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"Reading St. Augustine’s Confessions in Latin","
“It is difficult to translate the beauty of Latin easily into English. There’s something about the relationship between Augustine’s words and the meaning of what he’s saying that is more powerful and profound when read in their original language.
“This insight — about the relationship between words, and rhythm, and sound, and meaning — has been important to me over the years, especially as it has encouraged me to consider the variety of ways in which ideas are expressed in different contexts and across time and to recognize the distinctions those differences create in my view of the world.
“The value of theological, philosophical, literary inquiry — humanistic inquiry — is that it helps us to make sense of things in ways that were not available to us before.”
","Carol Quillen describes how, growing up, her initial insights and perceptions came from what she calls promiscuous reading — reading anything and everything and then finding connections among these very different texts. She consumed Augustine’s Confessions, in the original Latin, which captures and conveys meaning differently than English and enabled her both to grasp and question the complex ways in which language represents reality.
These differences in language, like reading, reveal different ways of seeing the world, and by learning about and seeing them, we create possibilities for ourselves.
Quillen says, “This insight — about the relationship between words, and rhythm, and sound, and meaning — has been important to me over the years, especially as it has encouraged me to consider the variety of ways in which ideas are expressed in different contexts and across time and to recognize the distinctions those differences create in my view of the world. The value of theological, philosophical, literary inquiry — humanistic inquiry — is that it helps us to make sense of things in ways that were not available to us before.”
","Augustine of Hippo","Confessions by Augustine",,,"Carol Quillen, President, Davidson College",,,,,,carol-quillen-reading-augustine-in-latin,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"Augustine of Hippo,Augustinianism,Books & Reading,Confessions,Feminism,Language & Culture,Latin,Lutherans,Professors,Theology & Philosophy",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/10/27/st-augustine-300.jpg,"Moving Image","National Humanities Center Board Members",1,0
"It’s the Little Things",,"There is a distinct moment I remember from my high school days that, while seemingly insignificant, is the reason I have always valued the humanities and humanities courses throughout my college experience. I was walking to a restaurant to meet a friend for lunch nearby my high school when a Taiwanese couple stopped me and asked for directions to a famous pond nearby. I could tell that they could not understand my instructions, so I tried my best to tell them the directions in Chinese, given my limited knowledge studying Chinese in school. Afterwards, they were very appreciative, smiled, and gave me a nod before being on their way, but this small moment made me recognize that the skills I was learning in my math, science, and computer science courses, while valuable, would rarely grant me such an experience.
My knowledge of Chinese, a foreign language and therefore a part of the humanities, was necessary for this moment to be memorable. If I had been unable to help the couple, I would have been disappointed with myself.",,,,"Spring 2014","Soravit Sophastienphong, 21, Undergraduate at Duke University",,,,,,the-little-things,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Chinese Language,Concord, Massachusetts,Duke University,High School,Language & Culture,Language & Languages,Students",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/120/Chinese_Class.jpg,Text,,1,0
"From a Cultural Perspective",,"In this audio recording, graduate student Margherita Berti describes how an ordinary encounter while studying abroad gave her a new outlook on cultural differences, practices, and perspectives.",,"Living in a new culture",,2008,"Margherita Berti, PhD Student",,,,,,cultural-perspective,,,,,,"My Humanities Moment goes back to when I was an exchange student in high school in 2008/2009. I lived for a year in Indiana with an American host family and we did everyday stuff together. So for example, going to a supermarket or going out to eat. They would drive me to school and I remember that one day I was in the supermarket with my host mom and we were by the cashier checking out and the cashier said to me, ""Hi, how are you?"" and I didn't answer because I felt that it was, in a way, inappropriate, that a person that I didn't know was asking me, ""How are you?"" And my host mom said to the cashier, referring to me, ""Oh, she's not rude. She's just not from here.""
