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Dublin Core
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Title
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Cassette tape
Identifier
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cassette-tape
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Title
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
Identifier
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Referrer
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NHC Summer Residency Program
Player
html for embedded player to stream media content
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jqGrPIJfFd4" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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Daun Fields, 42, Punk Singer, Ph.D. Student in English, University of Florida
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1986
Source
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Fisher-Price Tape Recorder
Description
An account of the resource
The following text is a transcript of the above recording.
My name is Daun Fields, I’m a punk singer and a Ph.D. student at the University of Florida. I’m 42 and this is my Humanities Moment.
So, my humanities object is the Fisher Price tape recorder. It’s a brown, chunky, hard plastic kid’s tape recorder from the 80’s. It was manufactured by Fisher Price from 1981-1987. The space in which it existed in my life was in the very back room of a (four room) single-wide trailer in southern Indiana, Franklin, Indiana, in a bustling trailer park. The back room of the trailer was my younger sister Jessie and my bedroom. We had a bunk bed, the walls were stacked with board games and dressers and toys, and in the corner of that room was a taxidermied barn owl. Which was illegal to have in the state at that time and I think still is. At that time that’s what that space looked like. This tape recorder, I suppose I chose it because it was the first time that I ever heard my own voice projected back to me and I was probably 7, or maybe 7 or 8 years old around that time.
The reason I chose this object is because, looking back, in that moment when I first heard my voice back to me, I realized that there was a lot of the world and sounds in the world and words that people said and sounds that came out of humans that I could save. That I could stop, and rewind, and listen back to them. So instead of always kind of replaying things in my mind, which I did as a child, being musically inclined from a really young age, hearing songs and being able to sing the words right back and sing the melodies right back and always kind of having songs in my head and singing out loud and humming and being really focused on sound and melody and the way that people talked; the volume at which they talked or the pitch at which they talked or the music playing in the grocery store and things like that...this tape recorder was such a big thing. It was just such a big thing in my life.
One of the things my sister and I would do is we would record ourselves playing cards. So we would play Slapjack or we would play GoFish and all these card games that were really exciting that would just get us laughin’. We would record ourselves playing those games and then record ourselves laughing. One of the interesting--I think maybe a better word--important or more profound reasons this tape recorder was so, just, I guess so powerful for me, is because I would record things and it wouldn’t necessarily be like I would record now as an adult. How I would record vocals or background sounds that you would want to edit out or you would want to filter and compress and get everything sounding really perfect, or the pitch, or the autotune. It really was just, you would hit record, and any sounds going on around the area would also pick up. So it was more just a full soundscape. Looking back, it really reminds me of how much is always happening. That it may not just be this one singer singing this song or this one person speaking. But there’s all of this other life that’s happening all around.
I would record my sister and I laughing or playing cards. Sometimes when my mom and dad would be fighting a couple of rooms up in the front of the trailer My sister and I would get really quiet and get behind the door and we would record them. And I would have these fights that I would have on tape and I would listen back to them. I’d listen back to them and I would hear my mom, who was very quiet normally, her voice would be very deep and she would be really loud. And sometimes the fights would go on for a long time and eventually I didn’t want to listen to those again so I would stop, rewind, and then I would go maybe into a different space. I would go outside, or I would go to my grandma’s house where it was really quiet, in a big brick farmhouse that was about two miles from the trailer park--really close--surrounded by nature, surrounded by cornfields, and I would record the cats in the barn. I would record the dog or I would record myself kind of singing along with the creek or my sister and I singing a song we learned in church, at the Baptist church down the street.
When I would listen back to these recordings, I was just listening. I wasn’t listening to find mistakes, I wasn’t listening with notes or ideas on how to improve the next time. And that object itself, that chunky, hard plastic, brown, corduroy brown, corduroy 1980’s brown, two-toned tape recorder, it really shifted me. It helped me to hear myself. It helped me to, I suppose, understand that I was a thing, just like the bird that I recorded or the cat that I recorded, or the humans that I recorded--that I was also a thing. That I had sound to contribute. And I had things to sing.
Title
A name given to the resource
Sounds of a Thing in Indiana
Identifier
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sound-of-a-thing-indiana
Creativity
Families
Nostalgia
Self-Realization
Sound Engineering
-
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Artifact
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Will Beattie
Identifier
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artifact
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Title
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
Identifier
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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NHC Graduate Student Summer Residency
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Will Beattie, 29, Graduate Student
Date
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July 2018
Source
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Treasures of St. Cuthbert, Durham Cathedral.
Description
An account of the resource
In the summer of 2017 I was visiting my family in the northeast of the UK as I prepared to begin my Ph.D. in the United States. I had been out of academia for a few years and was eager to get back to working on my passion - the literature of early medieval England. As luck would have it, in that same year Durham Cathedral had launched a new exhibition of the relics of the Anglo-Saxon hermit and bishop, St Cuthbert. After some convincing, my parents and I went up to Durham for the day and my father and I came face-to-face with the incredible trove. <br /><br />Cuthbert lived in the 7th century and, despite the vast chasm of time between him and us, we know a surprising amount about him. Thanks to the work of the Venerable Bede and his 'Life of St Cuthbert,' his piety and asceticism are well-documented. He lived through the Synod of Whitby in 664, a turning point in Christian history in Britain. He spent many of his years at the monastery of Lindisfarne, and in 676 he moved to isolated Farne Island to live out the rest of his days in religious contemplation as a simple hermit. <br /><br />Thirteen centuries had elapsed between his death and my visit to Durham Cathedral. His life and works are still remembered. They factor heavily in my research. Yet despite his renown, the collection of 'relics' is meagre. Only a handful of items (most famously his coffin, his cruciform pendant, and his comb) survive to us. Standing in that undercroft, I was reminded how little of the past survives to us. Cuthbert was one of the lucky ones who was able to pass something of himself down to us. How many thousands of people, how many millions of artefacts, have been lost to time? In so many ways, the history of early Britain is a patchwork of fragmentary texts, muddy foundations, and shattered objects. As a researcher, I have to be diligent and avoid the traps of generalising the period and its inhabitants. But we are still discovering things every year, and we are still adding to that patchwork of history.
Title
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St Cuthbert: Just One Voice in a Silent Crowd
Identifier
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saint-cuthbert-one-voice-silent-crowd
Anglo-Saxon
Artifacts
History
Literature
Material Culture
Medieval History
Museum
-
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Title
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Olive Tree
Source
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Pixabay
Identifier
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olive-tree
Dublin Core
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Title
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
Identifier
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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NHC Graduate Student Summer Residency
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Fernan Gomez-Monedero, 33, Ph.D. student
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010
Description
An account of the resource
A cold morning in February and a sun still shy to rise, it's time to harvest olives! As all the baggage is ready from the day before, there are only mud drooling roads to worry about (once the sun makes up his mind). Soon water runs down my back too, so, when the shadows are the shortest, I decide to take a piece of clothing off. <br /><br />One more tree despoiled, we stage nets under the next and hit the branches with our long sticks until the last olive has fallen. Next tree. Be careful to not spill any olives from the nets! Next line. Will we finish the whole field today? Before the day comes to a close, we fill up the last sacks and hurry to deliver the harvest. <br /><br />Unsurprisingly, the prize barely covers the cost for the whole endeavor. As usual, fewer and older people come to deliver their harvest too. I cannot help but to ask: am I the last generation to take on such a task? Gasoline has replaced the mule, my nets are made of durable nylon thread, the fabrics that cover my skin are as natural as the wheels of our car. And I know that the result of this harvest does not change my daily modern life. <br /><br />Soon, only a handful of agricultural engineers will be needed to harvest the whole shire. Efficient, like no one in the countryside before, they ride the new engines that collect each tree with appalling speed. Yet, something does not feel right. Maybe I am romanticizing the past, inventing a countryside without flies. Trading my modern amenities for the hardships of a farmer in the past does not sound that bad, at least, when I think of it from my air conditioned office. My suspicion of the machine, perhaps, is a disguise for a yearning for a simpler time. Yet, it has been around a decade since I last harvested olives. But still now, I cannot stop to wonder: does the olive tree prefer a mechanical hug, or a human beating?
Title
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If These Trees Could Talk
Identifier
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if-trees-could-talk
Agriculture
Modernity
Nostalgia
Self-Realization
-
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Cemetery
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cemetery
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Pixabay
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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National Humanities Center Graduate Student Summer Residency Program
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Jewel Parker, Age 27, Ph.D. candidate in History, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013
Description
An account of the resource
In 2013, as a new college student, I started exploring genealogy. I learned to use the research skills that I developed from college history class to explore primary sources documents on my own. I reached out to extended family members, made new email contacts, and asked questions. I looked at courthouse records, newspaper clippings, and church records to not only determine where my ancestors are buried, but who their immediate family members are. I decided that I would make a genealogy book for my dad’s Christmas present, and I included him in the process. I loved when I could convince my Daddy to spend his Saturdays walking around cemeteries, locating relatives.
It is this process of researching and investigating that led me to the discovery of my 5 times great-grandmother, Hannah Parker. Hannah was born around 1735. During the late eighteenth century, she left Northern Ireland for America with her husband and children. They eventually settled in what is present-day Grayson County, Virginia. When my 5 times great-grandfather, John, passed away, Hannah moved with her son and her daughter-in-law to Deep Creek in Yadkin County, North Carolina. Hannah died in 1806 and is buried at Deep Creek Friends Meeting.
