Reading St. Augustine’s <em>Confessions</em> in Latin
<p>“It is difficult to translate the beauty of Latin easily into English. There’s something about the relationship between Augustine’s words and the meaning of what he’s saying that is more powerful and profound when read in their original language.</p>
<p>“This insight — about the relationship between words, and rhythm, and sound, and meaning — has been important to me over the years, especially as it has encouraged me to consider the variety of ways in which ideas are expressed in different contexts and across time and to recognize the distinctions those differences create in my view of the world.</p>
<p>“The value of theological, philosophical, literary inquiry — humanistic inquiry — is that it helps us to make sense of things in ways that were not available to us before.”</p>
<p>Carol Quillen describes how, growing up, her initial insights and perceptions came from what she calls promiscuous reading — reading anything and everything and then finding connections among these very different texts. She consumed Augustine’s <em>Confessions</em>, in the original Latin, which captures and conveys meaning differently than English and enabled her both to grasp and question the complex ways in which language represents reality.</p>
<p>These differences in language, like reading, reveal different ways of seeing the world, and by learning about and seeing them, we create possibilities for ourselves.<br /><br />Quillen says, “This insight — about the relationship between words, and rhythm, and sound, and meaning — has been important to me over the years, especially as it has encouraged me to consider the variety of ways in which ideas are expressed in different contexts and across time and to recognize the distinctions those differences create in my view of the world. The value of theological, philosophical, literary inquiry — humanistic inquiry — is that it helps us to make sense of things in ways that were not available to us before.”</p>
Augustine of Hippo
<em>Confessions</em> by Augustine
<a href="https://www.davidson.edu/about/college-leadership/president/biography">Carol Quillen</a>, President, Davidson College
carol-quillen-reading-augustine-in-latin
Reading <em>Dune</em> as a Woman
I am in the middle of reading <em>Dune</em>, and while Frank Herbert has some good takeaways and powerful quotes, I was most specifically struck by how far women in media have progressed since 1965, when the book was published. In <em>Dune</em>, even the most powerful women follow a common trend of submission, even when they do not agree with their husband or the leadership. In general, there are very few lead female characters who are portrayed as important to the narrative, especially in comparison to the many military men depicted. The "Bene Gesserit," described in the novel as a fearsome and dangerous group of women, have power and wisdom, but ultimately serve the purpose of creating good genetic matches with men across the empire. Their power is immediately usurped by the protagonist of the novel, Paul Atreides. The women of this novel are continually overruled by men, and it is almost exhausting to read this as a woman in a time where we have more agency and chances to advocate. Rather than give up on the book entirely, I was met with the realization that <em>Dune</em> is an example of how far we have come. I had finished reading Leigh Bardugo's <em>Shadow and Bone</em> series right before starting <em>Dune</em>, and in this series, as in many other modern works, women are given more advocacy. The trend in more modern books shows how we have continued to overcome the oversights of past literary and cultural norms for women, and though much progress still needs to be made, it is encouraging to read older works with this mindset.
Frank Herbert
<em>Dune</em>
January 2022
Christine Taylor, 20, College student and copywriter
reading-dune-woman
Feminist Killjoys
In my 'Problems and Issues in Feminist Theory' graduate course in the Women's and Gender Studies Department, my professor assigned a new release in feminist and queer theory called <em>Living a Feminist Life</em> by independent scholar Sara Ahmed. Reading the book, I laughed, cried, and underlined more than any other academic book. I had never felt so seen in a book, and the accessibility but depth of the concepts in the book were mesmerizing. <br /><br />The Humanities Moment came when the class came together to discuss the book - all of us had the same response to the book. My professor asked us to be vulnerable and share some intimate moments in our lives while weaving academic theory and lived experience. In this space we shared the laughs, tears, and validated each other's experiences of moving and living in this world as someone assigned female at birth, committed to feminism, and navigating academia. <br /><br />The end of the book shares a resource called the "Feminist Killjoy Toolkit" and it encourages readers to build their toolkit, which includes your other Humanities Moments that are important to you and keep them in your back pocket. To use, learn from, lean on, and rest with. We all created our own toolkits and I've carried it with me throughout graduate school. The intellectual and feminist community and solidarity I felt in the classroom that day, connecting over this book and the shared experiences it spoke to and brought forth, also stays with me.
Sara Ahmed
<em>Living a Feminist Life</em>
Fall 2017
A.F. Lewis, 27, Ph.D. candidate and graduate instructor
feminist-killjoys
Literature and Its Worlds of Possibility
Coccia enlists the words of feminist theorist and poet Adrienne Rich to articulate the power of the humanities: “I came to believe a child’s belief, but also a poet’s … that language, writing, those pages of print could teach me how to live, could tell me what was possible.” Literature can open up worlds of possibility, encapsulating what the humanities can offer us.
