Texas A&M University
Identifier
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response-to-a-response
College Station, Texas
Hope
Meta Moments
Mimetic Desire
Robbins, Hollis
Self-Realization
Students
Texas A&M University
-
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Bolivia
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#Humanitiesinclass
Description
An account of the resource
This collection includes contributions from members of the National Humanities Center's education project Humanities in Class. The project aims to develop a deeper portfolio of curricular materials and help set standards for humanities education that highlight differences among humanities disciplines.
Text
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Human Ecology of Health
Description
An account of the resource
Walking the cobble-stone streets of a Bolivian village, I witnessed how a new clinic in a medically underserved area hadn’t made much of an impact. I was visiting a remote outpost to better understand the challenges in promoting health in poor Latin American communities. People come here only as a last resort because of the relative high costs and they are suspicious and reluctant to enter a facility staffed by foreigners. Only two came to see the doctor during the three days we were there. Likewise, latrines build by the clinic hadn’t improved sanitation because nobody uses them for cultural reasons.
By contrast, in another rural area, a woman with less than a fourth grade education has had a great impact as community health promoter. Because she grew up in the village, she is trusted and understands the problems the people face. Every 15 minutes it seemed liked another person up at her door, quite a contrast to the clinic. No outbreaks of childhood diseases have occurred since she began inoculating children. While limited in formal medical education, she has been trained to understand the importance of clean water and sanitation. More importantly, she had empowered other people in ways to improve their health.
Witnessing both projects created dissonance. While medical knowledge is necessary, more is required. I kept asking myself if the clinic was really addressing the needs of the underprivileged.
While my background in the humanities spans numerous perspectives, putting the various disciplinary puzzle pieces together in an applied manner hadn’t occurred. On the flight back to the United States, I began to recognize what is more formally referred to as the human ecology of health that examines aspects of population, habitat, and behavior. The clinic physician and accompanying nurses had medical training that allows them to understand disease pathogens, prescribe medicines and suture wounds. Yet they didn’t understand daily lives of the people they served. The community health worker, by contrast, was trusted and accepted by the community. She knew how to communicate to them and understand their body language. It was if a light bulb had been turned on in my head in which I realized that no single discipline had a monopoly on understanding. Solving problems that I had just observed in Bolivia were no longer a theoretical exercise, but I now realized that both breadth and depth in the liberal arts were needed to address real world problems.
Subject
The topic of the resource
While my background in the humanities spans numerous perspectives, putting the various disciplinary puzzle pieces together in an applied manner hadn’t occurred. On the flight back to the United States, I began to recognize what is more formally referred to as the human ecology of health that examines aspects of population, habitat, and behavior. The clinic physician and accompanying nurses had medical training that allows them to understand disease pathogens, prescribe medicines and suture wounds. Yet they didn’t understand daily lives of the people they served. The community health worker, by contrast, was trusted and accepted by the community. She knew how to communicate to them and understand their body language. It was if a light bulb had been turned on in my head in which I realized that no single discipline had a monopoly on understanding. Solving problems that I had just observed in Bolivia were no longer a theoretical exercise, but I now realized that both breadth and depth in the liberal arts were needed to address real world problems.
Date
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1989
Contributor
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<a href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/education-programs/humanities-in-class-guide-thinking-learning-in-humanities/">Edward Kinman</a>, age 59, Professor of Geography and Coordinator of the Virginia Geographic Alliance
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
human-ecology-of-health
Bolivia
Community Health Services
Health Promotion
Human Ecology
Interdisciplinarity
Local Knowledge
Medical Personnel
Professors
Public Health
Transcultural Medical Care
Villages
-
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Title
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
Still Image
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Andy Mink
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Patricia Garvey, 23, Earth Science and Astronomy teacher
Date
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June 2018
Description
An account of the resource
Visiting a sugar mill on the coast of Barbados, I wondered how far humans are willing to go for the everyday resources I take for granted. What are we willing to do to the environment or other human beings for sugar, salt, and electricity? In this image, you see the only wind-powered sugar mill still operational on Barbados from the 17th and 18th centuries. These sugar mills once existed by the dozen across the island of Barbados, acting as the technological backbone of the lucrative sugar industry. I focused in on the backside of the windmill because this is where you can see the reasonably advanced technology behind a brutal enterprise. On the tour, our guide pointed to the long wooden rod and noted that six to eight female slaves would have to lift and move this rod until the windmill was most efficiently moving in the wind. Weighing hundreds of pounds, I wondered if a more technologically advanced mechanism would have removed this burden… and if the development of technology would have eventually eliminated the need for slave labor altogether. But in this moment, I thought of Eli Whitney and his cotton gin. Invented with the hope of reducing the demand for slave labor, the cotton gin only made harvesting cotton more urgent. With sugar as one of the main staples in my American diet, I can only imagine that the demand for sugar has increased in recent years. Though my hope is that there is no place in the world today where the life expectancy of a laborer is only three years like that on these plantations… I do feel the need to consider who bears the burden of the resources that support my life. Does technology reduce the burden or simply shift the burden somewhere else? Did the development of the sugar mill reduce the cruelty of the slave trade or make the task more urgent? How far are we willing to go for our resources in modern society?