My father and I walked row by row, looking at heading stones dating back centuries. Then, just like that, we found her. The stone reads, “H.A. Parker.”
Obviously, Hannah Parker lived centuries before I was born, so I never knew her. Yet, suddenly I felt so connected to her because I realized that if she had not left her home and crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a ship, I would not be here today.
Finding my long-lost grandmother. That’s my humanities moment. Knowing who she was made me want to know more about the circumstances under which she lived, the time of the American Revolution, colonial-era beliefs about women in society and the church, the layout of the surrounding counties, and the people she may have encountered. I began asking hard questions and contextualizing the time in which she lived.
There are gaps in historical documentation, and I am aware that I will never learn everything about Hannah Parker. Even so, it is this desire to learn more about the time in which she lived that led me to my Master’s thesis work on women healers in colonial America. That project then led to the dissertation work on intercultural medical practice in the early American south that I do in my PhD program today.
A lot of people and different experiences influenced the path that led me to become a historian. Yet, this humanities moment of finding Hannah’s grave is different from the rest because for the first time, I realized the fruits of my labor. It took 7 months to finish that genealogy book for my father’s Christmas present. Because of this experience, when I now encounter names in census records, wills, and church records, I see them not as names and dates but as people. I have become invested in revealing the silences of their stories. Such instances make one very aware of one’s place in the world and the importance of uncovering the truth about what happened in the past, revealing people’s struggles, failures, and successes, and even understanding how people and events are influenced centuries later. We are all more connected to the past than we realize.
Title
A name given to the resource
Finding My Long-Lost Grandmother
Identifier
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finding-long-lost-grandmother
Family Histories
Family Trees
Genealogy
Historical Markers
Immigration
Research
-
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Title
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Sword in Chicago
Identifier
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sword-chicago
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Title
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
Identifier
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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National Humanities Center
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Thomas Morin, 32, Historian
Date
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2012
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
A visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Description
An account of the resource
It was not my first time in The City, but it was my first time visiting the Met. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's reputation stretched out wide before it for a young man from the West Coast. I had long been interested in art, and I knew that the Met had one of the best collections in the world. I had missed a previous opportunity to go a few years back, and I wasn't going to do so again. My sister, a friend, and I took a train up to Fifth Avenue, and soon were outside the museum's broad, colonnaded entrance.
My interest in the medieval period had only recently begun at that point. When I saw in the catalogue that the museum had an extensive collection of European arms and armor, I couldn't resist. We walked through the classical Egyptian section, admiring the tiny-carved Lapis lazuli figures. We paused for pictures amid the ruins of the Temple of Dendur, which stood in the middle of a small reflecting pool. Beyond that, we finally entered the arms and armor section.
Amid all the impressive examples of late medieval and early-modern craftsmanship, one piece in particular stood out to me. It was a large sword with a broad, angular blade (see attached picture of the same sword in the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was on loan in early 2020). The surface, while pitted slightly, was remarkably unmarred and smooth other than an inscription near the hilt written in Arabic. The sword as a whole had a simple elegance. Though the crossguard had little horn-like curls at the ends, it was otherwise unadorned. It had the appearance of a practical tool, precise and deliberate. It looked heavy but somehow also quick.
I was intrigued. I began asking all sorts of questions about the sword: Where had it come from? Who made it? Why was there an Arabic inscription on what was clearly a western European sword? Searching for those answers gave me my first taste of the interconnected Mediterranean world which would later become my obsession. The sword is thought to have been made in Italy, either in Brescia or Milan. From there, it was taken to the isle of Cyprus, at the time ruled by the Lusignan Kings, successors to the long-lost Crusader States. Then, sometime around 1419, it was presented as part of a diplomatic gift from Cyprus (along with many other weapons) to Sultan Shaykh al-Mahmudi, whose name is contained in the inscription. The sword, and many others like it, are one of many pieces of physical evidence for the extensive networks of connection which joined the various corners of the Mediterranean together in the medieval and early-modern world.
Though I have never handled the original (or its twin, rediscovered in Texas in 2014 by Sotheby's), I have had the opportunity to handle a modern reproduction which was made based on detailed measurements and mimics the sword almost exactly. It is a marvel of engineering. The sword's geometry and design makes it wonderfully balanced, so that, though it weighs almost 4 lbs (which is very heavy for a sword of this type), it feels light enough to wield in one hand. The tremendous skill which would have gone into the design and fabrication of that weapon made me question my received wisdom about the superiority of the modern world, and eventually to question the very meaning of "modern" at all.
The questions that this sword inspired have had long-lasting effects on the course of my continuing academic study and interest in the middle ages, and it is still an inspiration to me today.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Sword From Italy by Way of Alexandria
Identifier
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sword-from-italy
Armed Forces
Cultural Exchange
Cultural History
History
Italy
Material Culture
Medieval History
Metropolitan Museum of Art
-
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Title
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Television
Source
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Pixabay
Identifier
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television
Text
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On the Humanities webpage
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Akshita, 24, M.A.
Date
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October 2017
Description
An account of the resource
It was a balmy October night in 2017, when I lay pondering in a tiny rented room in a city that wasn't "home" both literally as well as metaphorically. I wished for a brief distraction from my mundane routine, and then I clicked on <em>A Death in the Gunj</em>, the movie that I noticed each time on the Amazon Prime homepage but ignored. And soon I discovered it was exactly all that I wanted. <br /><br />A story of a college graduate who joins his cousins on a vacation to their ancestral home in a sleepy town of McCluskieganj just to escape the monotony and sadness that enveloped him. The vacation didn't turn out as he had planned. More than a jovial family vacation, it was a weeklong account of his personal struggles with mental health, his peripheral silence, all ensuing in a titular death. This movie resembled many similar struggles that I was grappling with at that time. It brought me pain, shock and tears and has managed to stay with me all through the years. I visit it every now and then. In fact, this movie prompted my interest in Spatial Theory. <br /><br />There aren't any happy memories associated with this movie, but revisiting it every now and then makes me realize how far I have come. It has shaped my whole perspective, and has given me moorings on the intricacies of mental health. This movie will stay with me for a little longer or maybe forever.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Movie That Stayed Longer than I Expected
Identifier
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movie-stayed-longer-expected
Source
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<em>A Death in the Gunj </em>(2016)
Critical Theory
Film and Movies
Self-Realization
-
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Chinese street
Identifier
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chinese-street
Dublin Core
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Title
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
Identifier
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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Jinghong Zhang, 26, history Ph.D. student
Date
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May 2021
Source
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<em>A Touch of Green </em>(television series and novella by Pai Hsien-Yung)
Description
An account of the resource
While doing research in Nanjing, the capital city of Jiangsu province in China, I made a visit to a local neighborhood called Dafang Lane. There's no famous tourist spot here, but I was drawn to it by a Taiwanese TV series that I watched years ago -- <em>A Touch of Green</em>. <br /><br /><em>A Touch of Green</em> is a 2015 TV series that is based on a novella of the same name by Pai Hsien-Yung, a phenomenal Chinese writer. The story unfolds the life of three Republic of China Air Force pilots and their wives from the Chinese Civil War period (1945-1949) to the White Terror period (1949 to 1987) in Taiwan. The story is not an ode to China's revolutionary past, but rather to the tumultuous and miserable lives of ordinary Chinese people who left their homeland and migrated to a new island after the KMT lost the Civil War in 1949. It is not centered on the bravery of the pilots or the strength of their wives. Instead, the drama portrays their anxiety and weariness over the war, their helplessness when confronting fate and history, and their grief over their loved ones' deaths. It touched me because it transcends macro-historical frameworks and narrates the bond, love, pain, and survival hardship of an ordinary group of people. <br /><br />In the original novella, Dafang Lane is the military dependents’ village where the wives of the pilots resided. The old buildings still exist today, and there is a brief introduction on the wall explaining that they were constructed in the 1930s and are now protected historical sites in Nanjing. I walked around Dafang Lane, as if I was walking down the memory lane of modern Chinese history. The dripping sound of life echoed here, as I imagined how the wives of the pilots anxiously awaited their husbands' safe landing or their deaths. For me, the Dafang Lane is not just a place; it's also a humanities moment that intertwines the TV drama, the novella, and the untold history of a group of pilots and their families.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>A Touch of Green</em>
Identifier
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touch-of-green
A Touch of Green
China
Families
Historic Sites
Historical Memory
History
Nanjing, China
Television Series
War
-
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Dublin Core
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Video game controller
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Pixabay
Identifier
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video-game-controller
Dublin Core
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
Identifier
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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The Virtual Summer Residency Program
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Cameron Lee Winter, Ph.D. Candidate
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April 2021
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<em>The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild</em>
Description
