1
30
111
-
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Visiting the Art Museum
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visiting-art-museum
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Educators
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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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Social Studies Cohort
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G. Lee, 33, Social Studies Teacher
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July 17, 2021
Source
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Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
Description
An account of the resource
Recently, I've found myself longing to take advantage of the Smithsonian Museums that are so conveniently located ten miles northeast of my home- maybe it's because such destinations were closed for a long period of time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I figured that I might as well take advantage of these attractions re-opening and welcoming guests. Only a select few Smithsonian venues have opened their doors and so I decided to visit one that I've always enjoyed in the past, the Freer Gallery of Art. The Freer Gallery of Art boasts an impressive collection of art from East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Islamic world, and the Middle East. The collections range from the late Neolithic period to the modern era- there is certainly plenty to see. One of the main attractions located in the Freer Gallery is the <em>Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room</em>. This is a beautifully decorated room that serves as a lasting example of aestheticism. Despite the beauty and enveloping nature of the Peacock Room, I found my humanities moment in other places within the museum. <br /><br />My humanities moment came to me while viewing pottery, porcelain, ceramics, paintings, and sculptures from East Asia and South Asia. The connections to be made between cultures in India, China, and Korea, simply by identifying the similarities and trends in the artifacts seemed endless. Whether it was a ceramic-making technique or the spread and artistic display of Buddhism that could be traced across civilizations- regional interaction was present. Part of being a Social Studies teacher is facilitating the process of students making connections through the examination of regional interactions across time. Making those connections helps students be more globally-minded citizens.
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Artifacts at the Museum
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artifacts-museum
Art Museums
Connection
Cultural Awareness
History Education
Teachers & Teaching
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/4/524/miniature-3589682_640.jpg
f695f64b9538c81641d843818f6ea156
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Miniature City
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Pixabay
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miniature-city
Dublin Core
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Educators
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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
Text
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FCPS Summer Curriculum Development project work
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Kim Karayannis, FCPS Social Studies teacher
Date
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1991
Source
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8th grade US History class
Description
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In what has become a defining moment of my entire life, my first true humanities moment provided clarity and direction for my future in the midst of all things awkward about being a middle school student.
Doing well in school was a safety net for me. The excitement of learning new things and the validation that came with "good grades" and being a teacher's pet type person were anchors in a time of social and hormonal upheaval and a family move the summer before 8th grade. If I was going to be at a new school, at least I knew I would do well in my classes, (failing math for a grading period, not withstanding, I mean, this isn't my "math moment," it's my humanities moment). My 8th grade US History and language arts teacher, Mrs. Batsford, was young and energetic, and seemed to genuinely like us and think we were fun humans. Now, after teaching 9th graders for 20 years, I know just how special that was. But it was the creativity with which Mrs. Batsford presented content that really created my humanities moment.
One day while studying the Civil War, Mrs. Batsford had us spend an entire class period constructing a "city" out of empty milk cartons. She gave us no context or explanation for this craft project, just set us to work. The next day, our city was complete and laid out on a large table. She came out from behind her desk and I watched in shock as she climbed up on top of the table wearing big laced-up boots with her early 90's long floral dress. Without a word, she began stomping all over our milk carton city with her big giant boots, flattening every single little crafted square while we watching with our mouths hanging open. Her destruction complete, she daintily got back down from the table and said, "that's what happened during Sherman's march to the sea."
I was floored. I couldn't believe a teacher would behave in such a demonstrative manner and do something that seemed so brash, just for the purpose of helping us understand something. In that instant I knew that was what I wanted to do. I wanted to help students learn history with a little drama and a lot of storytelling. I began on a path that day, that has guided my steps from 8th grade to now, a 21 year veteran of teaching history. Later I learned that Mrs. Batsford's dramatized version of razing cities to the ground was not quite the real story of what happened during that episode of the Civil War. That never diminished the importance of this moment and what it showed me about how people can connect with history. She made me want to learn more. And that is certainly a legacy worth striving for.
