1
30
61
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Tbilisi Architecture
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Pixabay
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tbilisi-architecture
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Educators
Description
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This collection features contributions by teachers, education administrators and others involved in teaching at levels K-16.
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educators-humanities-moments
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Professional Development through FCPS in Virginia, USA
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Maggie, 29, High School Social Studies teacher
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Summer 2021
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Architecture in Tbilisi, Georgia
Description
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This was my fourth trip to Georgia since 2016 and each trip I have noticed a slow-and-steady increase in the amount of "western" influence in the city. From one year to the next, hotels- huge skyscrapers in a city of modestly tall buildings- are being built with seemingly no regard for the traditional architecture of the ancient city. To me (and truthfully, many of my Georgian friends share similar sentiments), these buildings are massive eyesores that break-up a beautiful, low cityscape that is not only the view from the balcony of the house in which we stay, but also seen from all over the city. This has an impact on me because I contextualize the city's expansion and economic growth within the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago. Since the collapse, this small but vivacious country has seen civil war, invasions and annexations from foreign adversaries, and a multitude of diplomatic relationships developed with countries both previously in and out of the Soviet bloc. The context and the subsequent developments have ushered in a new era in Georgia- one where there are no foreign powers at the helm of their government. One in which Georgia is in control of their own future for the first time in a long time.
As you travel in the city and beyond, you can see a host of influences from the Soviet era and of western countries. However, what remains clear is a strong Georgian tradition. You can travel in Tbilisi or even venture out into more rural villages and find feasts, toasts, celebrations, similar driving patterns, urban planning, architectural influences and more. All of this is to say that the architecture of their capital is one example of the tension between preserving tradition in Georgia and in welcoming innovation and change into the fold. You see it in other ways, too: social developments, cultural developments, and even the fact that the Georgian alphabet, spoken and written language is almost completely isolated to this small country of about 3.5 million people, with most people speaking at least one other language, sometimes even two or three. I feel as though I am witnessing a critical point in the development of the modern state of Georgia.
This beautiful country has welcomed me several times in the past five years with warm hospitality, friendship, delicious food, unique and incomparable experiences, all within a changing physical and cultural landscape. I have learned an immense amount about different subcultures of Georgians, what the people as a collective share and cherish, and how they've fought for their independence as a nation and a people. Their traditions are cherished, yet they are turning a new page and ushering themselves into a more modern era. I look forward to seeing the continued preservation of the traditions while also seeing the innovations they welcome.
Title
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Preserving Tradition and Embracing Change
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preserving-tradition-embracing-change
Architecture
History
Tbilisi, Georgia
-
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American Neighborhood
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american-neighborhood
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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NHC
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Carey Kelley, 44, Ph.D. candidate, University of Missouri
Description
An account of the resource
My wanderlust took me to many places around the world where I experienced humanities moments at nearly every turn, but my hometown is where my relationship with the humanities was born.
My childhood in a small town in New Hampshire was steeped in history. Impressive 19th century buildings and covered bridges painted the backdrop of my formative years and the hours of my days were measured by the ringing of Revere bells.
Sarah Josepha Hale also hailed from the same town. Hale wrote, published, and advocated for women’s education, but is most commonly known for her nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” Our lives were separated by over a century, but our childhood homes were only separated by a driveway and as a result she often came to my mind.
Hale’s life sparked my curiosity about what role women played in American history and how they influenced their world despite the restrictions society placed on them. The constant reminder that women do make history helped foster my interest in the humanities.
Title
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Homegrown
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homegrown
American history
History
New Hampshire
Songs
Women's Rights
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Artifact
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Will Beattie
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artifact
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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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
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July 2018
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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
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saint-cuthbert-one-voice-silent-crowd
Anglo-Saxon
Artifacts
History
Literature
Material Culture
Medieval History
Museum
-
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Sword in Chicago
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sword-chicago
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
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.
Referrer
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National Humanities Center
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Thomas Morin, 32, Historian
Date
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2012
Source
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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
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A Sword From Italy by Way of Alexandria
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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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Chinese street
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chinese-street
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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Jinghong Zhang, 26, history Ph.D. student
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May 2021
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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
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<em>A Touch of Green</em>
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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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Beowulf manuscript
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beowulf-manuscript
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
Identifier
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
Text
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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.
Description
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.
Title
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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
Identifier
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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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NHC Graduate Winter Residency (2020)
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Morgane Haesen, 28, PhD candidate (French and Francophone Studies), Penn State University
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
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
A name given to the resource
The “Infinitely Human”: Life Writings, Locks of Hair and Lived History
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
infinitely-human
Archives
Family Histories
Historical Memory
History
Strasbourg, France
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2ffcdf61c39701707578c594f0c33df3
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Title
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Big Bang
Source
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Pixabay
Identifier
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big-bang
Dublin Core
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
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.
Referrer
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National Humanities Center
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Jiajun Zou, 25, Graduate Student
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Maps of Time
Description
An account of the resource
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
-
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Title
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Chicano Park
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chicano-park
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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During the National Humanities Center VGSSR2020
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Sean Ettinger, 28, PhD Candidate in History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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2017
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My visit to Chicano Park in San Diego, California
Description
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I had been in San Diego for less than a week and was still unsure of bus routes. Having successfully navigated the trolley-to-bus transfer from La Mesa to the Gaslight District downtown, I figured I was close enough to walk. If it were a different day I would welcome any unexpected detours as a result of getting on the wrong bus, but today I was headed somewhere specific.
It was July, Saturday, and sunny. I walked southwest from downtown heading toward Barrio Logan. A historically working class Mexican and Mexican American neighborhood in the city, Barrio Logan is home to Chicano Park. Chicano Park is located under the Coronado Bridge and contains over 70 outdoor murals that decorate the pillars that support the bridge.
Chicano Park came into existence in April 1970 when neighborhood activists occupied the then vacant space under the bridge. The bridge was built around three years earlier, displacing thousands of residents in the process. Though the vacant space under the bridge was originally set to be the site of a highway patrol station, community activists instead demanded that the site be turned into a public park. After months of struggle, the city ceded to the community activists’ demands and designated the site a park. Soon thereafter local residents began calling the space Chicano Park. The name Chicano Park reflected not only how Barrio Logan was a predominantly Mexican and Mexican American neighborhood, but also how those involved with the takeover supported El Movimiento, the civil rights movement in the U.S. that focused on those of Mexican descent. Activists who participated in El Movimiento regularly identified themselves as Chicanas and Chicanos.