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Video games are kind of known for having pretty bland or shallow main characters. From the perspective of the video game developer it makes sense: you want to allow your audience to easily ‘slide into’ the character they control with as little resistance as possible. It makes for pretty bland story meant to foreground the often-simplistic plot and as long as the gameplay is good, the puzzles are intriguing, and the aesthetic is polished and beautiful me and many others are pretty content. It’s a successful model. <br /><br />For example, in <em>The Legend of Zelda</em> series, the main player-character Link has, in his thirty-five years of appearances in the franchise, had no spoken dialogue whatsoever. So, suffice it to say, you don’t expect to get a lot of emotionality out of this character. This is part of the reason that I chose to finally play <em>Breath of the Wild</em>, the latest installment of the Zelda franchise, during the time after my father-in-law’s passing this year. It’s a safe game—escapist in a way—especially in that the player character Link has no heavy backstory. <br /><br />I saw a similar setup beginning in this game but noticed it was different in a few significant ways. Link, instead of being a teenager who has lived his life in some small village, is instead a young man awakening out of some kind of hibernation vessel in an old ruin. He has no memories whatsoever. Like us, he has no knowledge of any kind of back story, no idea where he is, and must re-learn the basics from fighting to cooking. It makes sense, we as the audience don’t know how to fight in this game. We don’t know the mechanics of cooking. We don’t even know the physics, tools, or geography of this place that Link is supposedly from. So, it’s helpful to learn alongside the character and see his joy in cooking a simple dish for the first time or figuring out a puzzle that in hindsight was incredibly easy. <br /><br />But, as I wandered through the game a bit blithely and ignorantly, enjoying the light music, the beautiful vistas, and the engaging puzzle-dungeons—I reveled in knowing as much as Link, which is nothing. Everything was a sublime and beautiful discovery! As I moved along the main plotline, I encountered one of the important, secondary missions: find Link’s missing memories—locations only given by a certain picture of a vague landmark. <br /><br />It’s a challenge to figure out where things are in relation to a distant mountain peak and a lone tree—rather like being told that a needle is on the left side of the haystack—but it’s quite fun to wander within this nearly empty landscape of old ruins, small enclaves of civilization, and monster camps dotting the plains and forests. But, as I recovered these memories, the feeling of freedom in this game begins to take on a more emotive depth and motivation. I began to learn about Link and Zelda’s deep friendship and his relationships with the other Champions … All of whom are… by the events of this story you discover… dead (Well, Zelda isn’t technically dead but in a magical battle keeping the monstrous Ganon locked in the castle itself). <br /><br />Instead of being this free hero wandering the land, you’re now burdened with memories of a lost community and traumas that you… or Link… didn’t realize you were carrying or having to carry. The shadow of Ganon, the ultimate villain of the game that continually haunts the horizon, is not so much a boring baddie but the source of your grief. You see, to me, <em>Breath of the Wild</em> is a story about grief, told through the most ostensibly shallow of player characters. <br /><br />The proximity of my own grief, I think, colored my vision. But, Nintendo plays with the expectations of this blank player-character to force the audience to connect with Link on a more personal level and consider the possibilities for this series to exist on a deeper emotive level than had ever happened previously. In a sense, Link’s amnesia is a kind of denial of loss itself that, to win the game, you must confront. Link, like myself, might be considering: Why do I need to think about this, why do I need to recall these memories? It doesn’t help to think. And, for the game and for my own life: that’s true, to a certain extent. <br /><br />You can technically beat the game without recalling any memories, but it’s certainly much easier to do once you engage with them. More allies become available to help you in your quests. You get more heart containers, helpful items, and fighting techniques; you meet more cool characters and explore more of the absolutely gorgeous map. You don’t need to remember… but in a way, the game tells you that you need to remember. I too can go through my life without remembering my father-in-law—repressing the thoughts of loss that emerge in moments of abstract and difficult to trace anger or sadness. I don’t need to remember… but I do need to remember. <br /><br />As the game concludes and Link avenges his friends by finally defeating the main villain Ganon, their spirits appear before him one last time before disappearing into the sky. They don’t return or reincarnate, they leave. I think in this scenario, Link can move on with some degree of peace not because he’s avenged them or forgotten them but because he remembers. What does it mean for me to remember? I’m not sure yet. I won’t get a moment where some disembodied spirit will give me a nod before disappearing. I do need to remember.
Title
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The Unexpected Grief of <em>Breath of the Wild</em>
Identifier
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unexpected-grief-breath-wild
Family
Grief
Legend of Zelda
Self-Realization
Video Games & Gaming
-
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Dublin Core
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Title
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National Humanities Center Fellows
Subject
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Any contributions from current or past fellows at the National Humanities Center
Description
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This collection includes contributions from current or past fellows at the National Humanities Center
Text
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I am a NHC fellow in AY 2020-21.
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Mitra Sharafi, 47, legal historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Date
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2019
Description
An account of the resource
I live and teach in Madison, Wisconsin, but I usually spend my spring break on a research trip in London, England. On a cold and drizzly day in March 2019, I was walking down Marchmont Street through London's Bloomsbury neighborhood on my way to the British Library. My head was down and I was busy thinking about the documents I would request at the archives, when I noticed what looked like a metal fish embedded in the sidewalk. As I kept walking, I noticed other oversized articles cemented into the walkway: a split coin, what looked like a compass, a winged heart connected to a pineapple, a diamond-shaped plaque with the initials M.S. In one case, a heart was inscribed with "Meriah Dechesne, Born August 8th 1759."
Soon, I came across a sign that explained these objects. These were enlarged replicas of historical tokens that mothers, usually young and poor, left when they abandoned their babies at the Foundling Hospital. The hospital took in babies given up between 1741 and 1954. Today, the Foundling Museum sits on the site, around the corner from the stretch of sidewalk where I noticed these tokens. The mothers were supposed to leave a small physical object with their babies to help them re-unite later, if possible. It was a kind of identification system or secret password. Only the mother and the Foundling Hospital would know that she had left her baby with a metal fish, for instance. As it turned out, reunifications were rare.
On my way to one of the world's most famous collections of paper documents, I was shown another kind of artifact from the past. These metal tokens were mementos of heart-break and loss, of lives spent apart because of poverty and social stigma, and of stories and people that were probably absent from the written records housed three blocks away. The metal fish and its companions were a quiet and understated form of memorial. They were flat, trodden upon by thousands of people every day, plain, and potentially unexplained for most pedestrians. But they created one of the most moving monuments I have ever seen. Because of them, I think about two centuries of desperate mothers and abandoned babies whenever I walk down Marchmont Street.
Title
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The Fish on Marchmont Street
Identifier
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fish-on-marchmont-street
Architecture
Archives
Historical Markers
Historical Memory
London, United Kingdom
Memorials
Museums
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/428/Buckingham_Palace_HM.jpg
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Dublin Core
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Buckingham Palace
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buckingham-palace
Text
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For a school project
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Spencer Taylor, 18, Student
Date
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September 11, 2019
Description
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On September 13, 2001, the royal orchestra played the American national anthem during the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. This was two days after the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers when many first responders and innocent bystanders lost their lives in the attack.
I watched this after a day of hearing stories about people I knew, from less emotional stories like the ones of my parents to the personal stories of those who lost loved ones. Both of my parents were working that day and rushed home when they found out, which they still remember, but they didn’t know anyone personally. But it is the stories of those who were there, or who actually knew people there at the time that really affect you. My psychology teacher, when prompted, told the story of a close family friend who had flown to New York for a business trip, only to lose his life during a meeting in one of the towers.
When I got home, I was already primed with the sadness of those involved and feelings of pride for my country and humanity in general, when I got home and as usual, checked my phone. I saw an Instagram story posted by a close friend of mine shortly after opening the app and heard the national anthem being played by a band. Only after reading the caption did I realize why this was so significant. The caption at the top of the video informed me that this was during the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace and that the Queen had asked the royal band to play this instead of the usual marching music the guards play. After learning this, I noticed how many American flags were being waved, and how many tears were being shed. This was an experience I’ll likely remember forever.
This affected me in multiple ways. The first of course is the pride for my country I felt. I wasn’t alive then, but I do know my history, and the time following 9/11 was one of the most unified times in history. There were people on opposite sides of the aisle working together, neighbors mourning with one another, and a strong sense of pride that the fourth plane was stopped by the brave Americans in it.
The other way it affected me, was the fact that this was happening in London. This in itself means a few things, the first is that the USA is a symbol of freedom. In Hong Kong during the recent protests, there were many American flags waved by those who were protesting for their freedom, and there are other examples of the United States being a symbol, but for now, I’ll tell you the other reason this is significant.
It also reminded me that we are all human, and go through a lot of the same trials as others. While I’m sure some of the people waving flags were American, I’m also certain that most of the people in that crowd weren’t from the states, and that most of the civilized world mourned during that time. There were many lives lost in the attacks and many people mourned for those they didn’t even know.
This tells me that humanity always has hope, but sometimes we need to be reminded that we are actually one people regardless of race, religion, or any other distinguishing factor. That’s part of what makes this country great, how it’s a melting pot of different cultures, and everyone who lives here can achieve their dreams with hard work. This tells me that we always have hope.