Title
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The Burden of Sugar
Identifier
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the-burden-of-sugar
Barbados
Slavery
Sugar Production
Teachers & Teaching
Technology
-
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Family Tree
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#Humanitiesinclass
Description
An account of the resource
This collection includes contributions from members of the National Humanities Center's education project Humanities in Class. The project aims to develop a deeper portfolio of curricular materials and help set standards for humanities education that highlight differences among humanities disciplines.
Text
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Origin Stories: Or, Making Sense of Surprises in the Family Tree
Description
An account of the resource
My Humanities Moment happened when my husband and I received the results of the genetic testing kits we’d ordered. The stories that my husband’s DNA told matched up pretty closely with his family’s history, but mine delivered some surprises. In addition to indicating a lot of northwestern European and Central European ancestors, which I expected, my report pointed to Scandinavian, West African, and North African ancestors! This all came as news to my whole family. We wondered: how did these encounters happen? What were the circumstances under which these distant and diverse relatives met? The map that accompanied my DNA results was particularly striking to me. I was amazed to see how my ancestors emerged over the course of the last several centuries from that violent, complex, and fascinating region of interaction that stretched up from the west coast of Africa, across the Strait of Gibraltar, through Iberia into northern, central, and eastern Europe. My humanities moment came when I realized that although I may never know the details of my ancestors’ travels, I can indeed explain a lot of the context behind that map of my family’s origins. The migrations, the wars, the famine and curiosity and opportunities that pushed people out of one territory and into the next: I know those stories, because I am a historian! Trained in the history of the Atlantic world and now a university professor of world history, I rely on the humanities to help my students and myself interpret the past. Science can tell us a lot, but so can history. Data means little if we don’t know the context—the stories and histories—behind it. Humanities and the sciences can and should work hand in hand in our efforts to understand and explain the world we live in and our shared past.
Contributor
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<a href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/humanities-in-class-guide-thinking-learning-in-humanities/">Molly A. Warsh</a>, Assistant Professor of World History, University of Pittsburgh
Identifier
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making-sense-family-trees
Africa
Ancestry
Europe
Family Histories
Family Trees
Genetic Genealogy
Migration
Professors
Science & the Humanities
-
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Sugarcane
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Pixabay
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sugarcane
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Title
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
Text
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Andy Mink
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Caroline Bare, 38, Social Studies teacher
Date
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June 19, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
My source of inspiration came from a lecture on paintings and images of slave society presented at the Barbados National Museum. The painting by Issac Sailmaker entitled "Island of Barbados" visually depicts the transformation of the island's geography due to the creation of sugar plantations in 1694. Sugar not only transformed the physical landscape of this mostly uninhabited land, but also would impact the social, political, and economic institutions that were created as a result. This painting symbolizes the totality of sugar on this small island and sets the stage for the ensuing nickname, "Britain's crowned jewel." One of the reasons I was drawn to this painting for inspiration is due to my own experiences on the island over the last week of learning and exploring. Driving through the different parishes and seeing how the landscape differs in various regions is a stark contrast to this image from 1694 showing mostly port cities and the beginning of European transformation on the interior to create space for large scale sugar farming. When looking at maps from the 18th and 19th centuries, the island of Barbados is transformed even more due to the profits and demand for sugar in a new global economy. This image is a snapshot of an island in transition, but lacks the conflict and division sugar production will create in the future. The profits from sugar will create a hierarchy between plantation owners and those working the fields and mills as slaves. Although this image depicts the beginning of British influence and domination over the island of Barbados, the narrative will continue to evolve as sugar projection reaches an all-time high and the thirst for profit will result in the dehumanization of an entire group of people.
Title
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Transformation of an Island
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transformation-of-an-island
Creator
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Isaac Sailmaker
Source
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The painting <em>Island of Barbados</em> by Isaac Sailmaker
Barbados
Colonialism
Exploitation
Island of Barbados
Sailmaker, Isaac
Slavery
Sugar Production
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Library
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Pixabay
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library
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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NHC Graduate Student Summer Residency
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Chaney Hill, 25, PhD Graduate student in English, Literature at Rice University
Date
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Childhood
Source
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Public Library
Description
An account of the resource
I grew up an hour and a half northwest of San Antonio, Texas in a small, rural town called Medina. Medina is home to one school (K-12 campus), about five stop signs, one gas station, two restaurants, and three churches. When I was younger, the town had a population of about three hundred people, while others lived ‘out of town’ on ranches, plots of land, or small trailer park communities. The school district, which spans approximately sixty miles of rural land in each direction, has anywhere between two hundred and fifty students to three hundred students (K-12).
The school had a football field, one un-air-conditioned gym, a bus barn/weight room, two halls for high school classes, one hall for junior high classes, and another for elementary school classes. The cafeteria, library, and work out facilities were shared by all. The school library had one room for elementary students, one room for junior high students, and about six shelves for high school students. Needless to say, the library, despite their best efforts, was woefully lacking. Outside of the school library, the closest library was a forty-minute drive and one town over. However, because we were not residents of that county, we were unable to check books out. Medina was, among other things, book-poor.
This changed in 2001 when a group of community members came together and raised the funds to build the Medina Community Library. The library had computers for those who otherwise wouldn’t have access to the internet, which was still largely unavailable in rural areas or was so outrageously expensive as to be unavailable, it had movies so people wouldn’t have to drive forty minutes to the Blockbuster a town over, and they had twice as many books as the school library.