Since the 1970s artists like Victor Ochoa, Yolanda Lopez, and Salvador Torres have painted murals dedicated to Mexican and Mexican American culture and history on the bridge’s bare pillars. Popular murals painted in the 1970s include Historical Mural, Quetzalcóatl, and Birth of La Raza. Much like the name of the park, artists found inspiration in El Movimiento’s goals of eradicating ethnoracial discrimination and used the bridge’s pillars to present positive renderings of those of Mexican descent. Also starting in the 1970s, a festival, or Chicano Park Day, is held each April commemorating the day community residents occupied the land under the bridge, reinforcing the park’s continued importance to the local community.
After around a half hour of walking toward the park, colorful pillars broke into view. I entered the park and saw people walking among the pillars taking photos of the murals and reading the walls. People sat on steps of the green, red, and white painted kiosko situated near the center of the park. As I walked around taking my own photos a man in his mid-20s approached me and we began to talk. Learning that I was not a local, he began running through aspects of the park’s history. While I would later tell him that I was writing about Chicano Park in my dissertation, I initially kept this information to myself. I was more interested in hearing about how he spoke of the park. As he talked he braided the park’s history and importance to the community with the park’s significance in his own life. We stayed in the park and talked for hours while he guided me from pillar to pillar discussing the murals.
My “Humanities Moment” is therefore the confluence of walking to the park, seeing the pillars for the first time, and listening to a man – now a friend – talk about the importance of Chicano Park in his life and to the community. Chicano Park is representative of Mexican and Mexican American activism, culture, and history in the U.S. and reveals the power of community to determine the shape of its immediate surroundings. As my friend also demonstrated, Chicano Park is deeply personal and holds layers of meaning for community residents and those who visit the park.
Title
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Chicano Park
Identifier
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chicano-park
Activism
Artists
Communication
Community
Cultural History
History
Public Spaces
San Diego, California
-
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Anne Frank House
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anne-frank-house
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Jared Willis, 34, Student
Date
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2001
Description
An account of the resource
At the age of 16, I had the opportunity to travel to Amsterdam with my family. Even at an early age, I had a genuine interest in history and different cultures of the world, and I had never traveled outside of the country, so I was very excited about this trip.
In our travels through the city, I had many wonderful experiences. I visited several nice restaurants, had seen interesting live performances, and soaked up the culture everywhere I went. I went to the Van Gogh museum and beautiful Catholic churches hidden throughout seemingly regular neighborhoods. The most memorable venture for me, however, was when I went to the Anne Frank house.
I don't think anything can necessarily prepare a person for an experience like that. Sure, one can read about the atrocities of the mid-twentieth century that took place all over Europe - worldwide, really - and one can view photographs online of the reprehensible things that were done to people over the course of that time, but it's difficult to fully comprehend what people were subjected to until you are actually standing in the same space where it all occurred.
Behind a normal-looking, innocuous bookshelf on the top floor in what used to be Anne Frank's father's business, opened up a single space that was approximately 450 square feet in size. For two years, eight people hid in this tiny space from an invader who was determined to find and exterminate people like them. Upon entering that room, I was floored. I couldn't believe that they were forced to live like that - in hiding from murderous tyrants.
I think that's when I realized the power of the human spirit and its will to survive. What lengths could a person be willing to go to simply stay alive and protect the ones he or she loves? I posit that that limit doesn't exist; people will likely do anything necessary to survive.
Title
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Visiting the Anne Frank House
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visiting-the-anne-frank-house
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Family
Frank, Anne
History
Holocaust
World War II (1939-1945)
-
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books
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books
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Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/eeSdJfLfx1A
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Professional Development
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Mary Catherine Keating, 52, Teacher
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Middle School and High school
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<em>Animal Farm</em> by George Orwell
Description
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When I was in middle school I came to love history, especially Russian history and Hitler's Germany. This time period intrigued me, plus I learned if I read about communists and Nazis, teachers would leave me alone, and allow me to read. My father recommended George Orwell's <em>Animal Farm</em> while I was in 8th grade. I read the book, and enjoyed it, then moved on. <br /><br />In ninth grade social studies, I had to read a satire and present it to the class. I asked to read <em>Animal Farm</em>, and gave the worst presentation. But my teacher stopped me and began to ask me questions, especially about links between current events and the book. I was able to make connections. <br /><br />In eleventh grade, my social studies teacher, Mr. Eldeman, had my class read and discuss <em>Animal Farm</em>. He asked us questions about the book, and one question has stuck with me. Who is the hero of the book? As a class we would present a character, and he would show us why the character was not the hero. We never answered the question. 5 years after I graduated, I ran into Mr. Eldeman, and asked him who was the hero, his response was who do you think? To this day I still do not know the answer.
Title
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Who is the Hero of <em>Animal Farm?</em>
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who-is-hero-animal-farm
Animal Farm
Critical Thinking
High School Teachers
History
Novels
Orwell, George
Satire
Social Commentary
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Scottish Highlands
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Pixabay
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scottish-highlands
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Teacher Advisory Council
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This collection includes contributions from the National Humanities Center's Teacher Advisory Council. The council is a 14-member board that supports the Education Programs of the National Humanities Center for a one-year term of service.
Text
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FCPS
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Sarah Murphy, Teacher in Virginia
Date
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July, 2018
Source
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A summer trip to Edinburgh, Scotland
Description
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I've always loved to travel, and one of my favorite parts is getting to have a connection to the place that in our classrooms we refer to in the abstract. It makes the history more tangible, real, and often provides perspective that we don't get from secondary sources. While travelling in Scotland last summer, I did one of those seemingly cheesy bus tours that carts you around to different scenic and historic locations.
The legacy of English rule and colonization is still very present and visceral to the Scottish people. Hearing the stories being told about the breaking of the clans, the violence towards rebels, and seeing some of those monuments lent a viewpoint that I hadn't really been privy to. This was a topic that I had learned mostly from an English perspective, minus a movie or TV show here and there. Watching "Braveheart" is one thing, but hearing a descendant of a Scottish rebel speak of the events as though he were there is another. Standing in Glencoe valley and hearing of the skirmishes that occurred adds another layer of understanding. To this day, the experience makes me reconsider the phrase "History is written by the victor." What other perspectives are we missing by staying in one place?