Title
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The Day the Star-Spangled Banner Played at Buckingham Palace
Identifier
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day-the-star-spangled-banner-played
Historical Memory
International Relations
Music Performance
National Anthems
Nationalism
September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001
-
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Rome
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rome
Text
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Highschool English course
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Hayley Susov, HS Senior
Date
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December 2018
Source
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Rome, Italy
Description
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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
A name given to the resource
Photographing Rome
Identifier
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photographing-rome
Cultural Exchange
Family
Photography
Rome, Italy
Self-Realization
Travel
-
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Airport
Identifier
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airport
Text
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An assignment in school
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Donna Rich, HS Senior
Date
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2019
Source
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<em>The Day The World Came To Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland</em> by Jim DeFede
Description
An account of the resource
A few years ago I was riding in the car with my mom. She was listing to a book called <em>The Day The World Came To Town</em>. It’s about how the small town of Gander, Newfoundland came together when 38 commercial planes were diverted to their airport on 9/11 when airspace over the US was shut down. When I got home, I downloaded the audiobook and started listening to it. I was intrigued by how the small town of barely 10,000 people came together to help 7,000 people who were stranded there for about 5 days. It shows how there are still good people in the world that care. <br /><br />The terrorist attack against the United States could have turned many people against each other and left people with no hope in humanity, but in the small town of Gander, people came together to support people they didn’t know. Because the Canadian government was worried about possible terrorist threats in the belly of the planes, passengers were only allowed to take their carry-on baggage off the plane into the town of Gander. Some people had medications stored in their suitcases in the belly of the plane that they weren’t able to access. Pharmacists in Gander spent many hours contacting pharmacies and doctors all over the world in order to fill those prescriptions for free for the passengers. It overwhelmed me to hear about the drug store donating 4,000 toothbrushes, grocery and department stores donating anything on their shelves the passengers might need, and townsfolk emptying their closets of towels, sheets, blankets, and old clothes for the passengers. Homeowners offered spare bedrooms to passengers to sleep in and free showers. Young women volunteered their spare time to clean the showers at the gymnasium so that passengers could keep clean. Everyone came together to help people they had never met before.<br /><br />The Canadian government knew that there were possible terrorist threats on the incoming planes, but they still allowed them to land at Gander in order to help America. This taught me that no matter what country you live in, we all need to rely on each other sometimes. The book mentions how the only way to live in Newfoundland was with the help of others. Newfoundlanders had built a huge sense of community together. If anyone needed anything at all, they just needed to ask a neighbor and they would help out. <br /><br />Hearing this spectacular story made my faith in humanity grow stronger. It still amazes me how such a terrible event like 9/11 could bring so many people together. It changed my perspective on 9/11 and made me realize that, although the terrorist attacks were in New York City, it didn’t just affect the people living there. Not only did it cause Americans to unite, but people all over the world. A passenger on Lufthansa flight 400, Werner Baldessarini, was able to experience the strong sense of community that the folks of Gander fostered, noting “There was no hatred. No anger. No fear in Gander. Only the spirit of community. Here, everyone was equal, everyone was treated the same. Here, the basic humanity of man wasn’t just surviving but thriving” (DeFede 194). The feeling of community and togetherness was so strong that in his short 5-day stay, he was able to see it. The people in Gander welcomed the stranded passenger into their town, their schools, and their homes, they didn’t see them as strangers, but as friends. This book helped me to realize the importance of strong communities, and that good things can come from bad situations. <br /><br />DeFede, Jim. <em>The Day The World Came To Town: 9/11 In Gander, Newfoundland</em>. Harper Collins, 2003.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Spirit of Community
Identifier
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spirit-of-community
Books & Reading
Community
Newfoundland, Canada
September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001
-
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Dublin Core
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Blanket
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blanket
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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school
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Morgan B., 18, HS Senior
Description
An account of the resource
From the moment I was born I was wrapped in the warmth of a blanket. The doctors and nurses took me, wrapped me up and placed me on my mom to keep me warm and safe. Of course I don’t remember this but I am constantly told this story.
Throughout my childhood I have had a blanket that I was wrapped up in. A blanket that I took everywhere. I would go places and have this to be my safety, my security, my warmth. There is something about being wrapped tight in a blanket, something about it that gives you that big hug you might need when you don’t think you need it. I love the feel of the fabric against my face, the smell of the fresh laundry, it reminds me of home or loving parents, it gives me comfort.
I think that everyone should have a favorite blanket. During a time in my life where I felt lonely and sad, when there were things happening out of my control, I was given a blanket. It was a blanket made of a minky material that was heavy and warm. It was given to me to be a reminder that I am safe and loved.
If this blanket could tell stories it would have many to tell, as it has been on many journeys. When I have been unable to have a blanket with me, I find that I wear a heavy coat, even when the weather is contradicting such options. This simple coat gives me the same feelings of security and holds in all those emotions that a simple constant hug can give. I have used this blanket for more than just warmth sometimes it became my blanket hut that I could escape the world around me. I could create a fun tent to play in, make believe, and even at times sleep in.
A simple blanket can warm someone without a home, can give comfort to a small child, can remind you of a loved one no longer present, and can even be passed down through generations. I have even seen some people make blankets into pillows or wall art.
I believe having a blanket in your life can bring so much joy and peace. I continue to use this blanket today. The simple warmth of a blanket allows me to feel love when I choose to be alone, embraces me without emotion, and gives me comfort to sleep well during the night.
Title
A name given to the resource
Warmth of a Blanket
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
warmth-of-blanket
Comfort
Family
Memory
-
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Books
Identifier
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books
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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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
A name given to the resource
A Love That Follows You
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
love-that-follows-you
Books & Reading
Children's Literature
Emotional Experience
Family
-
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e0939c391cbed23182475fe5b4e9d917
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Book cover
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
book-cover
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
Identifier
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
Text
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From the National Humanities Center Virtual Winter Residency
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Cristovao Nwachukwu, 27, Graduate Teaching Assistant
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2016
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<em>Americanah</em> by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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<p>My humanities moment is a novel that changed my life and informed my path as an educator and researcher. But before I expound upon it, I need to tell you my story. I was born in Brazil as the only child of my Nigerian mother, who migrated to complete her undergraduate studies. Because of that, I constantly felt like I was living in-between, bridging the gap between Brazil and Nigeria. As I grew up, I struggled to find a sense of belonging, trying to conflate the Brazilian culture I learned at school with my Nigerian upbringing at home and fully identifying with neither. I was the other, a native foreigner.</p>
<p>To appease my ever-growing alienation, I plunged into literature, film, and music, anything that I could hold onto to calm my disquietude. Yet, I did not know at the time that I yearned to better understand who I was by seeing myself through the worlds of others. This unconscious search led me to study English and Portuguese language and literature at the Federal University of Bahia. However, as an undergrad, I did not search for myself as much. I still maintained this unbreakable connection between my subjectivity and literature, but, at the same time, I read more as an observer than a participant. Throughout most of my formal education, white authors, both from Brazil and Europe, represented the standard in literary studies, while Black authors, albeit abundant, were rarely mentioned.</p>
<p>Things changed when in 2016 I decided to read the novel <em>Americanah</em> by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I had already watched her famous Ted Talks “The Danger of a Single Story” and “We Should All Be Feminists”, and I got curious to read her work. This was the moment. Ifemelu’s journey as a Black Nigerian immigrant in the United States enthralled, moved, and inspired me. Adichie’s intricate and poignant representation of Black people in the U.S., the U.K., and Nigeria veered from the stereotypically negative and dehumanizing portrayals of Black people I was used to seeing in the media. In the novel, Adichie explores several facets of Black experiences, and I still remember that reading it felt like finally arriving home after spending your entire life squinting at the horizon, wondering if you would ever reach your destination. After years searching, I saw myself through the writing of someone who looked like me.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, I was not satisfied. I started reading Chinua Achebe, Sefi Atta, Wole Soyinka, and decided to translate this hunger for self-representation into a research project for graduate school. In 2018, I started following Ifemelu’s path as an immigrant in the U.S. to continue this intellectual and subjective query about the diversity of Black experiences across the world. I had found my home in African literatures and decided to never leave. I wanted to get closer to a mirror that had always been turned the other way, a lack of seeing that confined me to the role of the other. I wanted to stay, to sink “roots in without the constant urge to tug them out and shake off the soil” (Adichie 7).</p>
<p>Eventually, my research and teaching started to overlap. Curiosity prompted me to seek literature and film in which students who were also considered the other could see themselves represented as well. For students who were used to seeing themselves represented in all spheres of life, I also introduced them to works from diverse authors in order for them to move the mirror, look around, and get in contact with different realities and worldviews. These carefully devised choices of the texts I teach have turned my classrooms into safe spaces where diversity is the norm, and all students are heard and included.</p>
<p>Therefore, teaching African narratives about Black immigrants irreversibly converged my teaching philosophy and research. People still ask me nowadays which culture I identify with the most or even suggest that one day I will finally decide which country I consider to be my home. I never know how to answer this question because it is hard to convey what growing up in the diaspora is like. At least for now, I can say that every time I read <em>Americanah</em> again it takes me back to when this journey started, and I am excited to see where it will lead me.</p>
Title
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To See Myself
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to-see-myself
African Literature
Books & Reading
Diaspora
Ngozi Adichie, Chimamanda
Race Identity
Self-Realization
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Magazine excerpt
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magazine-excerpt
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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NHC Winter Residency for Graduate Students
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Kylie Broderick (27), PhD student
Description
An account of the resource
In 1922, Julia Dimashqiya, founder and editor of the Beirut-based women’s magazine "The New Woman" ("Al- Mar’a Al-Jadida"), inaugurated her first issue by dedicating it to "the daughters of my country.” From our vantage point, this statement seems to be an innocent and even bland admission of belonging. But looking beneath the surface reveals a world of contending debates about who belongs to this national mother, who might not, and why. In 1922, neither Lebanon nor Syria were yet countries—having transitioned from being Ottoman provinces to European mandates, these territories were undefined by fixed national borders. As such, enfolded in this invocation are a number of overlapping claims: to a nation, to a nonsectarian familial bond, to a future that is being built by a gendered collective. "The New Woman" was far from the only periodical working to define a community in this pre-national social soup; between the 1910s and 1930s, women-oriented periodicals in Greater Syria exploded in popularity. Women who founded, edited, and contributed to these magazines were attempting to both construct the ideal “modern woman” and also understand how their overarching society—beginning to be envisioned as a nation—would function through the lens of a collectively-defined women’s role.