Title
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The Day I Knew I Was Going to Teach History
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day-knew-teach-history
Connection
History Education
Teachers & Teaching
U.S. Civil War (1861-1865)
U.S. History
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/4/523/Claude_Monet-Madame_Monet_en_costume_japonais.jpg
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Camille Monet in Japanese Costume
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camille-monet-japanese-costume
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Sarah Bartosiak
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Educators
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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
Text
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High School Social Studies Curriculum Specialist
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Sarah Bartosiak, High School Social Studies Teacher
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June 18, 2021
Source
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<em>Black Histories, Black Futures</em>
Description
An account of the resource
I have vague recollections of eating my packed lunch on the stone steps of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art after completing a scavenger hunt for facts about particular paintings deemed important by my elementary school teacher. <br /><br />I more distinctly remember returning to that art museum with my mom a few years later to view the <em>Monet’s Water Lilies: An Artist’s Obsession</em> exhibition. I had already developed a partiality for impressionism, and Monet specifically, probably from that early field trip, and we discussed the similarities and subtle differences in each iteration of the painting. Alongside the paintings were photographs of the gardens from Monet’s time as well as modern images that immediately put this French commune on our travel bucket list. <br /><br />My mom and I haven’t made it to Giverny yet, but this summer we traveled to see the <em>Monet and Boston: Legacy Illuminated</em> exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts. This collection featured Monet’s paintings alongside works from his predecessor Millet and contemporary Rodin, but it was the comparison to the Japanese artist Hokusai that I found most surprising - until I learned that the forced reopening of Japan to foreign trade in the nineteenth century exposed Western Europeans to Japanese style and culture which inspired many artists of the time, including Monet. <br /><br />This art exhibition displayed the interconnectedness of political and economic power plays, expanding global trade networks, and cultural diffusion. And it has been by teaching my students how to analyze the content and context of paintings, maps, and other images that they have been able to put together the pieces that make up the puzzle that is world history. But I was doing to my students what my elementary school teacher did to me twenty years earlier. <br /><br />I selected all of the visual sources used in my classroom and explained how students should analyze them in order to understand the past - I was making them all complete my version of the world history puzzle. But then I came across the <em>Black Histories, Black Futures</em> exhibition curated by local high school students who developed a theme to explore, selected the works of art to display, and wrote the labels to provide context for three galleries throughout the MFA. These students actively researched and interpreted historical information to reach their own understandings about a past that was important to them. Next year, I look forward to seeing how my students put the pieces of world history together to create their own unique puzzles … and maybe even to curate their own museum galleries!
Title
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World History Puzzles
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Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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world-history-puzzles
Art Exhibitions
Art Museums
Learning
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Teachers & Teaching
World History
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/4/517/board-409582_640.jpg
1ab77792fc5aeea64849c353e357096d
Dublin Core
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Title
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Teaching with Technology
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Pixabay
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teaching-technology
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Educators
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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
Text
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Colleague
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Kathryn Thayer, Social Studies Teacher
Date
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August 2012
Source
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"Greatest Love of All"
Description
An account of the resource
For many years, my school district hosted an annual Academic Diversity Institute prior to the start of the new school year. At this institute, teachers had the opportunity to hear speakers and attend seminars that taught about and encouraged the implementation of new teaching strategies and methods in the classroom. The theme of the 2012 institute was "Reaching All: Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century." The keynote speaker at the 2012 institute reinforced many of the concepts and arguments that I had studied in my graduate school cohort program, from which I had graduated just three months earlier. As I listened to the keynote speaker, her words really resonated with me, further confirming my belief that the integration of technology in the 21st century classroom is critical to helping students to be academically successful, both in the present and in the future.
The keynote speaker tugged at my heartstrings through her incorporation of Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All". It is the song that my dad and I had danced to for our Father/Daughter dance at my wedding a year earlier. Although there is a very personal reason why my dad and I chose this song for our special dance, much of the meaning that he and I both share in connection with this song also carries over into my beliefs as a classroom teacher. My own analysis of Houston's lyrics further supports my belief about the importance of technology in the classroom.
"I believe the children are our future," as past and current generations have shown that they will be who shapes the workplace environment once they become the majority of the population. "Teach them well and let them lead the way" in how they will acquire, master, and utilize knowledge. "Show them all the beauty they possess inside" in order to intrinsically motivate them to want to learn. "Give them a sense of pride to make it easier" for them to find their own meaning in the standards that they must master in order to pass a particular course. "Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be" when we ourselves were students (Whitney Houston, "Greatest Love of All").
That last line in particular reminds me of how excited I was to use Ask Jeeves for the first time in my 9th grade Regional World Studies class in order to do research on the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. At the time, Ask Jeeves was a newly developed research tool on the Internet. My own memory of this experience reinforces the need for teachers to not only continuously learn about and incorporate new learning strategies and methods, but to also serve as a guide on the side of student learning and to let students find meaning in their own learning.
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"Teach Them Well and Let Them Lead the Way"
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Whitney Houston
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teach-them-well-let-them-lead
Children
Houston, Whitney
Music Appreciation
Teachers & Teaching
Technology
-
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d2cda1ebdd1f19934acab2c1e6bd5870
Dublin Core
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Dachau
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Pixabay
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dachau
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Educators
Description
An account of the resource
This collection features contributions by teachers, education administrators and others involved in teaching at levels K-16.