Title
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Scottish Highlands
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scottish-highlands
Colonialism
History
Scotland
Teachers & Teaching
Travel
-
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White House
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https://unsplash.com/photos/igCBFrMd11I
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white-house
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Graduate Student Summer Residents 2019
Description
An account of the resource
The National Humanities Center's graduate student summer residency program, <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/nhc-welcomes-graduate-student-summer-residents/">“Objects and Places in an Inquiry-Based Classroom: Teaching, Learning, and Research in the Humanities”</a> took place July 15–26, 2019. Representing 28 universities in 18 states, these participants worked with leading scholars and educators from across the United States as they learned how to add value to their research by focusing on teaching and learning.
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During the Graduate Student Summer Residency Program
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Hello, my name is Justina Licata, and I am a Ph.D. student studying history at UNC-G. And my humanities moment relates to how I became a history major many years ago, and it dates back to my eighth grade year. I think I was 13, I may have been 12. I went to school in Southern California in a town called Yorba Linda, it's actually where Nixon was born. Anyway, side-note. And I was very excited to take history, particularly U.S. history, I loved, loved history because my parents really made it a big part of my childhood by buying my sister and I lots of great books about history and art history. So I already had a really great foundation for loving history, but my eighth grade history/social studies teacher really kind of cemented it for me. Her name was Mrs. McClain and she was a fabulous teacher. She did a great job of making history feel alive and present, not just something that happened in the far past.
One way she did this was, I was in eighth grade during the 2000 Bush V. Gore election. And she took the time to, on an almost daily basis, kind of update us as that recount was occurring and explaining to us what was happening, how the Supreme Court participated in that election's decision, and she just really made the present feel as if it's a historical moment that we were living through and kind of appreciating that moment, whether we liked the outcome of that election or not, as a historical moment to pay attention to and that something people in the future will be reflecting upon, which is kind of poignant because the dissertation I'm working on is actually quite contemporary, something that's happened in the 90's mostly. And so it's been interesting to think back on how her, kind of, encapsulating that the present is a historical moment as well was really poignant for me.
One other thing I wanted to mention is that there was a particular lesson that she gave that really kind of made me realize that you could study history as a career and not just study, you know, the math and the science and the English, you know. That actually history could be something that you spent much of your college career dedicated to, which was something I didn't realize even though I loved it so much. So one day she, I don't actually recall what the lesson was about, but I'm assuming it was the Civil War because of what I will tell you in a minute, but she took the time to tell us a little bit about a paper she wrote in college, and I remember that she was writing, she was asked to write a paper about two years in the Federal Congress, so to examine two years in which of the House and Senate and what they did during that one session. So, she, I remember she told us that she chose to write about the 37th United States Congress which was the Congress that was sitting during the Civil War, so half of the Congress was not actually attending, half the members were not actually attending the sessions and going to Congress and D.C. because they had seceded.
And I just remember being so fascinated by this, and I couldn't even explain why I was so fascinated, I just thought wow that sounds so fascinating, and I wanted to write something similar. And, I remember thinking, well, that must, I don't think everyone's probably having this reaction to her explaining a paper she wrote in college, but I did remember also thinking that in that moment, realizing, oh, you can actually choose to major in history, and you can focus and learn, you know, in depth, about this topic, and that that was, in fact, what I really wanted to do, that I just loved history so much, and the idea of making this thing that I loved a career was truly remarkable and really poignant for me.
And so pretty much after that day, I told anyone who cared that I was going to, in fact, major in history and that I wanted to do something related to history as a career. I didn't know what that would be yet, but I did, in fact, go and do that, and I was really, I'm just so grateful that Mrs. McClain made that something that felt accessible to me, that she made it so that it felt like you can absolutely go and do this, and she kind of also gave me further insight as to how colleges worked which was really helpful as I was entering high school and starting to think about college in a more serious way, so I am very very indebted to Mrs. McClain, and I haven't spoken with her in a while, so I hope to try and maybe track her down and tell her how much I appreciated what she did for me way back then.
So, thank you so much, I appreciate it, and that is my humanities moment. Okay, thanks.
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Justina Licata, 32 years old, Ph.D. Candidate
Date
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When I was 12 or 13 in the eighth grade.
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A teacher's lesson
Description
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Graduate student Justina Licata explains how a junior high school teacher's passion and influence led her to embrace the study of history as a lifelong vocation.
Title
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The Day I Decided to Major in History
Identifier
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day-I-decided-to-major-in-history
High School Students
History
Presidential Elections
Self-Realization
Teachers & Teaching
Yorba Linda, CA
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/15/317/Eatonville_Plaque.jpg
0a7fe9e570f029d10df36717907d8185
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Graduate Student Summer Residents 2019
Description
An account of the resource
The National Humanities Center's graduate student summer residency program, <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/nhc-welcomes-graduate-student-summer-residents/">“Objects and Places in an Inquiry-Based Classroom: Teaching, Learning, and Research in the Humanities”</a> took place July 15–26, 2019. Representing 28 universities in 18 states, these participants worked with leading scholars and educators from across the United States as they learned how to add value to their research by focusing on teaching and learning.
Text
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Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
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Valerie Rose Kelco, UNC-Greensboro, Literature
Date
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February 2014
Source
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Eatonville Walking Tour Plaques
Description
An account of the resource
This plaque, and several others, are sprinkled throughout Eatonville, Florida to guide a walking tour of America's first legally established self-governing all-African American municipality. Eatonville was established in 1887. The town gained popularity from its depiction in Zora Neale Hurston's novel, <em>Their Eyes Were Watching God</em> (1937), and her autobiography, <em>Dust Tracks on a Road</em> (1942). <br /><br />Sadly, 100 acres of Historic Eatonville has been lost due to expansion of the Greater Orlando area and Interstate 4. However, The Historic District of Eatonville was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 3, 1998. The Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community has been working to make Eatonville an internationally recognized tourism destination, to enhance the resources of the town, and to educate the public of its cultural significance and the community's heritage. <br /><br />I came to Eatonville because of my research and love for Zora Neale Hurston. Inspired by scholars such as Alice Walker, who worked to find and mark Hurston's final resting place, I too am aspired to keep Hurston's legacy from disappearing. The dilapidated plaques that are supposed to guide and educate the public about the importance of Eatonville are impossible to read. <br /><br />The sight of these plaques awakened a call-to-action inside of me. Since this moment, I have been working to digitally preserve Zora Neale Huston's Eatonville through geospatial technology and augmented and virtual reality technology. This technology has the capability to tell these stories in ways that are immersive and accessible. By digitally preserving these stories, future curious minds will be able to explore and share the experience.