In middle school, Harper Lee’s <em>To Kill a Mockingbird</em> inspired Emily Coccia to imagine the possibilities of the law to bring communities closer to justice. In college, it was the world of critical theory—such as feminist and queer theory—however, that helped her understand the other paths available to those wishing to enact social change.
<em>To Kill a Mockingbird</em> by Harper Lee; queer and critical theory by Adrienne Rich and others
Emily Coccia, the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress
literature-worlds-of-possibility
Sometimes You Just Need to Keep Reading
<p>Growing up in the mid-1960s as a white girl in Tuskegee, Alabama, Mab Segrest attended a segregated private school that her parents had helped found in response to a court order years earlier to integrate public high schools. In the shadows of governor George Wallace’s racist violence, history had “come to [her] front door.” Seeking a better understanding of the U.S. South, she found William Faulkner’s <em>The Sound and the Fury</em> in the local library. Perplexed by the interior monologue of its opening pages, she forged ahead in grappling with the famed Southern writer’s dizzying language. Around page 105, a revelation rewarded her persistence: she had been reading from the point of view of cognitively impaired Benjy, the “idiot.”</p>
<p>Years later, while a graduate student in Duke’s English department, a time during which she eventually came out as a lesbian, she explored the contents of the Intimate Bookshop in the next town over, Chapel Hill. A question in a book called <em>Sappho Was a Right-On Woman</em> transformed her worldview: “What causes heterosexuality?” By shifting the query from <em>homo</em>sexuality to <em>hetero</em>sexuality, the question was a “revelation” for Segrest.</p>
<p>By continuing to dwell on Faulkner’s novel, Segrest learned the value of perseverance: “Sometimes you just need to keep reading.” In grappling with the queries of a feminist text (“what causes heterosexuality?”), she realized that “how you ask the questions makes a really big difference.” Texts, arguments, and how people struggle with what it means to be human can be “liberatory or revelatory,” whether for a young girl in the midst of an apartheid system or for a lesbian woman in a homophobic society. Together, these humanities moments bookend Segrest’s personal and intellectual formation and her understanding of the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender.</p>
mid-1960s
<a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/meet-the-fellows/mab-segrest/">Mab Segrest</a>, Professor Emerita, Connecticut College
segrest-sometimes-you-just-need-to-keep-reading
The Empowering Legacy of Science Fiction
Davidson traces an arc through her life story which began when a fifth-grade teacher gave her a copy of the novel <em>Dragonsong</em> by Anne McCaffrey. This gesture, combined with the bold and self-affirming nature of a novel featuring a determined young female protagonist, gave Davidson the strength and conviction to surpass her own expectations of herself.
<em>Dragonsong</em> by Anne McCaffrey
Michelle Davidson, educator and owner of The Lyceum Steps, an education evaluation company
legacy-science-fiction
Giving Value and Thought to the Imaginary
<em>Roxaboxen</em>, a book by Alice McLerran
During the 2019 NHC GSSR.
Katelyn Campbell, 24, PhD Student in American Studies at UNC Chapel Hill
value-thought-imaginary
Unexpected Lessons in Empowerment
My Humanities Moment involves a connection between two individuals that might not initially seem to have anything in common: Jane Austen and Quentin Tarantino. One of the first places I found inspiration for the tenacity that has always kept me going through numerous personal and professional challenges was in the novels of Jane Austen. The rather conventional Austen can hardly be called a feminist since her strongest characters ultimately bend to the social and gender expectations of their time. When I was in middle school, however, I didn’t know that. I read for pleasure, rather than analysis, and had a greater desire to accept a much more romantic vision of the world. This caused me to see characters like Elizabeth Bennett and Elinor Dashwood as strong women who faced difficult circumstances with grace and determination and spoke up for the things they believed in. I remember admiring their ability to put actions behind their words and positions—they seemed to fight hardest when things got tough. <br /><br />Flash forward about fifteen years to the first time I saw Tarantino’s <em>Kill Bill</em> series. Ironically, The Bride (Beatrix Kiddo) spoke to me in the same way as the Austen characters. Kiddo is attacked by people she considered her allies and left for dead in a way that pretty much should have assured her demise. The most inspiring scene for me has always been in the second movie, which depicts her escape from a grave in which she has been buried alive. I found her will to survive circumstances that would have destroyed another person—both literally and figuratively—incredibly motivating. <br /><br />Getting my masters’ degrees and my PhD has been a struggle to say the least. When I began my quest for an advanced education, I was a young mother who lived in a tiny rural town, fighting for a way to effectively express my value system in an environment that was much more conservative than I was. But whenever I felt like giving up—like when I was overwhelmed with work, life, or whatever—I tried to remember these fictional women. They refused to wallow in self-pity, but simply picked themselves up, reorganized, or even crawled out of the dirt to face the next moment with purpose and resolve. I still think of them when I find myself faltering and credit them for giving me the willpower to fight my own battles. They truly have made me the person I am today.
