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"Why Representation Matters",,"The sixth grade stands out for me as one of those important milestones in life. As an adult, I have numerous precise moments of recollection where a memory is so vivid it feels as if I can recall every word and emotion. Our school was a small neighborhood Catholic school with a tragic past. In the late 1950s, the school burned down, and ninety-five people lost their lives.
My experience as one of the few kids in the neighborhood who did not attend public school was nuanced. I never thought much about my identity outside of being the girl who went to Catholic school. My neighborhood was majority Latino and Black, and Chicago was and remains a largely segregated city. I saw white people at school and on television and Brown and Black people in my everyday life. I never noticed that the people I watched on tv shows and working in my small Catholic school did not represent my life or the lives of the people I knew.
That all changed when Mrs. Maureen Hart started her teaching career in my sixth-grade class. I could share countless stories about Mrs. Hart's dedication to teaching and her desire to really make a difference in the lives of her students. Still, this particular moment is about our sixth-grade production of A Raisin in the Sun. We spent weeks preparing. We watched the 1961 movie adaptation, we read the script, and we designed the set. We learned all about Lorraine Hansberry and her groundbreaking accomplishments. We learned that the original play was set in Chicago and that Hansberry herself was a Chicagoan. The information made our production even more important. After all, we had to do justice to Chicago's own playwright.
Studying and preparing for that play brought a profound sense of pride and ownership. I fell in love with the characters and all of their imperfections. It was the first time I experienced black characters who were flawed and proud on paper and in film. The struggles of the world around them were not the focus of the story. Family and kinship were central to the plot. When I finished the play, I clearly remembered a profound sense of knowing that I had a place in the world. My stories, although not heroic or regal, mattered and was worthy of praise and notoriety.","Lorraine Hansberry","A Raisin in the Sun",,1988-1992,"Bridget H., Ph.D. student",,,,,,why-representation-matters,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"2021 NHC Summer Graduate Student Residency ","A Raisin in the Sun,African American Authors,African American Literature,African American Women Authors,Chicago, IL,Family,Hansberry, Lorraine,Kinship,Representation,Teachers & Teaching,Theater and Drama",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/479/sunset-2180346_640.jpg,Text,"Graduate Student Residents 2021",1,0
"New and Strange: Thinking About Transformation Through Shakespeare",,"When I think “humanities moment,” this song from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest pops into my head. It’s almost too fitting: “Full Fathom Five” is such a momentary diversion in the play—a random and beautiful intrusion to the plot. The song seems interested in how we process death—something I have been doing a lot lately. These are the words to the song:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
A tree spirit named Ariel uses this song to get the attention of Ferdinand, a prince who has recently crash-landed on the island Ariel shares with a magician named Prospero. At this moment, Ferdinand believes that his father, the king of Naples, has drowned in the storm. The prince thinks he’s the only survivor, and Ariel sings to him, to get his attention, but also to offer a kind of consolation for his drowned father.
The image the spirit describes—a human body mutating and transforming into coral and pearls, is one of the most beautiful images I have never seen. You have to imagine it: when you see The Tempest on stage, you hear Ariel’s description, but this otherworldly transformation is something that can only really exist as a poetic description (or maybe really good computer graphics).
The other thing about the song that strikes me is its futility: try using these lines on someone grieving the death of a parent and see how far they get you. At the same time, this moment tries to give voice to forms of life outside of humanity as it attempts to explain something precious and important, not just about life, but art. Death is inevitable, and imagination, though it can never make up for that fact, does fascinating things when it tries.
The last thing I’ll bring up is the way this song, which makes visible a new and strange transformation, becomes visible in other media: Julie Taymor interprets the song in her 2010 film adaptation of The Tempest; Jackson Pollack has a painting named “Full Fathom Five,” and Beck, back when I was a teenager, titled his break-up album Sea Change, an allusion to the weird expressions we give to grief. These artworks show us that, while a human body can’t really transform into coral and pearls, one poetic moment can transform into another.","William Shakespeare","The Tempest",,2021,"Philip Gilreath, 32, University of Georgia Ph.D. Student",,,,,,new-and-strange,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"NHC Graduate Student Summer Residency","Adaptation,Drama,English Literature,Shakespeare, William,The Tempest,Theater and Drama",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/476/HM_Tempest_Image.jpg,Text,"Graduate Student Residents 2021",1,0
"Transforming Loss into Artistic Expression ",,"In this video recording, actor and musician Noah Reid describes the way that a Neil Young song allowed him to understand and portray the way that loss shaped Shakespeare's Hamlet.",,"Neil Young’s “Natural Beauty,” and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet",,,"Noah Reid, actor and musician",,,,,,noah-reid-transforming-loss-into-artistic-expression,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,"",,,"Actors,Hamlet,Music,Shakespeare, William,Theater and Drama,Young, Neil",http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/369/Hamlet_HM_image.jpg,"Moving Image",,1,0