Title
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"The Town that Freedom Built": Preserving Zora Neale Hurston's Eatonville
Identifier
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zora-neale-hurston-eatonville
Dust Tracks on a Road
Eatonville, Florida
Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Historical Markers
History
Hurston, Zora Neale
Memory
Public Spaces
Their Eyes Were Watching God
-
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f51c4c8e38f13c6f1f20caba9b62eeb1
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Monument Avenue, Richmond, Virginia
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Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monument_Avenue_and_Lee_Monument,_Richmond,_Va._(16810945346).jpg
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/349090586" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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NHC GSSR 2019
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Reclaiming Richmond
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ed-ayers-reclaiming-richmond
Description
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Historian Ed Ayers discusses how Richmond, Virginia’s 2015 sesquicentennial celebration drew upon the past to re-imagine the future. He emphasizes the ways in which the event’s planners sought to honor the diversity of perspectives and lived experiences in the former capital of the Confederacy.
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The 2015 sesquicentennial in Richmond, Virginia
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Dr. Ed Ayers, former President and Professor of History at the University of Richmond, former President of the Organization of American Historians, and noted public historian
Date
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April 2015
American Civil War (1861-1865)
Emancipation Proclamation (United States)
Historians
History
Richmond Sesquicentennial
Richmond, Virginia
-
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31b11fc9ef1d46000bacf225e8ca89f3
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Golda Meir in 1949
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Heidi Camp
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A Lifelong Love of Biographies
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Author, educational advocate, and entrepreneur David Bruce Smith recounts how his passion for reading biographies as a child instilled in him an enduring love of history and allowed him to overcome scholastic pressures he faced to deviate from his intellectual path. This exercise also connected him more strongly to a shared literary tradition within his family and granted him a level of insight and wisdom he has carried throughout his life.</p>
<p><em>Curator's note</em>: The Grateful American™ Foundation is dedicated to restoring enthusiasm in American history for kids and adults. Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in American Literature from George Washington University, and a master’s in Journalism from New York University. During the past 20 years he has been a real estate executive and the editor-in-chief/publisher of <i>Crystal City Magazine</i>. He is the author of 11 books, including his most recent title, <i>American Hero: John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States</i>. The Grateful American Book Series for <i>children</i>, featuring historic couples that were partnerships, debuts in the fall with <i>Abigail and John</i>—a joint biography of the Adams's.</p>
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david-bruce-smith-biographies
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David Bruce Smith, Founding Father of the Grateful American™ Foundation
Biography
Books & Reading
History
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/296/Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware.jpg
5f0a3e5cf206465c30ca5416bd551bf3
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”Washington Crossing the Delaware” by Emanuel Leutze (1851)
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/341103888" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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Heidi Camp
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Understanding History as Gossip
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Author, educational advocate, and entrepreneur David Bruce Smith discusses a transformational moment in his education, during which a high school teacher showed him the revelatory truth that history, at its core, is a collection of stories and gossip. Smith believes strongly that by presenting history to students as a series of exciting and illuminating stories, we can cultivate a more widespread appreciation for—and understanding of—history’s importance in the next generation of learners.</p>
<p><em>Curator's note</em>: The Grateful American™ Foundation is dedicated to restoring enthusiasm in American history for kids and adults. Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in American Literature from George Washington University, and a master’s in Journalism from New York University. During the past 20 years he has been a real estate executive and the editor-in-chief/publisher of <i>Crystal City Magazine</i>. He is the author of 11 books, including his most recent title, <i>American Hero: John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States</i>. The Grateful American Book Series for <i>children</i>, featuring historic couples that were partnerships, debuts in the fall with <i>Abigail and John</i>—a joint biography of the Adams's.</p>
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David Bruce Smith, Founding Father of the Grateful American™ Foundation
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david-bruce-smith-history
History
Teachers & Teaching
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/283/Unknown.jpeg
9f2dc4e958bb1c380e0cc5ea1907560c
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Kingfisher History Encyclopedia
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Nora Nunn
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Milind Kulkarni, 30, Engineer
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1999
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Kingfisher World History Encyclopedia
Description
An account of the resource
My humanities moment is about a brilliant encyclopedia which covered the vastness of world history from the prehistoric times to the present day in a concise and engrossing manner. I remember seeing the encyclopedia as a 5th grader in my neighbourhood bookstore. I was entranced by the picture on the book jacket. I think it was a medieval Norman-English stained glass painting. The book was imported into India and was very expensive, so my parents did not agree to get it immediately. I remember stopping by the bookstore many times on my way back from school and checking if the book was still on sale. I finally persuaded my parents to buy it for me.
One of the more interesting parts was that for every historical era there were timelines which showed significant events in every continent of the world. It made me appreciate how different civilizations and cultures went through ups and downs through the centuries, and how some went extinct while others adapted to changing circumstances and persisted through the tough times. It also makes you understand that the present world order is just a slice in the long arc of history and is not permanent.
The book really created in me a lifelong curiosity for history. I think learning about history also enlightens you about what makes communities and cultures strong and successful. Things like a healthy scepticism against dogma, a robust justice system and a conducive climate for innovation are all things which enable great societies. And I think we should all be cognizant of it so that we can improve our communities.
Title
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The long arc of history
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milind-kulkarni-long-arc-history
Books & Reading
Curiosity
Encyclopedias
Engineers
History
Kingfisher World History Encyclopedia
Surat, India
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/274/World_Flag_map.png
e1c5e3354b2c90d4c3ca5b61c47a8c17
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World flag map
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Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_Flag_map.png (Mason Vank's Maps)
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Heidi Camp
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/318871710" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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How Theology Helped Me Succeed in International Business
Description
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In any successful international business venture, you need to understand another culture. That’s the advice that James Hackett gives to his students. In this video, he reflects on how theology school—especially the study of the Bible—prompted him to investigate the intricate connections between religion, history, and culture.