Texas has an interesting history when it comes to public libraries, especially considering the state’s general aversion to public, non-commercial spaces (consider the lack of public land, public transport, and bikeable/ walkable spaces in Texas cities compared to other states and cities of similar populations and demographics). The frontier mindset of Texas influenced the prioritization of the accumulation of wealth while deprioritizing that which was not deemed essential to accumulating that wealth, such as non-commercial spaces for the public and acquiring non-technical knowledge (like the humanities). Consider, for instance, that Harvard University was founded some sixteen years after the Puritans landed at Plymouth Rock, but it took eighty years before Texas’s first public library[1] was founded.[2] While there are many other factors as to why the humanities have been decentralized and deprioritized (the frontier mindset is not the only factor by any means), I do think that the frontier mindset certainly contributed to the disparity of public libraries in the region I grew up (Notably, Medina’s county seat is nicknamed the Cowboy Capital of the World and it is not uncommon to see someone order a Cherry Limeade on horseback from the local Sonic Drive-In).
When the Medina Public Library opened I was finally given easy access to literature. My mother began volunteering at the library once a week after she got off work from her full-time job. These days I would wander the stacks choosing books I was interested in. I would sit on the floor and read for hours while my mom worked. Often when we think of a moment that inspired us to pursue the work we do in the humanities, we think of a book, a series, an author, an artifact, or a place with historical or religious significance. I have no singular thing that revealed to me the importance of the humanities. Instead, my humanities moment was the gift of public knowledge. The Medina Public Library, while it is still woefully inadequate compared to many other public libraries, was a democratic endeavor to provide my community with equal access to knowledge about other places, worlds, people, and experiences beyond our county. Instead of forefronting economic production, as the frontier mindset would mandate, the library instead fostered the circulation of knowledge and equitable community care.
[1] This is a debated topic. There are three different public libraries that lay claim to this title, but all claim their opening around the 1900s.
[2] See Texas Land Ethics by Pete A.Y. Gunter and Max Oelschlaeger (25-6).
Title
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The Power Public Knowledge has for the Humanities
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power-public-knowledge-for-humanities
Books & Reading
Cultural Exchange
Curiosity
Education
Libraries
Rural Communities
-
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James Joyce, 1915
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“I saw, in Stephen Dedalus, myself.”
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Beyond personally identifying with one of Joyce’s most well-known character, William Ferris points out how “Joyce keeps renewing his presence in our lives.” The continued circulation and appreciation of literature helps us draw parallels between our experiences and concerns and those of others, across time, national boundaries, and other differences.
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<p>In this excerpt from a conversation with William Ferris, former Chairman of the National Endowment of the Humanities, he shares how he came to see himself in Stephen Dedalus, the protagonist of James Joyce’s <em>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man</em>, who declares that he will fly from the nets of “nationality, language, and religion.”</p>
<p>He notes that at the time he encountered the character he and Stephen were about the same age and describes how he identified his own struggles as a young Southerner with those Dedalus experiences as a young Irishman. He goes on to discuss how the figure of Dedalus has become iconic and is used repeatedly to help discuss the struggles of young artistic spirits.<br /><br />Beyond personally identifying with one of Joyce’s most well-known character, William Ferris points out how “Joyce keeps renewing his presence in our lives.” The continued circulation and appreciation of literature helps us draw parallels between our experiences and concerns and those of others, across time, national boundaries, and other differences.</p>
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James Joyce
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William Ferris, former Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities
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william-ferris-stephen-dedalus
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<em>A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man</em> by James Joyce
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ireland
Irish Literature
Joyce, James
Literature
Southern United States
Welty, Eudora
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James Meredith at University of Mississippi
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Meredith_OleMiss.jpg
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james-meredith-at-university-of-mississippi
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Graduate Student Summer Residents 2019
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The National Humanities Center's graduate student summer residency program, <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/nhc-welcomes-graduate-student-summer-residents/">“Objects and Places in an Inquiry-Based Classroom: Teaching, Learning, and Research in the Humanities”</a> took place July 15–26, 2019. Representing 28 universities in 18 states, these participants worked with leading scholars and educators from across the United States as they learned how to add value to their research by focusing on teaching and learning.
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During the NHC 2019 Graduate Summer Residency Program
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Kiran Garcha; 35 years old; PhD candidate in the Department of History at University of California, Santa Cruz.
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During the end of my time in college, about 13 years ago.
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Paul Hendrickson, Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and its Legacy
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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.