Books and Films
Throughout my life
Melissa Young, Archivist and Historian
unexpected-lessons-empowerment
Coming Into My Feminist Consciousness
My Humanities Moment occurred during my Junior year in college, when I attended an evening session with Gerda Lerner, the author of <em>The Creation of Feminist Consciousness</em> and one of the founders of the academic field called women’s history. <br /><br />I read only short sections of the book assigned in my women’s studies class. (The course itself was a revelation to me, and a requirement because I didn’t score a 5 on my high school AP History exam. Being forced to take history courses in college was the bright side of this failure, because it was in those classes that I learned that history is more than the dates of battles, treaties, and founding documents -- all activities of men. I realized that women were doing cool (and important) things while all that other business was going on.) <br /><br />I remember almost nothing about the event except a single line by the speaker, which I can only approximate here. Dr. Lerner said that the tragedy of women’s history is the sheer waste of intellectual capital for millenia. She asked us to consider what our culture might have lost -- what all the world’s cultures have lost -- due to women’s subjugation and their lack of access to education. How many books were never written? How many works of art never made? How many ideas in philosophy and politics and religion and science were never engendered because of one gender’s systematic oppression? <br /><br />I remember sobbing in my chair. I remember the choking anger I felt at this injustice. I also remember the feeling I finally had an answer to a question my father had once posed. <br /><br />Now, you have to understand a bit about me to understand this moment, my coming to feminist consciousness. I was the only girl in a family of three boys. I was the daughter of a man who could have given the Great Santini a run for his money. Our household was run with military precision, my father being a retired Army officer, Vietnam veteran, helicopter pilot, and Ranger instructor, and my mother a traditional, mild-mannered wife. Our house was patriarchal, to be sure, and I did my best to measure up to a standard that placed male bodies and minds above all else. (My father, in fact, once told me that I was the “best son he ever had,” a true compliment coming from him.) <br /><br />I understand now that my father was a product of his time, born in 1931 and raised in Tennessee, but as a young girl I received mixed messages about my place. He appreciated my intellect and we often spent evenings together watching Masterpiece Theater or some other PBS documentary that would be “wasted” on my brothers. During one of these evenings, my father asked me, “Why do you suppose there are no women composers?” <br /><br />I cannot remember the exact tone of his question; he could very well have been taunting me, reinforcing the idea that women were inferior because, look, there’s the proof. There are no women composers. They must be bad at composing. Taunting me was one of my father’s unfortunate habits. But I like to think my father’s tone also included some confusion and curiosity. Here he was with this brainy daughter -- who was, in his words, “smarter than all three boys put together” -- but where could she really succeed if there were no women composers? <br /><br />I certainly don’t recall my answer to my father’s question, but I do remember the roiling of my brain and the shame I felt at not having a good explanation for why there were no women composers, few women authors, no women presidents, and certainly no female helicopter pilots. I remember the queasy sense of defeat that whatever my intellect, I couldn’t amount to much -- or at least not to the level of men. And I wanted to be a good man -- the best son -- for my terrifying, mercurial father. <br /><br />Gerda Lerner’s words gave me the answer I needed. There were no women composers because, according to Lerner, patriarchy had “skewed the intellectual development of women as a group, since their major intellectual endeavor had to be to counteract the pervasive patriarchal assumptions of their inferiority and incompleteness as human beings.” <br /><br />That’s exactly what I had been doing in my family for 20-something years, trying to counteract the idea that I was inferior. <br /><br />I never got to explain all this to my father, partly because I was too afraid, partly because I hadn’t worked it all out in a bell ringer, iron-clad speech that would once and for all convince him of women’s equality, and partly because he died soon after I graduated. But Gerda Lerner’s words have never left me, and they’ve helped me understand how the humanities -- the intellectual endeavors of both women and men -- can and do nurture the mind and the soul.
<em>The Creation of Feminist Consciousness</em> by Gerda Lerner
1993-1994
C. N. Bernstein
coming-into-my-feminist-consciousness
All Thanks to Olivia Pope
I decided to go into academia at a panel about Scandal. It was 2015 and I was a college senior.
Like millions of other fans, one weekly joy was Shonda Rhimes’ Thursday night primetime takeover: Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder. The thrill of these Thursdays was not only the juicy and ridiculous plots, but the chance to see dynamic stories of Black women on television. Between my friends, my mom, grandma, and Black Twitter as a whole -- we all had something to say. Yall remember the episode when Olivia is kidnapped, locked in a basement of sorts, but her hair remains frizz and kink-free?