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educators-humanities-moments
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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Natalie Glees, 25, teacher
Date
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July 2021
Source
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Third Reich Tour in Munich
Description
An account of the resource
I recently returned from a two week mini "Grand Tour" of Europe. The last stop on our itinerary was the Bavarian capital, Munich. As a World History teacher, I had to sign up for the Third Reich walking tour of the city. Along the two hour walk, we saw many significant sites like the Nazi Headquarters, Dodger’s Alley, and Hofbrauhaus. However, the most remarkable moment for me was actually the very end of the tour.
As we stood in Marienplatz, the last stop on our journey, our guide asked if we had any questions. The ten of us looked around at each other and remained silent, except for one man who asked, “How is Nazi history taught in German schools?” Our tour guide explained that when he was in high school in the 1980s, he learned about Nazi history for about two weeks. After a tumultuous year, teaching online during the pandemic, I only had about two weeks to teach most units which spanned hundreds of years, rather than a few decades. He added that his children who are currently in school spend about two months learning about the Nazi period. Additionally, every student in Bavaria is required to visit Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp in Germany.
I was in awe listening to how the German education system teaches the darkest period in the country’s history. I thought about how I learned about slavery in the US when I was a student. I grew up in Northern Virginia, an area rich in Civil War sites and mansions owned by slaveholders. However, our field trip to Mount Vernon in 1st grade and trip to a Civil War era mansion in 4th grade completely ignored the lives of the enslaved people who lived and worked on the grounds. Then I considered how controversial teaching accurate history in the US has become, especially the last few years. I reflected on how I taught. I try to provide students with a more detailed understanding of often oversimplified topics like slavery, colonialism, and imperialism but was I doing enough? What perspectives was I missing?
Germany’s commitment to providing a thorough and accurate understanding of one the most inhumane and difficult topics to teach motivated me to improve upon my instruction for the upcoming school year. I hope to reframe many units to highlight the experience of the oppressed and those who tried to enact change, rather than focusing on the elite who fought to maintain control.
Title
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Facing History is Not a Walk in the Park
Identifier
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facing-history-not-walk-park
Europe
History Education
Holocaust
Teachers & Teaching
World History
-
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Students at Capitol
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Josh Britton
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students-capitol
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Educators
Description
An account of the resource
This collection features contributions by teachers, education administrators and others involved in teaching at levels K-16.
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educators-humanities-moments
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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Teacher Curriculum Development
Dublin Core
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Josh Britton, 25, High School Teacher
Date
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March 14, 2018
Source
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Student Protest
Description
An account of the resource
It was my first day of observations at the school I now teach at. The day had progressed as a typical day and I had the chance to observe two World History 1 courses. After those classes my mentor teacher got into a conversation with two administrators about the events they were expecting for later that day. There was a planned student walkout in response to the school shooting in Parkland, Florida which had happened a month before.
Students of all ages across the country had coordinated what became the first student-led movement for gun control. I was inspired by the students for elevating their voices and creating a platform to stand up and demand that action be taken. I was also inspired by the teachers and administrators of my school who wore shirts in support, helped to answer questions for confused students, and supported any and all of the students who participated in the walkout.
These students were willing to stand up and say they have seen enough and can not sit idly by as more and more of these tragedies occur. The reason I got into teaching was to work with students like this and I hope to be able to inspire some of them. Everyday I get more and more inspired by these students.
Title
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Inspired by Activism
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inspired-activism
Activism
Gun Violence
Parkland, Florida
Student Activism
Teachers & Teaching
-
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36b3932ee9dfcaf970464a5cf01132cb
Dublin Core
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Auschwitz-Birkenau
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auschwitz-birkenau
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Rebecca Watt
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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
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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professional development
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Rebecca Watt, Social Studies Teacher and avid traveler
Date
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2008
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum
Description
An account of the resource
We (my mother, father, sister, and I) were travelling in Poland (where my mother's family is from). One of the places we visited was Auschwitz.
Every year I teach about World War II including the Holocaust. I share photos from my travels with my students throughout the school year, but it is something I was not able to photograph that chokes me up every year. The shoes. There is a large room, really more of a warehouse, with what looks like a large aquarium along one side (glass floor to ceiling). It is mostly (and used to be) full of shoes. Over time the shoes have begun to disintegrate and settled, making the number look smaller than what they represent. Knowing that it was common for individuals to have only one pair, maybe two pairs, of shoes means that every pair represents a person. You can talk about the sheer number of people who died in the Holocaust, in World War II, but those are abstract and sometimes too large to comprehend. But the shoes make those numbers real - real people, real families, real lives lost...maybe people my mother's family knew or lived near or went to school with. People who were removed from their homes, put on trains, sorted when they disembarked, stripped of their possessions and identities and murdered. Every year when I talk about this with my students, I have to pause and collect myself. And every year I hope that I am providing a sense of the personal into our history class so they don't ask the question "why are we learning about this?"