And of course I understood why my host mom said, and she didn't mean it in a bad way, in a rude way. She was just justifying the fact that I didn't answer a simple question to a stranger. And in that moment I reflected about how I have been studying English since I was 6, and at that time I was 16. So for 10 years that I studied English, I still didn't know how to interact with speakers of the language in a culturally appropriate way. That was because when I studied English in the past we focused so much on grammar, on rules, on vocabulary, and not so much on pragmatics and ways to speak to other people in a way that is appropriate in their own culture.
And this experience just made me more interested in learning about other cultures and also understanding how we teach culture in foreign language courses. And there is a citation that particularly spoke to me in relation to my experience, and that is a citation by Bennett, Bennett, and Allen, 2003. And it says, ""The person who learns language without learning culture risks becoming a fluent fool."" And that's how I felt, a fluent fool who knew language, knew how to speak to people, knew how to use English with other people, but just didn't know how to use that same language in a culturally appropriate way.",,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,"NHC Internship West","Cultural Awareness,Cultural Exchange,Indiana,Language & Culture,Study Abroad",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/15/326/grocery-shelves.jpg,Sound,"Graduate Student Summer Residents 2019",1,0
"Le Magic School Bus",,"No, it wasn’t the real Magic School Bus from the books and TV. But one of my most poignant humanities moments did happen on a bus. And I did learn a lot from it. And, yes, the bus was French.
I grew up in Arizona in a monolingual family. I studied French in my last years of high school because I needed it to graduate. I loved it. I loved it more than I loved any other subject ever before. So much so that I majored in French and History in college. I aced my French classes. Then I started taking Spanish and Italian. Languages came really easy to me. Growing up with a brother who had known he was going to be a pilot from the age of five, I thought that maybe I had finally found ‘my thing’.
In 2010, I took a job opportunity to move to Lyon, France as an English Teaching Assistant through a bilateral program between French and American embassies. I arrived and had the normal struggles adjusting to a new city and to how quickly people spoke French. I left the U.S. with my straight A grades and the language in my mind as a bunch of binary code of 0s and 1s that could be pulled out of my mind to fit any situation.
Except for the bus.
About two thirds of the way into my one year contract was when I had my humanities moment that still serves as a reference today. As is required in a French memory, I was on my way to meet my friends at a cafe and was running late. I was speed walking through the main square in the center of town growing more and more anxious about being late, proof that I was still not as French as I had liked to think. As I was rushing, getting my heart rate up, and tensing up all of my muscles to try to walk even faster, I noticed an idle bus facing the general direction I needed to go. As I walked up to the door, the driver opened it and I came gusting into the bus out of breath.
In the process of making eye contact with the driver, I asked in French, ‘Does this bus go to [name of cafe’s street]?’
The bus driver sat up straight and looked at me for an extended moment before saying very seriously ‘Mademoiselle, we say hello to each other first. We don’t just ask. So, let’s begin again. Bonjour Monsieur.' His attempt to instruct me on how to be polite can be very easily considered rude, but that didn’t faze me because I had already felt the weighty guilt of making cultural missteps.
The bus didn’t go where I needed to go, so I got off and the driver drove on. I was very late to meet my friends. However, I stood on the street corner for a minute or two thinking about what happened. I thought about how I took my knowledge of the French language and framed it in my American habits of often being quick and in a rush. I began to realize the real world of language and cultural competence is just as important, if not more important, to learning a language. There are different styles of formality, salutation, turn-taking, interactions with strangers, etc. It wasn’t just the 0s and 1s that my French degree gave me. There were also 3s, 8s, 5s, and maybe even a few exclamation points mixed into the code. It was a rich world of human interaction that was accessed by travel. This has led me to language and its social implications. This has led me to sociolinguistics and researching language and belonging. So, this magic school bus did actually end up taking me somewhere I needed to go and it got me there just in time.",,Travel,,2010,"Ashley Coogan, 34, PhD Student in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, Arizona State University",,,,,,le-magic-school-bus,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"Cultural Awareness,Cultural Relations,France,Language & Culture,Travel",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/507/HM_Bus_Image.jpg,Text,"Graduate Student Residents 2021",1,1