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The Power of Oral History
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power-of-oral-history
American history
Black History
Books & Reading
Family Histories
Oral History
-
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Confederate General Lloyd Tilghman Monument - Vicksburg National Military Park, Mississippi
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Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brigadier_General_Lloyd_Tilghman_Vicksburg_Monument.jpg
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<p>I’m Julia Nguyen and my Humanities Moment, or at least this one because my life has been full of Humanities Moments, as a child—so a relatively early one—going to the National Military Park in Vicksburg, in Mississippi. I was raised in a family that has always been very interested in history, but going to that park really changed the way I thought about both history and the way that we think about history.</p>
<p>I remember being about twelve and the guide is explaining that the park is full of monuments that have been erected by individual states, veteran’s groups, other kinds of institutions, and explaining, for example, that every one is different and that the states themselves or the veteran’s groups decided what they wanted their monument to look like and what that was going to say about, say, involvement of troops from Mississippi in the siege of Vicksburg or the involvement of troops from Massachusetts.</p>
<p>That was the first time I had ever really thought about historical memory as a concept, and the idea that a monument is not just about the history, it’s about how society or a group or an individual wants us to remember the history. For a twelve-year old, that kind of blew my mind. This idea that monuments and historic sites are not themselves history; they are a representation of history. That has always really stuck with me.</p>
<p>I can still remember that moment so clearly, and as I then as an adult studied history in college, went on to graduate school—my own work as a historian is not in historical memory, but that concept continues to shape the way I think about the practice of history and the way that I do history myself: the idea that doing research and writing history is also a representation of what I or any other historian wants society to know or think about the past.</p>
<p>When I write history, I’m not writing the pure past. It doesn’t exist. I’m writing an interpretation, and I think sometimes we as historians, and it’s I think a natural human tendency—“Oh yes, of course, historians of the past were influenced by their own biases or perspectives, or the limitation of the sources that they had access to, but we do things better now!” Certainly, in some cases that’s true. We have access to more sources in some cases. You know, certainly the history of the Cold War can be written differently after the fall of the Soviet Union. But it’s still being shaped by our own perspectives, our own biases, the society in which we live and operate.</p>
<p>I try to keep that in mind as I do my own historical research and writing. Also of course, I think that now that we’re in a moment that monuments have become flashpoints again, it’s important to remember that sort of “ah-ha” moment, that sort of moment where my perspective was completely shifted, and remember that the monuments themselves are not the history. They are a representation of the history, and it’s important to know the full context in which they were erected and also to know the message that the creators wanted to convey, and what that says about them as individuals and organizations, and what it says about us as a society and the way that we choose to remember—or not remember—certain aspects of our history.</p>
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NEH "Contested Territory" summer institute
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Statues and the Shapeshifting of History
Description
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As a young girl visiting Vicksburg, Mississippi, Julia Nguyen encountered a Civil War statue. It altered not only the way she understands history, but the way she thinks about that very concept.
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Civil War statue in Vicksburg, Mississippi
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Julia Nguyen, historian and grant-maker
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statues-shapeshifting-history
Collective Memory
Historians
History
Statues
U.S. Civil War (1861-1865)
U.S. History
Vicksburg, Mississippi
Vocation
-
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Winter Lamppost Scene
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Pixabay
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winter-lamppost-scene
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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Andy Mink
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Nina Cook, 26, Graduate Student at Rice University
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18 Years Ago
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The Chronicles of Narnia
Description
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When I think of my love for the humanities, I think of magic. For me, the humanities offer a glimpse into other realms, worlds filled with wonder, excitement and adventure. Perhaps nothing encapsulates the pure joy that the humanities represent to me as well as my forays into Narnia as a young child. C. S. Lewis’s magical land of Narnia was the first of many worlds I explored alongside my parents and younger sister. When I was small, my family did not have a television, so after dinner reading was our most entertaining pastime. I remember my parents taking turns reading through <em>The Chronicles of Narnia</em>. My daddy would perform different voice for each character—accents included. It was great fun! My sister and I would sit enthralled for hours (or what seemed like it), begging for “just one more chapter.” <br /><br />For us, it was not just a book—it was an entire world that we brought to life together in our middle-class kitchen in plain old Plano, Texas. <em>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe</em> made us long for Christmas and shiver with cold, even in the hot Texas summers. We begged for Turkish Delight; the descriptions of the delicacy tested the limits of our childish imaginations and we wanted to taste it for ourselves. One day, daddy came home from work and brought us a box filled with the delectable sweet so we could experience Edmund’s temptation alongside him. We were unimpressed. In my memory, the texture is wrong and the taste pales in comparison to the way Turkish Delight had tantalized my imagination—it was like the inside of a jelly bean: bland, fruity—a little slimy. I remember thinking it would definitely take something chocolate and gooey (not fruity and slimy) for me to betray my siblings as Edmund had done. <br /><br />My sister and I fought over the relative merits of each novel. My favorite was <em>Prince Caspian</em> (I liked that Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy reprised their roles in the book and even at that age I was a sucker for a Prince and an under-dog rebellion), hers was <em>The Horse and His Boy</em>. For Christmas, the year after my parents finished reading through all seven of <em>The Chronicles</em>, they gave us the whole series of recorded books on tape. We listened to them so often that I think I still have the majority of <em>Prince Caspian</em> memorized. Indeed, for me—to a certain extent—the magic of Narnia is indelibly linked in memory to the magic of Christmas, each filled with happiness, family, and lots and lots of food. Reading <em>The Voyage of the Dawn Treader</em> had me dreaming about spiced wine. As a child, of course, I could not experience this particular delicacy from Narnia, but I recall the first Christmas that my daddy made it for us. Even as adults, the experience took me back to Narnia. We still drink it around the holidays and reminisce about those good old days adventuring with the Pevensies, King Caspian, and Reepicheep the mouse. <br /><br />I still often think of quotations from the books—they come to me, like magical mantas, perfect little bits of encouragement in my everyday life. One of my favorites is from <em>The Silver Chair</em> and perfectly sums up my beliefs about why we should study the humanities. A little bit of background: Puddleglum, a marshwiggle from Narnia, is (as his name would suggest) a glum old chap. On his adventure with two human children, they get caught in a witch’s underground realm. She casts a spell on them to make them forget the beauty and magic of the world above, of the stars, and the sun, and even the great Lion and King of the Woods, Aslan himself. In a truly heroic soliloquy, Puddleglum defends the idea of storytelling and the power of imagination, arguing against the witch’s claim that everything he believes is a lie: "Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say" (Lewis 182). <br /><br />The implied question at the end of this quotation is what keeps me coming back again and again to the power of story. Is the world as dull a place as most people believe? I cannot believe that. It is important in this scenario that the story Puddleglum has told the witch about the world above is true, just as there is a bit of truth in all of the things that we, as scholars of the humanities, study: the histories, and the paintings, and the stories. Many may tell us that what we do is not important—but the humanities matter. They speak to the essence of the human experience, to the beauty (although broken) of our wonderful world, and in <em>The Silver Chair</em>, C. S. Lewis wrote a compelling apology for the magic of the humanities. <br /><br />Lewis, C. S. <em>The Silver Chair</em>. New York, HarperCollins, 1953.