Nearly one hundred years later, down in the digital ossuary of Middle Eastern archives, I opened the magazine and felt a kinship to her. Like Julia Dimashqiya, I feel engaged in a deep tradition of scholarship, agitation, and creative belonging. Like her, I understand that any project building something new requires a collective, a plurality, in order to last. Where she worked to build a nation in the face of unbearable oppression by colonial overlords, I hope to be engaged in a sphere of humanities that radically reshapes what it means to empathize, learn from, and interact with the past beyond the boundaries of time and space. Living one hundred years apart, we are connected to different facets of the same project to educate and elevate the consciously-constructed collective. After all, many of the problems she and other women intellectuals faced then remain familiar to us now: bridging the gap of social difference, challenging inequalities, and bringing together the many.
The first time I opened "The New Woman" was my Humanities Moment. Far from being a discrete point in time, I see it as part of an ongoing process built by a series of inquiries and curiosities that led me to the magazine. I did not have a single epiphany that switched on my lightbulb—instead, a decade of accidental discoveries in the literary realm, patient mentors in the academy, and interpersonal encounters in the world in time apprehended me, forming the unconscious bedrock of my commitment to the humanities. Holding the magazine for the first time merely lit the spark of a fire that had long been building—I knew I had to work with Julia Dimashqiya and other intellectuals like her, in spite of the century that separated us, to tell the story of women building a new nation. To me, this is what the humanities offers us: within the academy and beyond, it gives us the tools to understand one another and critically engage to form bonds. We work to define, challenge, and redefine our collectives and the borders between us. In this way, we learn how to connect the past to the present in ways that encourage us to envision the possibilities of our futures.
Title
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"To the Daughters of My Country": Humanitarian Connection across Time and Borders
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to-the-daughters-of-my-country
Magazines
Political Activism
Women
Women's History
Women's Rights
-
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Beowulf manuscript
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beowulf-manuscript
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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National Humanities Center's Graduate Teaching Residency, December 2020
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Emily McLemore, Ph.D. Candidate in English, University of Notre Dame
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Fall 2013
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Dated to the late tenth or early eleventh century, Beowulf is the longest epic poem written Old English. The narrative tells the story of the warrior Beowulf in 3,182 alliterative lines and recounts his battles with Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon who ultimately brings about his demise. It survives in a single manuscript known as the Nowell Codex, part of the bound volume Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, which is housed at the British Library in London. The volume suffered substantial damage from a fire in the 1700s, so it is very fragile in addition to being very precious as one of the four major manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon poetry.
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An account of the resource
Looking back, I can pinpoint many moments that poignantly mark my path toward medieval studies, but reading <em>Beowulf</em> was the moment that rendered all the moments before it visible. I have loved literature all my life, a statement that is perhaps unsurprising from someone who has dedicated herself to studying and teaching literature. My entrance into academia, however, was not a conventional one. I was a non-traditional undergraduate, returning to college in my late twenties to complete my degree in English and Secondary Education. While at Western State Colorado University, I fell in love with the intellectual labor of literary analysis, with the conversations about literature happening in the classroom, with the mentorship I received from my professors and also provided as a teaching assistant. I began to realize that my desire to be both a teacher and a life-long student of literature could be fulfilled by pursuing an academic career but remained undecided about an area of concentration. <br /><br />When I read <em>Beowulf</em> in my fourth semester, my experience was the epitome of an epiphany. I have never been so captivated by a text; I was absolutely immersed in it. Every memory that I would now include on a timeline tracing my trajectory into academia and, specifically, my specialization in medieval literature was illuminated while reading that poem. It became a part of me. It is a part of me. <br /><br />Most often, I work on Middle English texts. The thesis I wrote as a Master of Arts student at Oregon State University focused on two of Chaucer’s <em>Canterbury Tales</em>. The dissertation I’m currently writing as a doctoral candidate at the University of Notre Dame examines late Medieval English texts. But <em>Beowulf</em> is never far from my mind and always close to my heart. When I finally had the great fortune to see the only surviving manuscript containing the text that changed my life, I spent a long while admiring the rather unassuming artifact. While other visitors wandered past it for its plainness, I paid homage to the object that brought me to a place I never imagined I would be.
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Beowulf Brought Me to Medieval Studies
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beowulf-brought-me-to-medieval-studies
Beowulf
English Literature
History
Medieval Literature
Self-Realization
-
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Lock of hair
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lock-of-hair
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
Text
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NHC Graduate Winter Residency (2020)
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Morgane Haesen, 28, PhD candidate (French and Francophone Studies), Penn State University
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May 2018
Description
An account of the resource
Like fellow humanists, I struggled to pick a single moment to describe and share with you. However, while delving into my corpus (life writings – mostly diaries, autobiographies and memoirs - from the Franco-German borderland, Alsace-Lorraine, at the turn of the twentieth century), I am reminded of a unique moment I experienced when I discovered these documents in the archives.
In May 2018, the week after finishing my first year of the PhD program in the French and Francophone Studies Department at Penn State, I set out on my first archival trip to Strasbourg, France. Once in the archives, my curiosity and intellect were quickly at odds with my limited resources and time. In most French departmental archives, researchers are allowed to order and go through eight archival boxes per day. They usually contain part of a collection, and can range from several pieces of paper to several hundred documents. Moreover, not all boxes are described in the archive’s “finding aid” or databases. The nature of their contents sometimes requires an educated guess based on the limited information available to you. As such, with only a month in France, my research choices needed to be strategic: I had to single out the boxes I believed would contain the best documents to help in my research. One collection in particular piqued my curiosity as the archivists Virginie Godar-Lejeune and Marie-Ange Glessgen described it as having an “infinitely human quality.” While these writings fell out of my delineated period of study, I nonetheless decided to follow my dissertation committee’s advice to “listen” to the archives, indeed to avail myself of what Alsatian-Lorrainers had deposited at the archives instead of narrowly executing the search for my anticipated corpus: I requested the boxes in question.
After weeks of mechanically opening hundreds of envelopes and finding papers, postcards or greeting cards, I was quite taken aback when my fingers touched locks of hair. In addition to entire life papers (birth, marriage and death certificates, school grade reports, passports, and photographs), the boxes included locks of hair of every family member. Although I was aware of the practice of collecting children’s or spouses’ hair, I had quite a visceral reaction to seeing and touching it firsthand. The Lambs’ family archives almost systematically included such documents and objects for most family members between 1790 and 1936. The breadth of these documents spoke to the Lambs’ commitment to passing on their history: a small family of modest background in the industrial landscape of Strasbourg, France at the turn of the twentieth century. The intimacy of the objects included illustrated the family’s need to preserve their loved one’s memory. I spent the rest of the day reading through the entire family’s collection, learning about the parents’ love for their children, as well as their fear of losing them to wars and subsequent political instability in the region at that time.
As a doctoral candidate, it can prove difficult to project yourself as a researcher who can meaningfully contribute to the world around you. This experience made me realize my role as a historian, specifically, as a link in the chain of “passeuses de memoire,” or living historians. While this collection is not featured in my dissertation, it has instilled in me a sense of responsibility to preserve and make available the life writings of ordinary people, which constitute my corpus. Literally touched by the history of the Lambs family, I felt compelled to pass on their history and memory as a means of understanding larger historical conjunctures. To this end, I assign some of their letters to students in French history courses to teach how individuals lived through the vicissitudes of Alsace-Lorraine’s history.
The picture shows the lock of hair and passport photo of Emilie Lorentz-Lambs (1869-1929). The family’s archives (17J) reside at the Departmental Archives of the Bas-Rhin in Strasbourg, France. The collection is freely communicable and under no copyright laws.
Title
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The “Infinitely Human”: Life Writings, Locks of Hair and Lived History
Identifier
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infinitely-human
Archives
Family Histories
Historical Memory
History
Strasbourg, France
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Gulls Flying Together
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gulls-flying-together
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
Text
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NHC Graduate Student Winter Residency
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Katerina Santiesteban, 26, PhD Candidate in Spanish
Description
An account of the resource
After spending some time searching for my very own, singular, life-altering "humanities moment" that set me on my chosen path, I came to the conclusion that no such moment exists. Instead, my relationship to the humanities is everything, it's my life-long companion. Every important milestone has its own humanities "thing" - a poem, a painting, a song, a place. The actual "thing" itself is relatively unimportant. What matters are the emotions they teach and the people with which they help you connect. Thus, Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer's poetry is special to me because it helped me fall in love for the first time. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's "Hombres necios" guided me through my first adventures with feminism. Beethoven taught me to understand my own pain and sorrow during my cliché, teenage existential turmoil. For me, the power of the humanities is its ability to reach people, connecting us and teaching us to appreciate our differences.