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james-hackett-theology-culture
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James Hackett, CEO, Alta Mesa Resources
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The Bible
Business Leaders
Cultural Awareness
History
International Business
Religious Studies
The Bible
Theology
Vocation
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/229/Gandhi_Statue.jpg
ddab9dc986830e1b6909fee5e4613c30
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Statue of Mohandas Gandhi
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TAC
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Rick Parker, Middle School Social Studies Teacher
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September 2018
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Statue of Mohandas Gandhi
Description
An account of the resource
In front of the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta you’ll find this statue of Mohandas Gandhi. For years I have used a photograph of this statue to introduce our Indian Independence unit to my 7th graders with the prompt “Why is this statue of Gandhi in front of the King Center?” My students are already familiar with the American civil rights movement, and this inquiry was always a great hook to learn about Gandhi’s system of nonviolent civil disobedience, which Dr. King utilized so effectively.
Recently a substitute teacher asked a question that made me re-evaluate this prompt and the lesson I’d been teaching. During a casual conversation at lunch she asked me, “Why is Gandhi’s statue in front of the King Center?” I started to talk about satyagraha and how King found inspiration from Gandhi’s methods of protesting injustice, when she stopped me. “No, why is a statue of a racist in front of Dr. King’s museum?”
I was taken aback. It’s true, Gandhi’s racism toward people of African descent is well documented. He wrote about the black people of South Africa using derogatory terms like “Kaffir” and lamented the indignity of being imprisoned with native Africans. He spoke out against forcing Indians to share the same communities with Africans and condemned the denigration of Indian genes through marriage with black people.
Without realizing it, I had been teaching a sanitized version of Gandhi’s legacy. This moment opened a whole box of questions. For example:
- Surely, Dr. King knew about Gandhi’s views. Yet, he chose to ignore these for the sake of what he could accomplish by using Gandhi as a role model. What does that say about Dr. King? Was he selectively ignoring the racism or was his character so strong that he could look past this?
- Who “owns” history? Historians who seek to paint the clearest, most accurate record of the past? Or people who use those lessons for their own purposes?
- Was my pride in engaging students with history in a way that was easy for them to digest misplaced? Have I been doing them a disservice all these years?
So, I’m embracing a new approach. History is messy and needs to be taught that way. Exposing students to all sides of a story gives them a better chance to explore the nuances and form their own opinions. It can also give them a deeper appreciation for figures like Dr. King.
Title
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An epiphany over a statue of Gandhi
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epiphany-over-gandhi
Atlanta, Georgia
Civil Disobedience
Gandhi, Mohandas
History
History Education
King, Martin Luther
Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change
Memory
Racism
Statues
Teachers & Teaching
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/226/Africa_This_Way.jpg
b21c6429c2a552def18005801c98a8f2
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Barbados signs
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Barbados-signs
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
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A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
Still Image
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From Andy Mink
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Kristen Wilson 30 years old, history teacher in Albemarle County, Virginia
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A sign that I photographed while on the Atlantic coast of the island.
Description
An account of the resource
The image of this colorful sign is obviously meant to be “fun” and perhaps even funny. When I took this picture while traveling with fellow teachers and educators in Barbados, it honestly was because I thought the sign was kind of cute. But later on that day, when I thought about the sign and about looking East across the Atlantic Ocean, I had mixed emotions. The image seemed cheerful, but thinking about the sign marking the distance to Africa’s west coast made me feel anything but. All I could think about was that a few hundred years ago, African slaves on that coast were forced onto ships in chains. Those people endured a horrific journey of thousands of miles that lasted for several months, during which they endured most gruesome, horrific, inhumane treatment imaginable. Men, women, and children were separated from their loved ones, herded onto ships like animals, and packed into tight spaces to maximize cargo and profit for their captors. Many died of disease, suffocation, or drowning by throwing themselves overboard because they would rather die on their own terms than face whatever horrors awaited them at the end of their journey. Those that survived were whipped, beaten, starved, and then sold on the island of Barbados to grow sugar cane and face some of the shortest lifespans for slaves anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. These thoughts make me really upset. It’s a mixture of sadness, anger, shame and guilt that I used to push out of my mind when talking about or teaching about slavery or other less-than-cheerful topics in history in order to seem more objective or “removed”, but now I embrace those feelings. I use them to check my privilege, and to fuel the fire in me as a teacher and lifelong learner to learn as much as I can about the events and people in history who are so often underserved or overlooked because they aren’t “pleasant” or nostalgic enough to be “fun” to teach or learn about.
My trip to Barbados was an eye-opening one in many ways (some unexpected). I discovered that some of my own ancestors are buried on that island, and I learned that they were sugar planters and slave owners. This discovery further affirmed my belief that everyone is connected. Those connections might be rooted in the past, but they shape our present in ways that we don’t always fully, consciously acknowledge or understand. I wasn’t surprised by this information, and I also make no effort whatsoever to hide it. I don’t want to hide it. I don’t want to feel neutral or indifferent about it. I don’t want to ignore it or bury it or pretend that it doesn’t matter. It does matter. It matters because my privilege as a white person living in the United States is built on the forced movement and enslavement of African people. My ancestors came to the Americas of their own free will, and profited from slave labor in Barbados before they moved further north to Virginia. Those are the facts. The life that I now live and the comforts that I enjoy are byproducts of slavery, and to deny that fact would be unconscionable.
As a teacher, it is my responsibility to convey to my students that the impact of slavery cannot be underestimated. It is my job as an educator to not only be an objective purveyor of knowledge and information, but to help students contextualize why historical truth matters and how white privilege allows people to feel neutral and indifferent about slavery. Removed or neutral feelings about slavery are artifacts of white supremacy. Slavery isn’t something that should be taught only as a part of a unit on European Exploration and Colonization of the Americas. The Atlantic Slave Trade defines the American experience for all of us. The modern history of this entire hemisphere and of the entire world is defined by it. In my 10th and 11th grade classes, students do have questions about slavery and the slave trade. Unfortunately, they often sound a bit like this: “It happened, it was bad, but should we really worry that much about it? Do we really know what slavery was like? Do we really need to talk about it that much? Does it really affect people living in the 21st century?” This trip to Barbados, and the humanities moment that I had there only reaffirmed my belief that the answer to all of those questions is: YES.