The Shondaland symposium, hosted on my campus, brought together Black women scholars from an array of academic disciplines ( History, Women’s Studies, Law, Cultural Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Black Diaspora Studies, and Media Studies) to discuss this beloved tv takeover. As speakers framed the moment, I learned how historic this cultural production was. There hadn’t been a Black woman lead on primetime TV in more than forty years. That day I entered a great cipher (as Gwendolyn Pough would call it)… brilliant Black feminists came together in the intellectual and honest riffing of ideas. The discussions were, of course, genius. No stone went unturned. These scholars took up everything from what it meant to envision a Black woman with the power to run the State, how Rhimes’ complex characters transcend archetypes of Black womanhood, to Black women's still unprotected status under the law. The panelists engaged in the more pressing issues too: Fitz or Jake?, favorite sex scenes, hand-bags, petticoats, and iconic Poppa Pope speeches. Between giggles, I feverishly jotted down notes.
In the humanities, we take up questions pertinent to the dynamism of personhood and complexity politics. Yet, Black women are often left out of the mix. By senior year of college, I had come to know that I loved the humanities. This moment was the moment I learned that the humanities could love me back.
ShondaLand Symposium
2015
Sarah Scriven, 26, PhD Student in Women's Studies
all-thanks-to-olivia-pope
Humanities Moment(s)
During my hours of online teaching this year, I have repeatedly tried to bring myself back to my first encounters with the Humanities classroom. As an enthusiastic first-year student in comparative literature, I was excited to learn about art and culture from authors and specialists in cultural history and to be trained in the study of specific authors, styles, and genres. <br /><br />I had always been drawn to folklore and been curious about how narratives helped to make sense of the world. My learning had at least always been aided by narrative, the more vivid the details the better. For example, it was much easier to remember geographical information, say the name of the farm, Miklibær, if you knew the 19th-century story of the ghost, Sólveig who haunted the local priest, Oddur. Or the name of the region Ódáðahraun if you knew the lullaby "Sofðu unga ástin mín" about the mother who had fled poverty into the dangerous highlands and was singing to her child in hiding. <br /><br />When I made it to the humanities classroom it took me by surprise how it was not simply a place where meaning was mediated but a place in which I was trained to investigate how “meaning” takes place. I was both exhausted and thrilled by invitations to investigate how meaning is grounded in culture, relations, histories, and language in all its shapes and forms. In one of my first assignments in a class on Icelandic poetry, I received a comment from a teacher encouraging me to go “deeper” with my interpretation. She encouraged me to follow my own analysis, to try out what felt like a radical idea at the risk of being “incorrect”. Her comments were probably standard advice she gave to all her students, something she wrote on the endless papers that needed grading but for me, it was a formative moment of recognition of my voice and ideas. <br /><br />While the content of the poem escapes me (I think it was about feminism and potatoes) I can recall the feeling of that instructive moment and its effect on my journey as a reader and thinker lingers. Still to this day I remember the thrill of literary analysis, how we followed the teacher as she dissected poems, plays, and novels and somehow she made the students feel like they were necessary contributors to the study. Students brought different insights to the discussion and the teacher showed us how to see surprising connections between cultural texts. It felt like the possibility of meaning was both grounded in the teacher’s scholarship but also the exchange between the people gathered in the room. Through this process, the authority of knowledge started to feel slippery, which was a powerful exchange, especially in a university setting. It felt to me that the collective search for the answer to our questions required vulnerability from the teacher but also every student willing to participate in the conversation. It felt like we were not only discussing literary materials but also always debating how we should discuss them. What do we see on the page? What is missing? Where do we begin in our interpretation? With the author? Her environment? Essentially, how do we see? But also, how did the text even make it to us, the readers? Who preserved it? Why does that matter? <br /><br />I specifically remember how powerful it was to encounter feminist analysis, postcolonial and critical race theory, and to have access to new vocabularies to talk about power relations across time and space. The vocabulary of their insight even brought me closer to my original fascination with folklore, and I began to see the stories of my childhood not just as entertainment but as markers of power. Why were there so many ghost stories of young poor women that were haunting men of a higher class and stature? Could these stories tell us something about how colonialism conditioned gender and class relations in 19th century Iceland? <br /><br />In these encounters with the approaches of the humanities, or "humanities moments" it felt like we in the class were not just discussing an individual poem or story but our relations to, well everything. These memories of deep learning in the classroom continue to inspire my own practice of teaching. And while "thrill" is not necessarily an apt description for every one of my own classes the possibility of these humanities moments is something that continues to inspire me.
Sólveig Ásta Sigurðardóttir, 31, Ph.D. candidate
humanities-moments
Rebecca: The Novel & its Various Adaptations
Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of Daphne DuMaurier's <em>Rebecca</em>
Primary School
Alexis Lygoumenos, PhD student, actress under the stage name Alexis Nichols
rebecca-novel-adaptations