Title
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Humanities, My Life-Long Companion
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humanities-my-life-long-companion
Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo
Beethoven, Ludwig van
de la Cruz, Sor Juana Inés
Humanities
-
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Books for children
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Pixabay
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books-for-children
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
Text
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From NHC graduate student winter residency program
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Deaun Shin, 26, Ph.D. student
Description
An account of the resource
My humanities moment is actually a series of memories related to reading children's books. The memory of numerous bedtime stories, library visits, and experiences of making my own books about the children's book are still vivid in my mind. I enjoyed every single bit of the memory: My mother playing different characters in the books, pointing at pictures on each page, sunshine penetrating through the library windows, the smell of the books, the sound of flipping the pages, and the excitement while coming up with creative ideas what would happen next to the characters in the book.
This active engagement with children's books led me to keep exploring novels and literature later in my life. I finally ended up cultivating my tastes in classic literature. My favorite part of reading is to discuss literature with others. This collective informal literary critique has developed my collaborative ability which has deepened and widened my perspective about life in general.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bedtime Stories
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
bedtime-stories
Books & Reading
Family
Literature Appreciation
-
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b2b8854d9283cd351b50281ea1d36a43
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Swan
Identifier
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swan
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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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Through the Virtual Winter Residency
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George C. Berry, 26, MFA Candidate in Dance, University of Alabama
Date
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December 2020
Source
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Matthew Bourne's <em>Swan Lake</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Matthew Bourne’s <em>Swan Lake</em> is a masterpiece that changed the way I view classical ballet as a queer person. Bourne’s reimagining of the classic story, <em>Swan Lake</em>, replaces all of the female swans with their male counterparts. Instead of classical white tutus, male swans are clad in only delicate feathery breeches, revealing their chiseled physiques to the audience. This juxtaposition of strength and fragility through costuming changes the traditional perception of the swans from classically romantic to sensuously carnal. As the Prince tentatively touches a male swan he foreshadows his inner struggle to accept the love he feels for him. This moment serves as a calling card for young gay male dancers to embrace who they are. <br /><br />Audiences are often not used to seeing the love between two men told through dance, and Matthew Bourne has seemingly shown us a beautiful, sensual love story. The way that Bourne weaves this story, carefully considering the accessibility and complexity, he establishes a new classic that has gained popularity among both the critics and the general public. Still, even as Bourne embraces the nuances of the inner struggle to find one’s identity, Bourne refused to attach the queer label to his work in an attempt to keep his story universal. Although this ballet was culturally received as supporting gay rights, Matthew Bourne has explicitly denied that this was his only intention. Instead of embracing the critics’ labelling of the work as the “Queer Swan Lake,” he pivots the narrative by announcing that the prince is not a gay man; he is just a Prince experiencing inner turmoil and the swan represents the freedom he seeks. <br /><br />My humanities moment is not Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and the joy and identity I found within it, but instead is an interview created for TenduTV in 2011 entitled "Matthew Bourne: Refreshing the Classics and Winning Audiences Over," during which he renounced any gay readings of the work. I was so affected by this ballet that he created, that hearing him brush off the queerness that seemed so obvious in his work left my soul crushed. Bourne claimed that he doesn’t want his <em>Swan Lake</em> vision to be labeled as “just a gay story,” choosing instead to emphasize its universal appeal, and of course implying in the process that gay stories are only suitable for gay audiences. I, on the other hand, believe that identity-specific stories can be relatable, and that this story shares a universal message about wanting to be loved and cared for. I believe that the protagonist’s sexuality does not detract from the work’s appeal, instead it humanizes the gay community by showing their wants and struggles. <br /><br />Bourne’s decision to brush the queer influences in his work under the rug are supported by a long history of queer-erasure in dance culture more broadly. Ballet dancers, choreographers and critics have attempted to separate the art from queer culture for centuries, going back as far back as King Louis XIV and the form’s origins. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, composer of so many beloved ballets, including <em>The Nutcracker</em>, suffered from lifelong depression and may have committed suicide, in part because of the pain of having to live in the closet. Today, I have seen many companies comprised of mostly gay men steer away from being labeled a gay company for fear of being ostracized by a mainstream audience. Homosexual men who have given their lives to the craft of ballet long for proud representation, and it was a tragedy that Bourne chose to take this away from us, even as he so obviously put it on stage. <br /><br />As a young dancer, classical ballet training forced me to learn only heterosexual princely characters based on my appearance. I fought back against these assumptions through my gender non-conforming appearance, at which point I was discarded and my talent deemed wasted. This style of education failed to account for my desire for self-expression and creativity as a budding artist; they asked me only to imitate a masculine ideal that was not part of who I am. Just as the Prince in Bourne’s <em>Swan Lake</em> longs for reprieve from his mother’s quest to find him an acceptable bride, male ballet dancers seek freedom from their oppression from centuries-old values. <br /><br />The Prince in this story goes to the swan lake to hide himself from the world, just as I and countless others were forced to hide our sexuality for our own safety. I was forced to hide who I was from my parents, kids at school, and my dance teachers. Embracing my sexuality was not an option in the ballet school I attended, and in fact I was mocked for my appearance. When I came out, my dance teachers were the most repulsed by how I wanted to express my gender identity. In an industry that was built by queer people, they only embraced boys who fit their mold of who a “man” is in classical ballet. Recognizing the many queer influences in ballet history can help to bring us out of the shadows and into the increasingly diverse field of public opinion, allowing everyone to embrace our differences.<br /><br />Despite Bourne’s rejection of gay interpretations of his work, I believe the evidence for that meaning is too clear to deny. Bourne breaks heteronormative boundaries by choosing a man to play the swan that attempts to protect the Prince. I see two beautiful men embracing each other in a tender way that, yes, maybe shouldn’t have to be labeled as gay, but I clung to this break from tradition as a sign of romantic acceptance. While I agree that cultural traditions of heteronormativity handicap young minds, and that it is wrong to automatically label male intimacy, or anything a male does outside the macho sensibility, as feminine or gay, the romantic overtones of Bourne’s work are undeniable. I am not the only queer person to see it, as Dr. Kent G. Drummond states: “In a broader context, (Matthew Bourne) also forces a long-simmering relationship between homosexuality and dance out of the closet and into mainstream popular culture” (Drummond 2003). For these reasons, and many others, gay men - a group of individuals wanting to be accepted - still claim and cling to Bourne’s work even as he fails to return the embrace. <br /><br />Bourne’s <em>Swan Lake</em> was a catalyst for gay men wanting to dance as themselves in the ballet world, and the success of the work additionally proves that two men dancing together in a loving and intimate way can be beautiful and marketable. It is a shame that even after the work’s adoring reception, Bourne was afraid that his work would be seen one-dimensionally and that society lacked the open mind to receive all that he had created. My two-fold humanities moment is the moment of how this ballet changed me, and the moment when Bourne’s interview changed my views on this ballet. <br /><br />I hope that Bourne’s views on representation have changed as society has evolved. I was hurt by seeing someone fail to give credit to a community that needs uplifting. When leaders fail, the community has twice as much work to do. Although my thoughts on the work have shifted, I can speak to the normalization of two men tenderly embracing that Bourne inadvertently created with this ballet. The embrace between the Prince and Swan inspires me to create work that is defined by who I am; to embrace who we are and where society is going. Young gay boys dreaming of dancing professionally will continue to cling to this work, dreaming to one day experience this type of freedom. I believe that a future of gender equality is just beginning to peek over the horizon. <br /><br />Kent G. Drummond (2003). "The Queering of Swan Lake." <em>Journal of Homosexuality</em>, 45:2-4,235-255, DOI: 10.1300/J082v45n02_11
Title
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Not the Gay <em>Swan Lake</em>
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not-the-gay-swan-lake
Bourne, Matthew
Cultural Awareness
Dance
LGBTQ Rights
Queer Theory
Self-acceptance
Swan Lake
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/17/415/Blake_Poem_HM.jpg
970d066c795974c101bc1e9325542a4e
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Tree
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Pixabay
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tree
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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NHC Winter Residency 2020
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Carolyn A. Levy, 28, PhD Candidate, Penn State University
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2008/2009
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"The Human Abstract" by William Blake
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I discovered the poetry of William Blake on a bookshelf in San Francisco. Set beside the works of Charles Baudelaire, and other books I’ve long forgotten, Blake’s poems had rested on the shelf in my grandparents’ home for years. I was unfamiliar with Blake’s work at the time, but, during a visit in high school, I took his poetry from the shelf for some late-night reading. I flipped through the pages of Blake’s work without expectations, and I soon found what became my favorite poem, “The Human Abstract.”
I read through the poem countless times that night, and I found myself thinking about it still the next morning. By the time I returned home from my visit, I was eager to memorize the poem. I told my parents that I wanted to read more of William Blake’s work, and my father seemed somewhat surprised. His surprise wasn’t due to my interest in poetry, but rather in this particular poet. I explained that I’d recently discovered my new favorite poem, and launched into an explanation of what I’d read. My father quickly replied that “The Human Abstract” was his favorite poem, and it had been his favorite poem for many years.
