Only Connect
This was a major humanities moment for me because it gave me the answer to a question I had been pondering for over fifty years. Why did I have the feeling, however vague, that the courses in the humanities I had taken when I was a student at Duke University somehow helped me in every volunteer leadership role I had ever undertaken — whether it was starting a job training program for high school drop-outs, or helping start a history museum, or serving on a community foundation? The professor’s tenth point, “Only Connect,” had answered my question. What a gratifying humanities moment.
Over the years I have been blessed by many humanities moments, but there is one that I especially cherish. Some fifteen years ago, I happened upon an article in <em>The American Scholar</em> written by a professor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison who put forth the ten qualities he believed a person would acquire from having a solid liberal arts education. It was the tenth quality on his list that got me. It was “Only Connect,” two words taken from a work by E. M. Forster. By this, the professor meant that a liberal arts education enables a person to have the freedom to connect — with different ideas, with different people, with different possibilities. It gives us, he wrote, the wisdom and the desire to connect with the human community.<br /><br />This was a major humanities moment for me because it gave me the answer to a question I had been pondering for over fifty years. Why did I have the feeling, however vague, that the courses in the humanities I had taken when I was a student at Duke University somehow helped me in every volunteer leadership role I had ever undertaken — whether it was starting a job training program for high school drop-outs, or helping start a history museum, or serving on a community foundation? The professor’s tenth point, “Only Connect,” had answered my question. What a gratifying humanities moment.
An article quoting author E.M. Forster in <em>The American Scholar</em>
Sally Dalton Robinson
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The World from My View
Without my introduction to geography I would have never captured this image and more so, if I had, I likely would have only seen the beautiful old building and not the depth of human interactions across the landscape.
I have traveled many places and have tried to capture what I found unique, beautiful and different. But, this place, along the Bosporus Strait which merges the European region of Istanbul, Turkey, with the Asian region of Istanbul, Turkey, to be one of my favorites. At first I remember seeing this building and quickly trying to get out my camera to snap a photo before the ferry we were on quickly passed. However, it wasn’t until later I realized that the quick photo I managed to take of an abandoned building revealed more than I expected. As you can see, here is an old building, run down but with a history that I would love to know. Now, the immense growth and economic development peeking out from behind the building in the skyscrapers that dot the landscape show a new chapter to the story and its development.
As I reflected on the moment in my life when I realized the capacity of the humanities, experiences I have embarked on, and appreciation of the geographical landscape, I realized it was a culmination of events that began in my world regional studies course at Texas State University – San Marcos, TX. My professor, Byron “Doc” Augustine, opened my eyes to the world through his lectures, stories, and passion for travel. I realized I was where I needed to be and soon after changed my degree with his guidance. It was not the last course I took from him, but one I sincerely attribute my passion for geography, social studies and the humanities.
It seemed each day he shared with us a glimpse of his perspective when viewing the world geographically and noted that - if you are ever given the opportunity in life to travel you should take it. I have since lived by those words and tried to travel both domestically and internationally to understand the different cultures and ways of life in this vast world. I still have so much to see. This passion for the humanities further deepened when I began teaching world geography, human geography and GIS. Learning from my students, sharing my experiences and broadening not only their understanding but mine as well, has and will continue to shape how I perceive the interactions between people on Earth.
Without my introduction to geography I would have never captured this image and more so, if I had, I likely would have only seen the beautiful old building and not the depth of human interactions across the landscape.
2009
<a href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/humanities-in-class-guide-thinking-learning-in-humanities/">Megan Webster</a>, Educator
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Learning How to Read a Poem
<p>Janet Napolitano, President of the University of California, reflects on her life growing up in New Mexico and how a low grade on a poetry analysis assignment in college encouraged her to master the craft of writing. She notes how her writing abilities and exposure to the humanities served her well in a career in government and higher education.</p>
<p>To celebrate its 40th year anniversary of grant making, programming, and partnerships that connect Californians to each other, California Humanities invited a group of 40 prominent Californians to explore what the humanities mean to them. For more information visit <a href="http://calhum.org/about/we-are-the-humanities" title="California Humanities: We Are the Humanities" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">California Humanities: We Are the Humanities</a>.</p>
"Batter My Heart, Three-Person'd God" by John Donne; <em>Death Comes for the Archbishop</em> by Willa Cather
Janet Napolitano, President of the University of California
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That Day and that Professor
Several years ago, I was invited to teach a literary translation class at the college in my small town in Montana, something that was completely out of my profession as I was a civil engineer with a master's degree in Information Systems. Moreover, it was not part of my remotest dreams but since at the time I was the only native Spanish speaker in my town, with a master’s degree, I decided to accept the invitation. The experience turned out to be wonderful. So much that a few years later, I had already finished my first semester in the doctoral program in Latin American literature. While being a student, I also had the opportunity to be an intern for the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere in UF. There, I coordinated table events for the Pop-Up Culture Week where students, after learning about the Humanities Moments concept, were able to create their own Moment. It was so successful that we repeated the event a few months later at the International Education Week.
That special day when, in Montana, that professor and now friend invited me to teach changed my life forever. Today, very close to finishing my PhD, having taught, and having worked as an intern, I can say that being a teacher is the most wonderful thing that has happened to me in my professional life and I would not change it for anything in the world. The satisfaction of first seeing my students with their eyes full of curiosity and interest when I mention cultural and life events lived in my country and in Latin America, as part of the language and culture classes, and later, exchanging thoughts and experiences with them at the events reminded me that humanities are not only knowledge but also amazing human being experiences that we share and pass on from heart to heart.