Title
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Overlooked Histories
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overlooked-histories
Ancestry
Bathsheba, Barbados
History
History Education
Memory
Slavery
Teachers & Teaching
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/222/Brigadier_General_Lloyd_Tilghman_Vicksburg_Monument.jpg
10444ef9c7f4e84dbee236dd35ea574b
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Confederate General Lloyd Tilghman Monument - Vicksburg National Military Park, Mississippi
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Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brigadier_General_Lloyd_Tilghman_Vicksburg_Monument.jpg
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<p>I’m Julia Nguyen and my Humanities Moment, or at least this one because my life has been full of Humanities Moments, as a child—so a relatively early one—going to the National Military Park in Vicksburg, in Mississippi. I was raised in a family that has always been very interested in history, but going to that park really changed the way I thought about both history and the way that we think about history.</p>
<p>I remember being about twelve and the guide is explaining that the park is full of monuments that have been erected by individual states, veteran’s groups, other kinds of institutions, and explaining, for example, that every one is different and that the states themselves or the veteran’s groups decided what they wanted their monument to look like and what that was going to say about, say, involvement of troops from Mississippi in the siege of Vicksburg or the involvement of troops from Massachusetts.</p>
<p>That was the first time I had ever really thought about historical memory as a concept, and the idea that a monument is not just about the history, it’s about how society or a group or an individual wants us to remember the history. For a twelve-year old, that kind of blew my mind. This idea that monuments and historic sites are not themselves history; they are a representation of history. That has always really stuck with me.</p>
<p>I can still remember that moment so clearly, and as I then as an adult studied history in college, went on to graduate school—my own work as a historian is not in historical memory, but that concept continues to shape the way I think about the practice of history and the way that I do history myself: the idea that doing research and writing history is also a representation of what I or any other historian wants society to know or think about the past.</p>
<p>When I write history, I’m not writing the pure past. It doesn’t exist. I’m writing an interpretation, and I think sometimes we as historians, and it’s I think a natural human tendency—“Oh yes, of course, historians of the past were influenced by their own biases or perspectives, or the limitation of the sources that they had access to, but we do things better now!” Certainly, in some cases that’s true. We have access to more sources in some cases. You know, certainly the history of the Cold War can be written differently after the fall of the Soviet Union. But it’s still being shaped by our own perspectives, our own biases, the society in which we live and operate.</p>
<p>I try to keep that in mind as I do my own historical research and writing. Also of course, I think that now that we’re in a moment that monuments have become flashpoints again, it’s important to remember that sort of “ah-ha” moment, that sort of moment where my perspective was completely shifted, and remember that the monuments themselves are not the history. They are a representation of the history, and it’s important to know the full context in which they were erected and also to know the message that the creators wanted to convey, and what that says about them as individuals and organizations, and what it says about us as a society and the way that we choose to remember—or not remember—certain aspects of our history.</p>
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NEH "Contested Territory" summer institute
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<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" allow="autoplay" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/809871229&color=%2355d7d2&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=false&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=false"></iframe>
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Statues and the Shapeshifting of History
Description
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As a young girl visiting Vicksburg, Mississippi, Julia Nguyen encountered a Civil War statue. It altered not only the way she understands history, but the way she thinks about that very concept.
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Civil War statue in Vicksburg, Mississippi
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Julia Nguyen, historian and grant-maker
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statues-shapeshifting-history
Collective Memory
Historians
History
Statues
U.S. Civil War (1861-1865)
U.S. History
Vicksburg, Mississippi
Vocation
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/213/the-mother-1505000_960_720.jpg
9f367a9895b129b04975d583cc957053
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Village road in Vietnam
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
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A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
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contested-territory
Text
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The National Humanities Center
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Kevin Shuford
Date
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Wednesday, July 18th, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
Until this summer institute, I had never heard of the Vietnamese folk poetry known as ca dao. To be honest, I had never even thought of Vietnamese people having a poetic tradition at all. I, like so many other Americans, had relegated Vietnam to an inert location on a map or a tidy historical category. I could barely conceive of a Vietnam beyond the context of American military intervention. Even as we learned about the legacies of European colonialism in the initial seminars, I still saw Vietnam as an almost passive landscape trodden over by successive waves of foreign invaders. In effect, I had made Vietnam a victim in its own story. That changed for me when I heard professor and poet John Balaban talk about his experience collecting and publishing for the first time the oral poetry of Vietnamese farmers. Balaban spoke of an ancient people, full of history, full of passion, and full of pride, inundated by the monsoons that swept away the architectural vestiges of power that we in the “West” have come to rely on so heavily for our historical identity. What was left was a long, beautiful tradition of oral history preserved in the daily life of simple farmers. As Balaban eloquently writes in <em>Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry</em>, poetry flourished “in villages where the lone singer can hear his or her voice against the drone of crickets, the slap of water, or the rustling of banana leaves in the wind (p. 2). This line jolted me out of my facile characterization of Vietnam and its people. Long before the French cast their colonizing net over the people of Vietnam, long before the Americans stumbled into their disastrous war, long before there even was a place called Vietnam, a lone singer could hear her voice “against the drone of crickets, the slap of water, or the rustling of banana leaves in the wind.” The theme of our institute was “Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia.” At first glance, I assumed that we would be discussing America’s involvement in the so-called Vietnam War of the twentieth century; after two weeks of intense study, I have realized that I fundamentally misread the title of this institute. To study contested territory is not to examine how America and the Viet Cong fought bitterly over this hill or that, but rather to place America in the context of an ancient regional story that is crowded with diversity and life. “America’s Role in Southeast Asia” says nothing of dominance or destiny – it was my enculturation as an American that read into it such a teleological narrative. Contested territory, like so much else, starts, and perhaps ends, in the mind.
Title
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Discovering Contested Territory Through Vietnamese Folk Poetry
Source
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<em>Ca Dao Vietnam: Vietnamese Folk Poetry</em> by John Balaban
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discovering-contested-territory-through-vietnamese-folk-poetry
Colonialism
History
Oral Tradition
Poetry
Vietnam
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/212/Yasukuni.jpg
74b7570812e79cf10049321b99937818
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Yasukuni
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yasukuni
Dublin Core
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Title
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
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contested-territory
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
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The National Humanities Center
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Breann Johnston, Middle School Teacher
Date
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July 26th, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
Human connection is the most important part of life to me. I really value great relationships and look forward to connecting with new people every chance I get. Obviously, I am not going to have the same views on every single topic as anyone else. I think we make the biggest growth as human beings when we connect with people who have very different perspectives than our own, and we are willing to see things through their eyes. It does not mean that will always lead us to the same conclusion or change our own perspective in any way.