I had unintentionally discovered my father’s copy of William Blake’s work, left in his parents’ home in his old childhood room. I never knew that he had read Blake’s poetry when he was younger, nor did I know that he’d taken a college course focused on William Blake. As it turned out, my brother’s name, William had even been chosen with William Blake in mind. These connections astounded me. My father and I don’t typically enjoy the same literature, and we’d never discussed poetry before that conversation. However, my coincidental discovery of the Human Abstract revealed our connection across generations. We shared the same fascination with the poem, and we found ourselves diving into a discussion of our thoughts on Blake and poetry. “The Human Abstract” has become an enduring topic of conversation for my father and I, and I’m grateful to have stumbled upon this poem on a night when I couldn’t sleep.
Title
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A Shared Poem
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shared-poem
Blake, William
Books & Reading
Family
Fathers & Daughters
Poetry
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/17/414/Reading_Identity_HM.jpg
1eb7dac6d4fe17f97d395f84e29e719a
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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I heard about this moment in the course I took on exploring cultural identities in an intercultural communication course.
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Ahmet Aksoy, 33, Doctoral Candidate, Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
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Summer 2020
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Critical Autoethnography
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I am a second-generation Turkish American. However, how does this hyphenated identity impact the daily interactions I have in society? When taking an intercultural communication course, I was introduced to Boylorn and Orbe's Critical Autoethnography book. In it, they explore the everyday interpersonal and cultural experiences that they and fellow contributors have had with society. Through their lived experiences and personal narratives, readers are invited into the multiple ways in which we navigate our personal selves in the societies that we live in. In section three, “Negotiating Socially Stigmatized Identities,” contributors explore what it is like to live with an identity that has been stigmatized in society.
As I read the stories of these individuals, each one resonated with me and had me question the position and presentation that I place on myself. One story stood out among them all. It was the narrative of an Arab-American, Jewish, and nonheterosexual middle aged individual. Their daily interactions demonstrated the struggles and challenges they faced in American society. While I do not share a similar identity with the individual, It did have me question the ways in which society restricts and impacts how I strategically perform my identities in society. It began to have me look back at special moments in my life where my identity had been challenged.
The reason this moment stands out is that it was the first time I questioned and desired to explore my position and the impact my identity has had in society. It has taught me the importance of identity and that how we communicate our identities can impact how we are perceived and adapt our identities in society. Moreover, it guided me to my interest in examining the construction and negotiation of one’s identities and their performances in society. In reading this text, I was moved. It invited me to examine scholars' lived experiences and how it impacts their identities. Moreover, it made me question and look inward to examine how my identity as a second-generation Turkish American plays a role in the interactions I have in society. Since this moment, I have heavily examined and questioned more the ways that our identities influence the interactions we have in society. I am forever grateful for this text and the moments it has given me.
Title
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Identity and Its Development in our Everyday Lives
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identity-development-everyday-lives
Books & Reading
Boylorn, Robin M.
Critical Autoethnography
Identity
Orbe, Mark P.
Self-Realization
Social Commentary
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/17/413/Big_Bang_Image.jpg
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Big Bang
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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
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/409/Stone_Fresco_HM.jpg
bd366adf57a7328c7d2613109f5c9bac
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Stone Fresco
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stone-fresco
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web search
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Samia Rab Kirchner, 57, Associate Professor of Architecture at Morgan State University
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1985
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19th century Frescoes on wall of the Lahore Fort in Pakistan
Description
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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!
Title
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humanity without The Humanities
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humanity-without-the-humanities
Art
Cultural Awareness
Cultural Relations
Human Beings
Humanities Education
Teachers & Teaching
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/17/408/Amber_Edited.jpg
f457f61f03c6db1b018009289c32ca59
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Pill
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pill
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
Text
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National Humanities Center Remote Summer Residency Program
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Sarah (Sadie) Warren, 31, PhD Candidate, Instructor, and Digital Scholarship Associate
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Approximately 2014
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Pablo Neruda's Odes to Common Things
Description
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Reflecting on growing up as a clumsy child with two rambunctious brothers, two phrases immediately come to mind, burnt into my memory like a brand from their ceaseless repetition: "make your bed" and "they're only things." One of these ("make your bed") never failed to inspire in me a blood-boiling rage of the Sisyphean sort: after all, what was the point of making your bed if you were just going to unmake it a scant twelve hours later? The other ("they’re only things") was less affectively charged, but the well-meaning platitude applied like a balm by my mother after this or that was broken never seemed to sit right. I understood the moral sentiment, which underscored the relative importance of social relations over material goods. Yet, while I lacked the language to articulate it, it never seemed fair to cast some of these goods as inert, inherently meaningless "things." Scraggly blankets, favourite markers, even the contours of secret nooks tucked away in the crevices of the basement: these beloved things seemed to occupy some special, understated liminal space between person and mere object, between meaningful language and the absolutely mute. <br /><br />Reading Pablo Neruda’s <em>Odes to Common Things</em> was the first time that I found myself experiencing that electric connection between self and materiality through the mind of someone else—through the eyes of a poet. For Neruda, the life of a chair invokes a rich ecosystem. It is not a utilitarian object, easily cast aside and replaced with another: it is a dynamic actor in a vibrant and distinctive jungle lifescape of sounds, smells, stories, and—ultimately—symbolism. Soap, not just a cleansing agent, is the "pure delight" of ephemeral fragrance as it sinuously winds its way through the world, impressing itself on us. And all of these things, taken together, constitute more than an inert backdrop for human life: as Neruda says, "they were so alive with me/ that they lived half my life/ and will die half my death." It is Neruda's appreciation for the vitality at the heart of the seemingly mundane, the shimmering lives of lifeless things, that I try to channel whenever I am trying to philosophically express our place in the world and all of its unexpected dimensions—or trying to come to grips with the loss of a favourite coffee mug.
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Neruda and the Shimmering Lives of Lifeless Things
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neruda-and-shimmering-lives-of-lifeless-things
Books & Reading
Families
Literature
Neruda, Pablo
Poetry
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/407/Playground_Playdates_HM_photo.jpg
65b3d477339ae07d61236d5aa9e04324
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Double Dutch
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Pixabay
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double-dutch
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New America’s Neighborhood Stories: Looking Into the Past to Map the Future: A Humanities + Tech Approach
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Shimira Williams, 42, Integration Specialist
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February 29, 2020
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"Throw it Back" by Missy Elliott
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In October 2019, I attended New America’s Neighborhood Stories: Looking Into the Past to Map the Future: A Humanities + Tech Approach. Attending this session, inspired me to add a new layer to the “Where in the world is Qai Qai?” map for Zoey labeled Zoey’s Zone. Zoey’s first pin is New York City, for a Meet & get your photo with Lupita Nyong’o for Sulwe at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square. The intent of the map is to guide conversations between children and adults about places and peoples through storytelling that prompts inclusion and early math. (https://www.productivityllc.com/map-your-story/)
Then in February 2020, I was a panelist for the New America held a capstone event “Taking a Humanities+Tech Approach: Creating Inclusive Tools and Learning Experiences: Event” to conclude the series of connected conversations (#ConnectedConversations). We were all encouraged to submit a moment to The Humanities Moments project was created by the National Humanities Center in partnership with the Federation of State Humanities Councils in an effort to gather, store, and share personal accounts of how the humanities illuminate our lives. (https://www.shimirawilliams.com/2020/02/27/connectedconversations/)
I decided on a song because music is a mood changer. I love music, and dance and some say I think in lyrics. Missy Elliott has always been a visionary and the video for "Throw It Back" has the dancers playing double dutch. This fit right with a playground initiative I was jump-starting for community building and STEM: "Playground Playdates: The rhythm and data of double Dutch" - (https://www.thebeautyofstem.com/playground-playdates-the-rhythm-and-data-of-double-dutch/)
Title
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Playground Playdates: The rhythm and data of double Dutch
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playground-playdates
Music
Self-Realization
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/406/Greek_statues_HM.jpg
7cbb9aae219a8ca564d77f0f2d88f597
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Greek Statues
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Pixabay
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greek-statues
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E-mail contact
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John Cleary, 60, Associate Professor of Philosophy
Description
An account of the resource
Werner Heisenberg in his book "Physics and Philosophy" wrote: “It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human culture, in different times and different cultural environments or different religious traditions, hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments will follow.”
And thus what does important mean? Are we important in relationship to whom and to what? By important we mean any conversation, observation, fact or theory about the human experience that describes, explains or substantiates our affect and influence in the world. What is the evidence to demonstrate that our construction of what is called civilization has resulted in importance to both the scientific way of looking at life and the world, but also the philosophical?
We explore today both the claims of both scientists and philosophers that if people are rational actors on the world stage, what evidence is there to conclude that we have a hold what are importance means for the future of the human species, and how the scientific or philosophical account writ large may inform us of just how important we are.
The problems that Physicists and Philosophers wrestle with of course needs no introduction. Scientists, theologians and philosophers have wondered how to interpret our relationship with the material world (as well as other definitions of our experience) and the kinds of vocabularies we employ to understand who we are and how we should situate ourselves physically, and psychologically and ontologically. If the sum of our accomplishments include a definition of progress that rests on achievement, what are the ways in which we can identify how we can see ourselves as unique, and therefore “important” (or not important) with and through multiple experiences.