Title
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The Magic of the Humanities
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the-magic-of-the-humanities
Books & Reading
Children's Literature
Curiosity
Family
Lewis, C.S.
Storytelling
The Chronicles of Narnia
-
http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/508/McEwen_German_House_Franklin_TN.jpg
61d588c87ddc636b5da1912c1f36af60
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McEwen German House, Franklin, TN
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mcewen-german-house
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
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NHC Graduate Student Summer Residency, 2021
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Lauren Eastland, 52, PhD Candidate, University of California, Davis
Date
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1973
Description
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For as long as I can remember I have found peace in libraries. Just the idea of them makes me smile. My earliest memory of being in a library is from when I was a young child, around four years old, in the town of Franklin, Tennessee. The War Memorial Public Library was housed in a historic Victorian house in the downtown area of what was then a small city of about ten thousand people. I remember walking into the main room and seeing a large, dark-wood desk occupied by a matronly librarian who greeted me with a friendly smile. I remember that the children’s books were in a room to the right, which was filled, floor-to-ceiling with closely spaced shelves of books and the worlds they contained. It smelled old in there and was always kind of dark, with light entering mainly through the large windows on one side of the room. This lent an air of mysteriousness and I always felt like I was on an adventure, an intrepid explorer alone among the aisles of books that dwarfed me. I remember being a little anxious and maybe even a little frightened, but I loved the feel of the books in my hand. The excitement of getting to choose a pile of them to take home, as many as I could carry, was stronger than my fears. I felt empowered.
When I reflect on it now, I realize that these trips to the library must have been just as important to my mother as they were to me. She was and still is a voracious reader, and was always in the middle of numerous books, which were scattered throughout the rooms of our house. I have always admired her ability to pick one up and read a few pages in the interstices of her busy day, grasping onto moments of escape wherever she could find them as an effectively single mother, nursing student, and homemaker in the early 1970s. There were four of us and I was the “baby” by six years, which meant that I was privileged to spend time with her and do things that she didn’t have the time to do with my older brothers and sister, who were all spaced a couple of years apart. While they were in school, we sometimes got to do special things like going to the library.
Sitting alone among the stacks, pulling a book off the shelf to see what was inside, reading some of it right there to see if it was worthy of taking home to read again and again…I still get the same excitement from it today as I did when I was four years old. That same profound sense of peace and possibility comforts me every time I enter a library, and I still do it every chance I get.
Title
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The Solace of Libraries
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solace-of-libraries
Books & Reading
Family
Libraries
Mothers & Daughters
-
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"When Breath Becomes Air," by Paul Kalanithi
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Robert D. Newman
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This collections includes contributions by Robert D. Newman, president and director of the National Humanities Center
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robert-newman-humanities-moments
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When Breath Becomes Air
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What makes life worth living in the face of death? How do you handle the loss of all you’ve dreamed and what do you hope for when the future you’ve imagined is no longer possible? These are some of the questions with which Paul Kalanithi wrestles and for which he realizes his medical training offers few, if any, answers. When preparing to go to the hospital, he writes of packing three books: C. S. Lewis’s <em>Mere Christianity</em>, Heidegger’s <em>Being and Time</em>, and Solzhenitsyn’s <em>Cancer Ward</em>, telling his wife, “I need to make sense of my cancer through literature.” His decision to write the memoir of his decline also served as an exercise in understanding.
Description
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Just as he was completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. <em>When Breath Becomes Air</em>, the memoir Kalanithi wrote in the midst of his illness, traces his journey from brilliant medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” to his life as a patient and new father faced with his own mortality. As his body declines, his spirit expands. “Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life,” he writes, “hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue.”<br /><br />What makes life worth living in the face of death? How do you handle the loss of all you’ve dreamed and what do you hope for when the future you’ve imagined is no longer possible? These are some of the questions with which Paul Kalanithi wrestles and for which he realizes his medical training offers few, if any, answers. When preparing to go to the hospital, he writes of packing three books: C. S. Lewis’s <em>Mere Christianity</em>, Heidegger’s <em>Being and Time</em>, and Solzhenitsyn’s <em>Cancer Ward</em>, telling his wife, “I need to make sense of my cancer through literature.” His decision to write the memoir of his decline also served as an exercise in understanding.