I use the phrase, “life is all about perspective” all the time, but how much the concept of contested territory is related to perspective did not really hit me until Morgan Pitelka was presenting his seminar, “Memory and Commemoration.” He discussed the Yūshūkan War/ Military Museum in Tokyo, Japan and explained that the Japanese people say the museum is a place of memorial for the lost soldiers, while others see it as a place to glorify Japan’s violent military past. There were other strong examples of contested perspectives throughout my time here in North Carolina, but that moment brought it all together for me.
Title
A name given to the resource
Contested Perspective
Identifier
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contested-perspective
Connection
History
Museums
Teachers & Teaching
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/210/Eisenhower_Ngo_Dinh_Diem.jpg
34f241863c9fda67272b4ce86e046856
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Presidential Meeting
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presidential-meeting
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
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A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
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Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
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contested-territory
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NEH Seminar on Contested Territory at the National Humanities Center
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Bryan Boucher, 39, Teacher
Date
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July 24, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
On May 8th, 1957, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was greeted by President Dwight Eisenhower (along with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles) at Washington National Airport at the beginning of an official state visit for President Diem. This seemingly ordinary photo is noteworthy because it captures the complexity of the Cold War and the contested territory of Southeast Asia, and embracing that chaotic feeling is a main reason why I love the humanities.
There is much to teach about in this photo. Why would Eisenhower personally greet Diem at the airport, something he only did on one other occasion (and is almost never done by sitting U.S. presidents for heads of state)? Why is the year 1957 important? What does the United States think of Vietnam at this time? How is this photo potentially problematic? There are contrasts on many levels when dissecting this photo, and it can launch exploration in so many directions.
The photo encapsulates a conversation that I had with Vietnam historian Pierre Asselin after a talk he presented to our NEH summer seminar at the National Humanities Center. While we were discussing the challenges of teaching the Cold War to students, Professor Asselin noted, “if you study the Cold War correctly, you should be more confused as you go along, and that’s a great feeling!” This last line resonated with me, and reiterated my belief that it is important for students to understand different perspectives, sometimes without finding an answer to the question that was posed, but understanding the complexity and nuance of that question. This process is where real learning takes place, and it is important to teach students to embrace this chaos (and even to seek it out) in their own learning. Challenging our initial impressions of a source and digging deeper speaks to the lifelong value of the humanities.
Title
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Embracing the Complexity and Chaos of the Humanities Through a Photo
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embracing-the-complexity-and-chaos-of-the-humanities-through-a-photo
Diplomacy
History
Photography
Presidents of the United States
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/200/French_Indochina_post_partition.png
c6268a7744443bc59d2548f17e853b7e
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French Indochina Post-Partition
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french-indochina-post-partition
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Title
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
Subject
The topic of the resource
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
An account of the resource
Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
Identifier
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contested-territory
Still Image
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National Humanities Center Summer Seminar
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Kate Cruze, 35, History Teacher, Greensboro NC
Date
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July 1954
Description
An account of the resource
I misunderstood the Geneva Accords and the reasons behind American involvement in Vietnam. I knew it was in the context of the Cold War but I did not understand why it had to happen and was I to teach a war or a conflict? After Pierre Asselin spoke on the subject and shared a similar map I understood that context was critical and that this was a war for the Vietnamese and a conflict the Americans could not politically shy away from.
The map chosen is significant as it is a Western perspective of a nation with delineations assigned by outsiders. Questions emerged. Where is Vietnam? Who is Vietnam? How could this map possibly tell me the answers.
It was in viewing this map and reflecting on the conversations and lectures from the seminar that I better understand this was a complex situation for a diverse group of people who had to answer difficult questions in the context of the Cold War. Who you claimed to be determined if you were a friend or foe of the United States. If a friend threatened to fall to our enemy, what choice did we have but to act in order to save an ally. As France used the Cold War to gain American support, the North Vietnamese used our own words to defend its independence. It was a time for hard choices, and we made ours: to defend democracy from tyranny of communism.
This moment in history resonated with me because I walked away finally feeling like I understood what various peoples of Vietnam were fighting for and how the United States fit into the narrative.
Title
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Why Americans in Indochina Wars?
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why-americans-in-indochina-wars
History
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/193/MFQ1_112_-_An_Extraordinary_emblematical_flag_-_Bussa_Rebellion_Banner_April_1816.jpg
0a0e475e6000f39ea380025e5da12972
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Bussa Rebellion Banner
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bussa-rebellion-banner
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
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A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
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Andrew Mink of the National Humanities Center
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Emily Longenecker, 34, High School Teacher, Virginia
Description
An account of the resource
I visited Barbados on a teacher professional development trip in 2018. My assigned research topic for the trip was Bussa’s 1816 slave rebellion. Within three days in April of that year, the rebellion had spread to most of the southern half of the island.
Slavery in Barbados was addressed in a limited way by tour guides and historians on the island. There were not accounts from the slaves to detail their life experience. During this trip, I viewed the rebellion as evidence that slaves were not satisfied with the conditions of their lives and wanted their freedom. In a roundabout on one of the highways in the country, there stands a statue of Bussa- hands raised, fists clenched, chains broken. However, there is no diary entry from Bussa, just accounts from the British of the importance of putting down the rebellion. We can only make assumptions about Bussa’s objectives, but we are missing his words.
In an account written in a private letter on Tuesday, April 16th, the slaves were described as carrying “an extraordinary emblematic flag.” British sketches of the flag, now housed in the National Archives in London, are the only record of the goals of the slaves. They were striving for the freedoms that had been denied to them. They wanted to marry and have access to the privileges of the planters. But they did not want to overthrow the British Crown. They wanted to be British citizens.
This flag is the voice of Bussa and his followers. Slaves were often kept illiterate in order to limit their access to the tools and ideas to agitate for freedom. In this way, their voices are lost. Without those voices, it is possible for historians and individuals to imagine what slaves would have thought or said. But those imaginations do not allow for the complexity of human thought and experience. We are missing these people and we will never truly know their lives. It is unique to have evidence of what Bussa really thought. It contributes to the recognition and understanding of the humanity of Bussa and his followers.