Various accounts, including historical, sociological, theological and scientific/philosophical have provided a narrative framework for explaining how to construct our importance or insignificance. Insofar as history give us examples of how people have affected change, we want to ask how various explanations and interpretations have aligned with the assumptions we have about our place in the world. For example, if people are “thinking animals” how have they evidenced behavior that reflects uniqueness within scientific, social and political contexts?
Within the discursive landscape of science and philosophy this reflection will address the questions of our importance insofar as it will identify some of the ways in which alternate narratives explain how we understand our importance and, furthermore, how scientific and philosophical thinking may share, or not share, paradigms for who and what we are. For example, if science concerned with what is verifiable and testable, how might we understand its epistemological rigor in terms of identifying our overall importance? Furthermore, if the claims of philosophy offer a counter-narrative of what is explained as reality and truth, how does this stand in contrast to scientific truth? If the meta-narratives of religion (cultural values) tell us something about what and who we are, can we rely on this as a way of explaining our significance? Alternately, can we depend on the scientific account (i.e. the laws of science) in the hard sciences, such Physics, to properly explain the role of humans and their interaction and influence in the world?
While we want to acknowledge the length and breadth of the questions posed above, our project is investigating the role of self-reflective/objective positions in unfolding (exposing?) how we ARE or NOT important/special through the lens of scientific and philosophical inquiry and what implications this has for teaching and learning. So in this respect, our attempt to consider this subject is not exhaustive but exploratory.
Since the time of pre-Socratic philosophy, early scientist/philosophers such as Anaxagoras, Thales, Heraclitus, Parmenides and Anaximenes speculated about the origin of life and what the world consists of. What is the nature of change? And what are we to understand that which appears to be constant or changing in the material world in relationship to ourselves. Indeed the questions that physicists ask today are ones that that early philosophers asked as well. Who are we? Why are we here? What motivates us to act the way we do? Similarly early Greek tragedians such as Sophocles and Aeschylus posed the question: if we are free to make our decisions as autonomous subjects, how is it that the will of the Gods also controls the way we act and see ourselves in the world? Or as Socrates asks: if we consider ourselves important are our actions good because they are approved by the Gods or whether the Gods approve of them because they are good. Certainly we can see this revisited in the Faust legend where one scholar is blinded by his desire to over emphasize his importance. Machiavelli takes up this theme with greater rigor, arguing that rulers need not actually be virtuous, but appear to be so …thus diminishing, as some might argue, our importance as guides of virtue.
And yet scientists like Galen, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Plank, and others let their information guide the re-construction of our importance in relationship to the coherence or correspondence theory of truth, then, unlike the theologians and mystics of the past (Boethius, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Meister Eckart and others) who drew their relationship to God as a way of signifying the importance of the supernatural in defining who and what we are, science draws on the tradition of Descartes, Hume, Locke and later philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell to re-establish the Greek tradition in observation and "following inquiry where it leads."
So what we may be left with is an example of an ongoing epistemological struggle that makes us aware of the competing truth claims of both sides of the conversation. While it may be accepted that the discoveries and facts of scientists may be radically different from those of the philosophers, we know from the historical account, and even today, that both physics and philosophy wrestle with the same speculative questions which invariable lead us, once again, to ponder our importance. And so we ask the overriding question: Are we important?
As a physicist might ask: in relationship to the physical world how we might match to other material processes, evolutionary changes and other scientific discoveries that may make us pause and wonder about our importance as a species, as organisms controlled by entropic forces, and as evolving beings. And, as philosophers have wondered as well, what kind of beings are we to make claims of ontological importance to what we have accomplished and lived by. Has the counsel of the wise about our importance really turned out to be wisdom itself? and do the values and institutions that make up the power structures of society point to our overall importance in a metaphysical sense? Are the facts that one learns through looking through a telescope such as the moons of Jupiter, more important than the shape of a snowflake or an electron? What is the role of our importance in this respect? Similarly, do the capital T truths of Philosophy outweigh the truths acquired through hypothesis, experiment and conclusion? Has the creation of truth been more important than finding truth and importance? And what does our own impulse for certainty suggest about our importance personally and collectively?
Colin McGinn once wrote in his book “The Making of a Philosopher” that “ There are extremely general concepts that crop up everywhere—time, causality, necessity, existence, object, property identity. No scientific discipline can tell you what these concepts involve, because they are pre-supposed by any such discipline; we need philosophy to understand these concepts. For example, is causality just a matter of mere constant conjunction of events of “one damn thing after another” as A.J. Ayer used to put it—or does it involve an element of necessary connection? These are all questions human beings naturally ask. Children spontaneously ask philosophical questions, much to the frustration of their parents. The philosopher is just someone with a particularly strong interest in these age old universal questions; she is the embodiment of one kind of human curiosity—the kind that seeks the general, not the particular, the abstract, not the concrete. Of course it is easy to be impatient with such questions, because they do not admit to scientific resolution. However, we should not run away with the idea that a question is either scientific or nothing.”
And yet the supposed insignificance of our accomplishments in relationship to the size of the universe, the power of nature to change how we live, the triumph of selfishness and ignorance throughout the ages, the reality of people behaving more like beasts endowed with intelligence more than anything close to a saint makes us ponder. The wheels of history show that our desire to overcome ourselves and our troubles throughout the language of the science and the humanities point to one shining beacon of hope: creativity. It is our creativity that allows for the hope of change in our education system, our governments and projects and plans within the artistic trajectory of technology and scientific inquiry to lead to new ways of thinking about ourselves. Along with the philosophers, it will be the creativity of the scientists as artists and the imagination of the mathematicians to assist us in seeing how important and therefore how seriously we should take ourselves in the "here and now" and in the "there and then." Our creativity helps us to know that our desire to re-invent, re-examine, and re-focus our values of what we identify as important is what guides us to interpret the problems ahead. New systems of thought in all walks of life that re-invigorate our importance by relying on our imaginative instincts to enable us to envision a better world in which we are not systematized, and to re-invigorate a new way of seeing that the union of creativity and analytic thinking will mean new freedoms for our life worlds as people overcoming the stagnation of intellectual orthodoxy, Phillistinism and seeing the true meaning of our importance not based on hubris…or mis-placed values…but stalwart emphasis on the hope than we are better than what time has done to us. The new world order may call for the increasing technological paradigms as to how to run our lives, yet the creative impulse to solve problems through the language of scientist/philosophers will collaborate to emphasize our importance despite the overwhelming reality of our planetary insignificance.
Austrian-British philosopher of science Karl Popper, Generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century once wrote “The best thing that can happen to a human being us to find a problem, to fall in love with that problem, and to live trying to solve that problem, unless another problem even more lovable appears. Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.” It is for this reason that we ask in the context of the study and teaching of Physics and Philosophy: are we important?
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Are we Important?
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are-we-important
Interdisciplinarity
Philosophy
Philosophy Education
Science & the Humanities
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Milky Way
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milky-way
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John Cleary, 60, Associate Professor of Philosophy
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The advancement of civilization as it is often situated in the narrative of scientific inquiry is matched by the enlightened aims of the humanities; both are dedicated to improving the human condition. As such, they are undergirded by a critical interplay between discovery and creativity.
There is reason enough to feel a sense of wonder and awe about the complexity of the universe. The spectacular nature of the solar system is often punctuated by a vastness that may agitate our existential uncertainty and, further, it has often made us recognize how this pertains to our experiences of boundlessness and incomprehensibility in nature and, in turn, our responsibility to ponder its meaning as it applies to science, (e.g. physics and astronomy) philosophy and literature.
The facts and theories of scientific progress, inventive as they are in the pursuit of knowledge, (discovery) can tell us much about the grandeur and magnificence of the heavens. In a similar way the humanities, (creativity) by utilizing the lantern of imagination, has offered ways of constructing a view of space (the night sky) through the explanatory power of metaphor and narrative.
How can our understanding of astronomy be complemented by poetic experiences such as what is often illustrated in theatre? For example, Bertolt Brecht's play "Galileo." In addition, how might we see these kind of ideas converge, and what new relevations and teaching strategies could arise from them?
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Discovery and Creativity
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discovery-and-creativity
Creativity
Interdisciplinarity
Philosophy
Science & the Humanities
Teachers & Teaching
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Geodesic Dome
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John Cleary 60 Associate Professor of Philosophy
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Science Seminar Presentation at my College
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My interest in the relationship between the Sciences and the Humanities
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Analytic and Creative Thinking:
Conventional descriptions of the way teachers and students learn about Science and the Humanities are under-girded by the assumption that these disciplines are cognitively exclusive. That is, what is taught by scientists falls under the vocabulary of the analytic and that what instructors of Humanities do is congruent/appropos with creative thinking. Closer analysis reveals, however, that both camps share more than they realize, and that a not-so-evident part of what it means to think like a scientist requires forms of creative thinking in the same way that analytic thinking is part of the project of thinking like an artist. A good example of this is what architects do. Inventive architects, like Buckminster Fuller, required themselves to think about the aesthetic value of a structure (e.g. a geodesic dome), as well as its alignment with geometric forms. It is for this reason that teachers should allow themselves to think in a interdisciplinary way. When students see that their imaginations are part of what it means to think like a scientist, they can also understand the precision is part of what artists do too.
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Analytic and Creative Thinking: A Conversation
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analytic-creative-thinking
Architecture
Creativity
Interdisciplinarity
Science & the Humanities
Teachers & Teaching