Creator
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Paul Kalanithi
Contributor
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Robert D. Newman, President and Director, National Humanities Center
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robert-newman-when-breath-becomes-air
Death
Illness
Kalanithi, Paul
Lung Cancer
Memoirs
Mortality in Literature
Neurosciences & the Humanities
When Breath Becomes Air
-
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Rome
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rome
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Highschool English course
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Hayley Susov, HS Senior
Date
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December 2018
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Rome, Italy
Description
An account of the resource
When I was 5 years old, my family and I gathered around the Christmas tree bright and early on Christmas morning. I was more than excited when I unwrapped a small handheld camera that was pink and orange, and about half the size of a dollar bill. The screen on the camera was less than half an inch wide and tall, and the camera could only hold about 3 photos at a time. Still, I was ecstatic. I would walk around the house and take pictures of my family, and then delete them right away so I could take a couple more. This planted the roots for my love of photography. On a trip to Italy, that love blossomed.
Around the time I was ten years old, my family and I decided to stop doing presents for Christmas and take vacations instead. This became one of my favorite traditions very quickly. In 2018, we took our first trip to Europe. We spent a majority of the time in Italy, specifically the Rome region. We decided to stay around there because the art and architecture was inspiring. Before the trip, I decided to purchase my first DSLR camera. I practiced using it for the weeks leading up to the trip, but the trip felt like some kind of final exam. It felt like a test that I had been studying for for weeks, and this was my chance to prove my knowledge.
I fell in love with Italy after one day of being there. The pasta and gelato was definitely a factor, but there was something about the energy and the culture that really just changed me as a person. It was my first big exposure to a country outside of North America. Every day we were there was a learning experience, but I didn’t want to let the time just slip through my fingers. I knew at this moment that this was my test. Yes, it was a test I assigned to myself. But I knew that I had to find a way to capture the feeling I was experiencing over there.
Less than a week into our trip, we decided to take a tour called “Rome in a Day”. We started at a small coffee shop in the shadows of the Colosseum. We walked around and through all of the big architectural landmarks. We would spend about an hour at each location, then leave to check out a new city, museum, or town square that was historically famous. There was something humbling, grounding, and almost magical about being right next to the Colosseum. I had seen it in photos, but the photos were nothing like what I experienced.
So I pulled out my camera, adjusted the settings, and began trying to recreate the scene exactly as I was experiencing it. I did this at every structure or town that we went to. I wanted to focus on getting everything from my perspective, because it was a powerful experience to me. Being in a country where they don’t speak English, and my Italian was far from understandable, it was comforting to see everyone taking photos from different places. While everyone’s photos would turn out different, it felt unifying to know that we were all connecting through the click of our cameras. We all had one thing in common, and that was that we never wanted to forget that moment.
Throughout the rest of the trip I continued to take many many photos. At the end of each day, I would go back to our house and spend hours looking at them and editing them. The photos I took in Rome are still some of my favorites to this day, and I could say the same about that vacation. Rome was magical. Photographing it was even more magical.
Title
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Photographing Rome
Identifier
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photographing-rome
Cultural Exchange
Family
Photography
Rome, Italy
Self-Realization
Travel
-
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Impressionist painting
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impressionist-painting
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Van Gogh and Me
Description
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Last November my grandmother was visiting and wanted to do something fun. Instead of fun, my mother dragged us to the traveling “Beyond Van Gogh” exhibit that was in Salt Lake City at the time. As we entered this big warehouse where the exhibit was located, my fears seemed to be confirmed. I walked along a winding path with backlit, large-canvas reproductions of Van Gogh’s paintings with excerpts of letters written between Vincent Van Gogh and his brother Theo written over top of the paintings. For me, because I have a visual field cut and other sensory processing issues, it was painful and overwhelming to look at. The backlighting of the artwork made every detail pop and screamed for my attention. So everything smeared together and my brain could not process anything. I did everything I could to avert my eyes as I felt myself slowly becoming overwhelmed and on the verge of melting down.
I did notice that not everything in this room was yelling at me. In between these paintings, there were various empty picture frames invisibly suspended from the ceiling. As people, including myself, walked by, we all became the subjects. I became part of the artwork for a fleeting moment as I was framed within the borders. Then, once I turned the last corner, I entered a dark room with projections of moving color on the wall and floor. I went from being the one who moved around stationary pieces of art into a stationary person watching as the brushstrokes of color and light moved around me and swallowed me whole. As my mind and senses adjusted to this new reality, I entered a huge warehouse-sized room, projections of Van Gogh's work enveloped me on all sides. I was completely immersed in all the colors and details. Music written about Van Gogh or his works was gently playing in the background. For me, it was like a reverse fishbowl effect. Instead of feeling alone and exposed while something stared at me, I was a natural being that was happily swimming amidst the wonder around me. As I watched colors and paint strokes slowly morphing one painting turned into another, for the first time, art moved me in ways I never experienced before. By magnifying details that I would never normally see, I finally understood why art is so powerful. I watched his artistic process from start to finish as sketches were recreated and deconstructed before my eyes. I did not know about his work as a portrait painter, but seeing his side-by-side gallery of his many subjects, including himself, showed such an incredible imagination. This was the first time that I felt art really move me. Van Gogh’s artwork is so powerful and now I understand why his work lives on today. Visiting the “Beyond Van Gogh” exhibit has made me rethink what is possible. Please do not tell my mom that she was right and that I had so much more than fun.
Works Cited: “The Immersive Experience .” Beyond Van Gogh Salt Lake City, 2 Dec. 2021, vangoghsaltlake.com/.