An English professor
Fall 2007
Nancy Pinzon, PhD Candidate, Latin American Literature, University of Florida
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humanity without The Humanities
My "humanities moment" occurred during my undergraduate studies at what was/is essentially a trade school in Pakistan (with no GenEd courses and only one course on Art or Art History offered among the subjects listed on your website. Specifically, during field trips to the Lahore Fort, where we saw 19th century frescoes brightly decorating the interior walls during our first visit and a month later they were gone (plastered over)! I had drawn those frescoes in my sketchbook, taken photographs and was planning to integrate these in my Architecture Thesis project for Punjab House in Islamabad. I can still feel the freezing of my body, the numbing of my mind, and the visual shock to see the plastered surface that hid my frescoes. Even as a 4th year undergraduate student, I pulled myself together to write a letter of inquiry to the Pakistani Minister of Antiquities. Long story short, my quest to uncover histories and safeguard monuments of the dispossessed began, WITHOUT being exposed to general education requirements or humanities curricula.
Since then, having spent more than 3 decades in American Higher Education machine, I wonder why have the humanities come under attack since the 1990s? Yes, neo-liberals may be blamed for everything these days, but there is a major disconnect between humanities scholarship and the public imagination/perception of the value of humanities (precisely why you are seeking "humanities moments", right?). These "moments" are not going to "mind the gap" between public comprehension of the value of The Humanities to humanity. We as humans must remove (dismantle) the colonial industrial machine of higher education, which has perfected the European division of Arts/Humanities and the Sciences, through decolonizing curricula. And please do not get me wrong, I am not calling for "multi" or "trans" disciplinary approaches, rather for taking an ANTI-DISCIPLINARY comprehension of ECOLOGY, SPACE + TIME.
Sometimes I wonder why I sought higher education in the "land of the free" when the toil I pursued back home placed me closest to the humanity of my ancestors!
19th century Frescoes on wall of the Lahore Fort in Pakistan
1985
Samia Rab Kirchner, 57, Associate Professor of Architecture at Morgan State University
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Humanities Moment(s)
During my hours of online teaching this year, I have repeatedly tried to bring myself back to my first encounters with the Humanities classroom. As an enthusiastic first-year student in comparative literature, I was excited to learn about art and culture from authors and specialists in cultural history and to be trained in the study of specific authors, styles, and genres. <br /><br />I had always been drawn to folklore and been curious about how narratives helped to make sense of the world. My learning had at least always been aided by narrative, the more vivid the details the better. For example, it was much easier to remember geographical information, say the name of the farm, Miklibær, if you knew the 19th-century story of the ghost, Sólveig who haunted the local priest, Oddur. Or the name of the region Ódáðahraun if you knew the lullaby "Sofðu unga ástin mín" about the mother who had fled poverty into the dangerous highlands and was singing to her child in hiding. <br /><br />When I made it to the humanities classroom it took me by surprise how it was not simply a place where meaning was mediated but a place in which I was trained to investigate how “meaning” takes place. I was both exhausted and thrilled by invitations to investigate how meaning is grounded in culture, relations, histories, and language in all its shapes and forms. In one of my first assignments in a class on Icelandic poetry, I received a comment from a teacher encouraging me to go “deeper” with my interpretation. She encouraged me to follow my own analysis, to try out what felt like a radical idea at the risk of being “incorrect”. Her comments were probably standard advice she gave to all her students, something she wrote on the endless papers that needed grading but for me, it was a formative moment of recognition of my voice and ideas. <br /><br />While the content of the poem escapes me (I think it was about feminism and potatoes) I can recall the feeling of that instructive moment and its effect on my journey as a reader and thinker lingers. Still to this day I remember the thrill of literary analysis, how we followed the teacher as she dissected poems, plays, and novels and somehow she made the students feel like they were necessary contributors to the study. Students brought different insights to the discussion and the teacher showed us how to see surprising connections between cultural texts. It felt like the possibility of meaning was both grounded in the teacher’s scholarship but also the exchange between the people gathered in the room. Through this process, the authority of knowledge started to feel slippery, which was a powerful exchange, especially in a university setting. It felt to me that the collective search for the answer to our questions required vulnerability from the teacher but also every student willing to participate in the conversation. It felt like we were not only discussing literary materials but also always debating how we should discuss them. What do we see on the page? What is missing? Where do we begin in our interpretation? With the author? Her environment? Essentially, how do we see? But also, how did the text even make it to us, the readers? Who preserved it? Why does that matter? <br /><br />I specifically remember how powerful it was to encounter feminist analysis, postcolonial and critical race theory, and to have access to new vocabularies to talk about power relations across time and space. The vocabulary of their insight even brought me closer to my original fascination with folklore, and I began to see the stories of my childhood not just as entertainment but as markers of power. Why were there so many ghost stories of young poor women that were haunting men of a higher class and stature? Could these stories tell us something about how colonialism conditioned gender and class relations in 19th century Iceland? <br /><br />In these encounters with the approaches of the humanities, or "humanities moments" it felt like we in the class were not just discussing an individual poem or story but our relations to, well everything. These memories of deep learning in the classroom continue to inspire my own practice of teaching. And while "thrill" is not necessarily an apt description for every one of my own classes the possibility of these humanities moments is something that continues to inspire me.
Sólveig Ásta Sigurðardóttir, 31, Ph.D. candidate
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