Title
A name given to the resource
The Shoes
History Education
Holocaust
Teachers & Teaching
World War II (1939-1945)
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/4/511/arch-4297400_640.jpg
2696afd103588bad71de235fa4c3fa74
Dublin Core
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St. Louis Arch
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Pixabay
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st-louis-arch
Dublin Core
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Title
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Educators
Description
An account of the resource
This collection features contributions by teachers, education administrators and others involved in teaching at levels K-16.
Identifier
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educators-humanities-moments
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
For internal use only, for tracking and metrics.
My school district's curriculum design project
Dublin Core
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Michelle Lukacs, 30, Social Studies Secondary Teacher
Date
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Fall 2017
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Facing East from Indian Country</em>
Description
An account of the resource
In my first semester as a history grad student, I remember reading an assigned book that changed my perspective on history forever. Prior to grad school, I had a very basic and foundation building education at that point. Looking back to my undergraduate years in a history program, I realized now how traditional the views and sources were. It wasn't until I entered my grad school program that I realized how much more open the field of history has been in recent history with its intersectionality and fresh perspectives in modern scholarship. <br /><br />I had a moment that completely deconstructed my idea of U.S. History when I was participating in our class discussion on Daniel K. Richter's <em>Facing East from Indian Country</em>. In the book's introduction, Richter shares a narrative of a moment he had in a St. Louis hotel room overlooking the famous Arch structure and thought to himself what if we viewed U.S. history facing east instead of facing west? That simple perspective shift upended my grade school education and historical upbringing as a young student. No longer was the story driven and told simply from the powerful and oppressive sources. The victims of the powerful were now being told that there was value to their stories and provide a fuller understanding of history. <br /><br />Richter shares the historical problem of the lack of primary sources from American Indians but still attempts to share a narrative with their perspectives at the center. He uses an unconventional method of sourcing to achieve his goals and provides an alternative history that highlights the pain and brokenness that European colonization has caused in North America. As an educator and historian, I am inspired by Richter's work and methodology and I hope to create learning experiences for my students that will not only inform them of the traditionally missing voices in history but also share with them the new ways that the field of history has been trying to create a fuller, more accurate and balanced history that will hopefully inspire them to do the same in their futures.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Power of a Perspective Change
Creator
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Daniel K. Richter
Identifier
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power-perspective-change
History Education
Marginalized Voices
Richter, Daniel K.
Teachers & Teaching
U.S. History
-
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18850521a651badd8f2b74d3f44023d2
Dublin Core
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Title
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Virtual meeting
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virtual-meeting
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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I first heard of Humanities Moments as a participant in the GSSR in the National Humanities Center.
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Joanna, 30s, Ph.D. Candidate
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Summer 2021
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<em>GROUP</em>
Description
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In preparation for teaching online during the 2021 summer semester, I have been thinking about how much group discussions are transformed by digital platforms. In reflecting on the vulnerabilities that are required for students to discuss challenging topics (particularly feminist activist work) I was wondering how students will respond when they find themselves isolated in different physical spaces, but working together to create a community online. I often discuss these questions with my fellow teachers, and I received a recommendation to watch a short web-series titled <em>GROUP</em>. <br /><br /><em>GROUP</em> is a fictionalized portrayal of a group therapy session, in which the audience gets to witness how communication and relationships develop between the different group members. The show’s dialog is largely improvised and its premise is based on an adaptation of <em>The Schopenhauer Cure</em> by Irvin D. Yalom. The topics of discussion between the group members vary, but many sessions circle back to larger questions about the human condition and the value of free expression of emotion that “can’t be expressed in polite company.” What does it take to really communicate about and self-monitor emotions rather than speaking in terms of assessment or observation to one’s own reactions (meaning, already moving on to the next step of analysis)? <br /><br />Despite the show’s therapy setting, it sparked my thinking about the level of intimacy involved in all small group discussion. I connected the moments of hesitancies that many of the show’s characters experienced to what I have witnessed students reveal in individual self-reflections regarding their classroom discussion experiences. I also wondered about how different emotions drive student responses to the topics that they are learning about, and how students can better respond to intellectual challenges (both from the classroom materials and from their fellow classmates). <br /><br />This reflection is guided by the following core question: what is the potential for students’ opening of their minds to theory, to alternate forms of knowledge about how the world world, if they are able to first process their own emotional responses? The web series tackles both in-person and Zoom therapy settings, and it really helps to drive home the vulnerabilities of communicating in a shared physical space. Furthermore it elucidates how connections are built based on physical presence. On further reflection about the evocative nature of <em>GROUP</em>, it seems to me that developing a culture of trust and vulnerability in the classroom is dependent also on de-centering the authority of the teacher and understanding how the exploratory potential of learning is built on the foundation of community relationships. <br /><br />I think this Humanities Moment relates back to my own experiences as facilitator of learning in the classroom, in that I think folks experience the most meaningful forms of learning or self-exploration when there is enough space to balance self-expression with group accountability.