Source
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"Beyond Van Gogh" traveling art exhibit
Date
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November 2021
Identifier
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van-gogh-and-me
Contributor
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Julia Reardon, Mountain Heights Academy, Utah
Aesthetics
Art
Art Exhibitions
Cultural Awareness
Emotional Experience
Family
Museum
Painters
Paintings
van Gogh, Vincent
-
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ddaacf843886f96a1acda62eb16fd1b7
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"The Tragedie of King Lear," William Shakespeare
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National Humanities Center Board Members
Description
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This collection includes contributions from the distinguished board of trustees of the National Humanities Center
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/259946108" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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Title
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Growing Up with the Humanities
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Mirah Horowitz, Russell Reynolds Associates
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mirah-horowitz-growing-up-with-humanities
Description
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Mirah Horowitz describes the lessons imparted from her mother, an English professor, on reading and writing as ongoing practices of critical inquiry. Building on their shared love of Shakespeare, Horowitz’s mother taught her daughter how the act of writing can cultivate ideas, prompt questions, and nurture a deeper appreciation for literature. In this light, Horowitz reflects on how the practice of reading and writing about works such as <em>King Lear</em> and <em>As You Like It</em> provided an opportunity to engage with the world in a meaningful way.
Subject
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Building on their shared love of Shakespeare, Horowitz’s mother taught her daughter how the act of writing can cultivate ideas, prompt questions, and nurture a deeper appreciation for literature. In this light, Horowitz reflects on how the practice of reading and writing about works such as <em>King Lear</em> and <em>As You Like It</em> provided an opportunity to engage with the world in a meaningful way.
Source
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William Shakespeare's <em>As You Like It</em> and <em>King Lear</em>
As You Like It
Books & Reading
Composition (Language Arts)
High School
King Lear
Literature
Mothers & Daughters
Shakespeare, William
Teachers & Teaching
Writing
-
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0df2cb269d4bf8b400913e886fa88822
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Printz Prize Winners 2018
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printz-prize-winners-2018
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Title
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Teacher Advisory Council
Description
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This collection includes contributions from the National Humanities Center's Teacher Advisory Council. The council is a 14-member board that supports the Education Programs of the National Humanities Center for a one-year term of service.
Text
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Teacher's Advisory Council
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Scot Smith, 53, school librarian
Date
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February 5, 2018
Description
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<p>I was born and grew up in rural Southern Appalachia. Books and stories were my pathway out of the holler and into a world of hope and possibility. As a child and teen, I read and listened voraciously, and those stories found in books helped to save my life. Without them, I am not sure where I would be right now. During my early years as an adult, I searched for a career that would pair my enthusiasm for literacy and literature with my profession. I finally found that perfect match as a librarian.</p>
<p>As a middle school librarian, I fell in love with Young Adult literature, books written for teens between the ages of 13 and 18. When I am asked why I seldom read “adult” books, I respond that I believe that some of the best books—both fiction and non-fiction—written today are being published for teenagers. In my defense, I am quick to cite numerous studies that indicate between 48–52% of the YA books being checked out at public libraries and purchased in book stores or online are to readers over the age of 24, in other words, readers like myself. What does that tell us? That these books written for teens possess value and quality for people of all ages.</p>
<p>In 2017, I had the opportunity to serve on the Michael L. Printz Award committee for the American Library Association. This prestigious award is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) and sponsored by Booklist. The winner and honors must exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature. Over the course of 12 months, I worked with a committee of eight other librarians from across the US. As a committee, we read hundreds of novels, biographies, and non-fiction titles written for teens. We convened online and in person, wrote about the books we had read, and in February of 2018 met in Denver to decide which titles we would select for the Printz Award. After two days of intense debates, we chose diverse five titles. The committee selected <em>We Are Okay</em> by Nina LaCour as the winner of 2018 Printz Medal and recognized four books with Printz Honors: <em>The Hate U Give</em> by Angie Thomas, <em>Long Way Down</em> by Jason Reynolds, <em>Vincent and Theo</em> by Deborah Heiligman, and <em>Stranger the Dreamer</em> by Laini Taylor.</p>
<p>As the awards were being announced at the ALA conference on February 5, I sat in a packed auditorium as tears rolled down my face. And why is this my Humanities Moment? Because this moment validates what I have always felt about YA literature. My experience on the Printz Committee and the five books we selected affirm two of my core beliefs—that some of the best books being written today are being published for teens and that anyone, young or old, can find beauty and meaning in the pages of YA. As a middle school librarian, I remind myself that I have the power to hand a student the right book at the right time in his or her life, a story that might change a life forever. And that is the power of literacy for teens….showing young readers a pathway to the future and inspiring them with hope and promise.</p>
Title
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Why I Read YA
Identifier
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why-I-read-ya
Education
Librarians
Libraries
Literacy
Literary Prizes
Young Adult Literature
-
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cbfea756a64f4c6c42f69ea46ece4cab
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The Remorse of Orestes by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1862)
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Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_(1825-1905)_-_The_Remorse_of_Orestes_(1862).jpg
Moving Image
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<iframe width="640" height="480" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" frameborder="0" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/339408443"></iframe>
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Title
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The Power of Mythological Thinking
Description
An account of the resource
As a teacher of classical mythology, Poliakoff explains that the challenge he presents to his students—and that myths present to contemporary readers—is to understand how such ancient stories transcend their particular contexts to embody universal lessons which can be translated across cultures and history. By using classical mythology both to understand our origins and to clarify the truths of our current experiences, he suggests that we can learn how to live in a way that opposes tyranny and connects us to others.