Title
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"An extraordinary emblematic flag"
Identifier
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an-extraordinary-emblematic-flag
Barbados
Bussa's Rebellion (1816)
History
Memory
Slavery
Teachers & Teaching
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/192/Barbados_Museum.jpg
ef593688f166f9ce2ce7637184f0136e
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Barbados Museum
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barbados-museum
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
Text
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Andy Mink
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John Skelton, 30, Teacher, Virginia
Date
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June 2018
Description
An account of the resource
The Barbados Museum and Historical Society is located in a former military prison. Its original purpose of control through force and containment is clear and obvious when I entered the present-day museum. Cannons flank the entrance, a symbol of calculated and brutal violence. The façade is imposing, an intimidating tall arch way designed not to invite but to deter entrance. However, today it is a place of education, a site of liberation for the thousands of stories of people and events in the island’s past. That past for Barbados is incredibly complex. Built on coldly calculated and horrific brutality of agricultural production and subsequent cultural diffusion, the island today grapples with economic, political, and social successes, challenges, and the myriad of geographic factors that influence their narrative to the present day.
Education is critical to Barbadians history and culture. Education was restricted from enslaved Africans, planters viewing an education as catalyst for rebellion. Upon becoming a sovereign nation, Barbados made a social and political commitment to education. Across the island, the pride and commitment to education is obvious. It is the theme that many social-historians touch on as a key marker for its rise in development relative to other island countries that make up the Caribbean. Barbadian planters feared the liberating force of education, Barbadians themselves intertwined economic and political independence with education, and today, many Barbadians put high value on education’s ability to promote the freedom of job opportunity and prosperity on or outside of the island.
This literal former prison’s repurposing into a historic museum was itself a catalyst to understanding Barbados, but also the challenge of the humanities as people grapple with their own past, present, and the connections between them. As people, we look to past individuals and stories and attempt to reutilize or repurpose them to educate, improve, or respond to contemporary and future challenges. This museum, and its reutilization of the prison as a place of confinement to that of freedom is symbolic of that process. Barbados’ past is brutal and complex and, rather than imprisoning that narrative, we must learn and use those real and human truths to promote a better future.
Title
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The Liberation of Our Past
Identifier
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the-liberation-of-our-past
Architecture
Barbados
Education
Geography
History
Museums
Prisons
Teachers & Teaching
Violence
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/191/Emancipation_Barbados.jpeg
bc3569ce6e9d7d0ad37b7736c9e29288
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Emancipation Act Barbados
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emancipation-act-barbados
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
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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Andy Mink
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Chris Cantone, 24, US History and World History I teacher at Albemarle High School in Albemarle County, Virginia
Date
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June 2018
Description
An account of the resource
“To be honest, I’m glad my family didn’t go to America. We ended slavery 30 years earlier. What were YOU guys thinking?”
Our Bajan tour guide of St. Nicholas Abbey told us this as we walked through the sugarcane plantation house. She chuckled, and we along with her, albeit awkwardly. She was right, too; the day before, our research group got to actually leaf through the Emancipation Act of 1834, the physical document that started the process of freedom in Barbados. THE original document! We all casually crowded around the pages and touched them with are bare hands. Compare that with the Declaration of Independence, which literally had a whole movie made about how impossible it would be to steal that document.
The concepts of freedom and liberation are remarkable, almost overwhelming to think about. As such I, along with many others, anchor these to our own experiences. I interact with freedom and liberation in an uniquely American way; I talk about the First Amendment with my US History students, and we discuss the Emancipation Proclamation as a seminal moment in the American story. However, sometimes this lens leads me to think that freedom itself is uniquely American. When I hear the word freedom, and mind immediately jumps to the Stars and Stripes. This, of course, is ridiculous. We didn’t invent freedom; in fact, we were pretty late to the party.
The communities we grew up in shape our worldview. Often, they give us a nearsightedness with regards to monumental events and processes. There are freedom stories from all over the world; it is our job, as global citizens, to learn and grow from them. Therefore, we can better understand and appreciate how each of our communities’ narratives fits within a far greater, and far richer, story.
Title
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The Emancipation Act of 1834 and our Shared Freedom Story
Identifier
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the-emancipation-act-of-1834-and-our-shared-freedom-story
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The Emancipation Act of 1834
Barbados
Emancipation Act of 1834 (Barbados)
Emancipation Proclamation (United States)
History
Liberation
Slavery
Teachers & Teaching
U.S. History
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/12/190/barbados_flag.png
fc8671700e5a69ad4b027823aa2434b0
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Barbados flag
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barbados-flag
Dublin Core
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Title
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Virginia Geographic Alliance West Indies Teacher Institute
Description
An account of the resource
A week-long experiential professional development experience for teachers taking place during June 2018 in Barbados
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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Andy Mink
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Elizabeth Mulcahy, Social Studies Teacher
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
June 18, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
Standing on Chamberlain Bridge and looking at Independence Arch, I began reading the Barbadian Pledge. Instantly my brain goes to each school morning when students stand and say the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. Both symbolize a promise of loyalty to a nation represented by a flag, but why do humans feel the need to align to a specific political entity and profess this allegiance to others? I have come to the conclusion that it is a mixture of pride, identity, and competition. Barbados and the United States achieved independence from Great Britain, and the pledge shows the pride in being a separate nation. It was a way for citizens to define themselves different from the previous identity connected to Europe. Even though neither pledge was written or established in the immediate time after independence, both wanted to create an identity that links the people of their nation within a very connected world.
Humans are also innately competitive, and whenever there is a competition one team/nation links themselves to symbols. Both the flag design and pledge of Barbados were even created as part of competitions. Pride and identity represented in the pledge and flag carry over to the numerous international competitions such as the Olympics and the World Cup. The emotion seen at sporting events of the 21st century are intense. Some may see this competition as divisive among people, but I feel the pride for a nation shown through say the pledge or waving a flag as a human trait carried throughout the world. There is disagreement over when to say a pledge or if a person should say the pledge at all, but this belief in choosing an identity to be proud of is one shared by humankind.
Title
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The Pledge of Barbados
Identifier
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the-pledge-of-barbados
Source
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The Pledge of Barbados
Barbados
Chamberlain Bridge
Citizenship
Colonialism
History
Nationalism
Teachers & Teaching