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"Reclaiming Richmond",,"Historian Ed Ayers discusses how Richmond, Virginia’s 2015 sesquicentennial celebration drew upon the past to re-imagine the future. He emphasizes the ways in which the event’s planners sought to honor the diversity of perspectives and lived experiences in the former capital of the Confederacy.",,"The 2015 sesquicentennial in Richmond, Virginia",,"April 2015","Dr. Ed Ayers, former President and Professor of History at the University of Richmond, former President of the Organization of American Historians, and noted public historian",,,,,,ed-ayers-reclaiming-richmond,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,"NHC GSSR 2019","American Civil War (1861-1865),Emancipation Proclamation (United States),Historians,History,Richmond Sesquicentennial,Richmond, Virginia",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/314/Monument_Avenue_and_Lee_Monument_Richmond_Va._[16810945346].jpg,"Moving Image",,1,0
"Unexpected Lessons in Empowerment",,"My Humanities Moment involves a connection between two individuals that might not initially seem to have anything in common: Jane Austen and Quentin Tarantino. One of the first places I found inspiration for the tenacity that has always kept me going through numerous personal and professional challenges was in the novels of Jane Austen. The rather conventional Austen can hardly be called a feminist since her strongest characters ultimately bend to the social and gender expectations of their time. When I was in middle school, however, I didn’t know that. I read for pleasure, rather than analysis, and had a greater desire to accept a much more romantic vision of the world. This caused me to see characters like Elizabeth Bennett and Elinor Dashwood as strong women who faced difficult circumstances with grace and determination and spoke up for the things they believed in. I remember admiring their ability to put actions behind their words and positions—they seemed to fight hardest when things got tough.
Flash forward about fifteen years to the first time I saw Tarantino’s Kill Bill series. Ironically, The Bride (Beatrix Kiddo) spoke to me in the same way as the Austen characters. Kiddo is attacked by people she considered her allies and left for dead in a way that pretty much should have assured her demise. The most inspiring scene for me has always been in the second movie, which depicts her escape from a grave in which she has been buried alive. I found her will to survive circumstances that would have destroyed another person—both literally and figuratively—incredibly motivating.
Getting my masters’ degrees and my PhD has been a struggle to say the least. When I began my quest for an advanced education, I was a young mother who lived in a tiny rural town, fighting for a way to effectively express my value system in an environment that was much more conservative than I was. But whenever I felt like giving up—like when I was overwhelmed with work, life, or whatever—I tried to remember these fictional women. They refused to wallow in self-pity, but simply picked themselves up, reorganized, or even crawled out of the dirt to face the next moment with purpose and resolve. I still think of them when I find myself faltering and credit them for giving me the willpower to fight my own battles. They truly have made me the person I am today.",,"Books and Films",,"Throughout my life","Melissa Young, Archivist and Historian",,,,,,unexpected-lessons-empowerment,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"From my involvement in the graduate fellowship program","Alabama,Austen, Jane,Books & Reading,Empowerment,Feminism,Film,Historians,Kill Bill: Volume 1,Kill Bill: Volume 2,Mothers,Pride and Prejudice,Sense and Sensibility,Tarantino, Quentin",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/15/312/Sand-brock-15.jpg,Text,"Graduate Student Summer Residents 2019",1,0
"Statues and the Shapeshifting of History",,"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. ",,"Civil War statue in Vicksburg, Mississippi",,,"Julia Nguyen, historian and grant-maker",,,,,,statues-shapeshifting-history,,,,,,"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,"NEH ""Contested Territory"" summer institute","Collective Memory,Historians,History,Statues,U.S. Civil War (1861-1865),U.S. History,Vicksburg, Mississippi,Vocation",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/222/Brigadier_General_Lloyd_Tilghman_Vicksburg_Monument.jpg,Sound,,1,0 "History, (Re)imagined","This encounter with Anderson’s scholarship inspired Knirim to reevaluate the meaning of truth, “proof,” and imagination in the study of history. In the absence of time machines, imagination—combined with rigorous scholarship, of course—can enable us to travel to certain moments in the past. Or at least come closer to the past than we were before.","Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism compelled Alexander Knirim, then a young historian, to re-think the role of imagination in history. Knirim recounts how his original misunderstanding, that we can reconstruct historic truth, was challenged by Anderson’s book and evolved into an appreciation of Anderson’s exegesis.",,"Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedict Anderson",,,"Alexander Knirim, Bayreuth University & The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress",,,,,,knirim-history-reimagined,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"Anderson, Benedict,Books & Reading,Historians,History,Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,Professors",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/11/125/anderson-imagined-communities.jpg,"Moving Image","Kluge Scholars",1,0 "Abu’s Afsanas","Oral history—one of the oldest humanities.","My Abu (‘father’ in Urdu) is my favorite storyteller ... I grew up with stories of his childhood in India and later in his life: he and his best friend, Shafi, climbing neem trees in Puna; them trying to get back at a bully, but having their elaborate plan—with one of them crouching behind the bully while the other pushed him over—completely backfire (getting beat-up for a second time!); them tapping people’s heads from atop a wall as the clueless souls walked by not knowing what just happened; traveling by boat from India to Zanzibar, where my uncle was stationed on the hill opposite from the Sultan’s palace; stories of my grandfather, a famous detective who headed up the investigation of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi; my father coming to ‘America’ in 1959 as a Fulbright scholar to study engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and witnessing the burgeoning Civil Rights movement ... These were the stories that shaped me, my worldview, and piqued my interest in studying history ... And I haven’t even gotten into my mother’s stories of growing up in Peru! (N.B.: ‘Afsanas’ are short stories in Urdu.)","Abu ","Oral history—one of the oldest humanities",,"Over the course of our lifetimes","Omar H. Ali, 46, Historian",,,,,,abus-afsanas,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Civil Rights,Fathers & Sons,Gandhi, Mohandas,Historians,India,Oral History,Storytelling",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/7/100/298d45c12d154180a8bea1243f1e48d7--india-style-vintage-stamps.jpg,Text,#Humanitiesinclass,1,0