Source
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“<span>An Afternoon of Actaeon</span>,” by Milet Andrejevic; <em>The Oresteia</em> by Aeschylus
Contributor
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Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni
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michael-poliakoff-mythology
Aeschylus
An Afternoon of Actaeon
Andrejevic, Milet
Metamorphoses
Mythology
Ovid
Paintings
Teachers & Teaching
The Oresteia
-
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Title
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without words
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Educators
Description
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This collection features contributions by teachers, education administrators and others involved in teaching at levels K-16.
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educators-humanities-moments
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/269216222" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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Title
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Without Words
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Christina Lohry, Chantilly Montessori School, Charlotte, NC
Description
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Teacher Christina Lohry describes a moment in which she realized how language (and other forms of communication) can profoundly change how we view others, breaking down misconceptions and helping us connect.
While volunteering at a cerebral palsy center as a teenager, Lohry took the time to literally look into another person’s eyes. In doing so, her sense of the world was forever changed. Reality, she realized, is “never solid, it’s never what we think it is.” Human connections—with or without the assistance of language—are always possible; in turn, the world can always be bigger.
Identifier
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taking-time-look-into-someones-eyes
Long Island, New York
Nonverbal Communication
-
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0937bd6d7c3e772aa8906b1eb022bbdb
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Title
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Wings
Identifier
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wings
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
Identifier
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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National Humanities Center
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Richard Daily, 32, Ph.D. Candidate
Date
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2008
Source
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"10,000 Days (Wings, Part 2)"
Description
An account of the resource
"It's time now
My time now
Give me my,
Give me my, Wings"
Having grown up in a particularly religious family, one that didn't encourage listening to rock music, hearing Tool's brilliant lyrics and masterful musicality struck a cord from the first song I heard. However, their song "10,000 Days (Wings, Part 2)" that shook me to my core.
On the quad at the University of Redlands, I would belt out songs in the warm night air, when the campus was quiet save the echoes of my voice. So when I really listened to "10,000 Days" and sang the lyrics into the darkness, I was rapt with emotion; I felt the message in the song. While the song is about the lead singer's mother, her piety, and her passing, the singer demands that she receives her wings. The somber tones and religious metaphors caused my voice to tremble as I sang the tune. Tears welled as the fast paced tempo, ethereal guitar, and driving drums demanded my presentness in the moment.
I remember this moment so vividly because I was at a turning point in my relationship with religion, sexuality, and life. This song opened up a pathway to healing myself and defining those relationships on my own terms. I didn't have to ask for freedom, I could demand, "Give me my wings!"
Title
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Give Me My Wings
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give-me-my-wings
Creator
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Tool
Family
Freedom
Independence
Music
Religion
Tool
-
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Title
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Book spines
Source
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https://unsplash.com/photos/HslUloFIIk0
Identifier
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book-spines
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Title
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Graduate Student Summer Residents 2019
Description
An account of the resource
The National Humanities Center's graduate student summer residency program, <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/nhc-welcomes-graduate-student-summer-residents/">“Objects and Places in an Inquiry-Based Classroom: Teaching, Learning, and Research in the Humanities”</a> took place July 15–26, 2019. Representing 28 universities in 18 states, these participants worked with leading scholars and educators from across the United States as they learned how to add value to their research by focusing on teaching and learning.
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#GSSR2019 #GradsintheWoods19
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<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/809871433&color=%2365d4da&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=false&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=false"></iframe>
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
My Humanities Moment is with my favorite book: The Book in Japan, written by Peter Kornicki, a former professor at the University of Cambridge. This book was published in 1998, but his research began in the 1970s when he visited archives in Japan to collect materials on rare books that were made in pre-modern Japan, which is roughly before 1868. It was a time when Orientalism was highly popular in the West, the 1970s, and you have all kinds of elite white men marching to Asia to write about exotic and mysterious cultures of Asia. They enjoyed all kinds of white privilege in Asia, they were welcomed everywhere. And Peter Kornicki was one of them.
So honestly what I had expected from the book was what I got from many other books produced around that time: Eurocentric Orientalist bias from elite white men. But I was so surprised to find that the book was almost free of any kinds of such bias. Peter Kornicki treated books of pre-modern east Asia as they were. It was shocking to see what an amazing job he had done.
When I was reading the book, I was getting my MA in Japan, and I was under a lot of pressure. The field was very hierarchical, and I constantly faced doubts from scholars around me, because I was not a native Japanese speaker. I still am not. I didn't know how far I could go pursuing a career in pre-modern Japanese studies as a foreigner, but Peter Kornicki's perfect book on the book history of Japan, made me realize that my skin color, my nationality, my gender, they do not matter. All of those cannot define me as a scholar. And this is probably true with a lot of other things in my life. The only thing that matters is what kind of person I envision myself to be as a scholar and as a human being. And that was my Humanities Moment.
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Contributor
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Jingyi Li
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016
Source
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<em>The Book in Japan</em> by Peter Kornicki
Title
A name given to the resource
Be What You Want to Be
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
be-what-you-want-to-be
Description
An account of the resource
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.
Books & Reading
Cultural History
Kornicki, Peter
Orientalism
The Book in Japan