Title
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<em>GROUP</em> and Individual: Cultivating Spaces of Expression
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group-and-individual
Group Discussion
Learning
Self-Realization
Teachers & Teaching
Therapy
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/479/sunset-2180346_640.jpg
238bc0d6fd940dfc36be5f824fb87a0b
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The Sun
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Pixabay
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sun
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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2021 NHC Summer Graduate Student Residency
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Bridget H., Ph.D. student
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1988-1992
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<em>A Raisin in the Sun</em>
Description
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The sixth grade stands out for me as one of those important milestones in life. As an adult, I have numerous precise moments of recollection where a memory is so vivid it feels as if I can recall every word and emotion. Our school was a small neighborhood Catholic school with a tragic past. In the late 1950s, the school burned down, and ninety-five people lost their lives. <br /><br />My experience as one of the few kids in the neighborhood who did not attend public school was nuanced. I never thought much about my identity outside of being the girl who went to Catholic school. My neighborhood was majority Latino and Black, and Chicago was and remains a largely segregated city. I saw white people at school and on television and Brown and Black people in my everyday life. I never noticed that the people I watched on tv shows and working in my small Catholic school did not represent my life or the lives of the people I knew. <br /><br />That all changed when Mrs. Maureen Hart started her teaching career in my sixth-grade class. I could share countless stories about Mrs. Hart's dedication to teaching and her desire to really make a difference in the lives of her students. Still, this particular moment is about our sixth-grade production of <em>A Raisin in the Sun</em>. We spent weeks preparing. We watched the 1961 movie adaptation, we read the script, and we designed the set. We learned all about Lorraine Hansberry and her groundbreaking accomplishments. We learned that the original play was set in Chicago and that Hansberry herself was a Chicagoan. The information made our production even more important. After all, we had to do justice to Chicago's own playwright. <br /><br />Studying and preparing for that play brought a profound sense of pride and ownership. I fell in love with the characters and all of their imperfections. It was the first time I experienced black characters who were flawed and proud on paper and in film. The struggles of the world around them were not the focus of the story. Family and kinship were central to the plot. When I finished the play, I clearly remembered a profound sense of knowing that I had a place in the world. My stories, although not heroic or regal, mattered and was worthy of praise and notoriety.
Title
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Why Representation Matters
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Lorraine Hansberry
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why-representation-matters
A Raisin in the Sun
African American Authors
African American Literature
African American Women Authors
Chicago, IL
Family
Hansberry, Lorraine
Kinship
Representation
Teachers & Teaching
Theater and Drama
-
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Classroom
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Pixabay
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classroom
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Title
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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National Humanities Center
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Sólveig Ásta Sigurðardóttir, 31, Ph.D. candidate
Description
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During my hours of online teaching this year, I have repeatedly tried to bring myself back to my first encounters with the Humanities classroom. As an enthusiastic first-year student in comparative literature, I was excited to learn about art and culture from authors and specialists in cultural history and to be trained in the study of specific authors, styles, and genres. <br /><br />I had always been drawn to folklore and been curious about how narratives helped to make sense of the world. My learning had at least always been aided by narrative, the more vivid the details the better. For example, it was much easier to remember geographical information, say the name of the farm, Miklibær, if you knew the 19th-century story of the ghost, Sólveig who haunted the local priest, Oddur. Or the name of the region Ódáðahraun if you knew the lullaby "Sofðu unga ástin mín" about the mother who had fled poverty into the dangerous highlands and was singing to her child in hiding. <br /><br />When I made it to the humanities classroom it took me by surprise how it was not simply a place where meaning was mediated but a place in which I was trained to investigate how “meaning” takes place. I was both exhausted and thrilled by invitations to investigate how meaning is grounded in culture, relations, histories, and language in all its shapes and forms. In one of my first assignments in a class on Icelandic poetry, I received a comment from a teacher encouraging me to go “deeper” with my interpretation. She encouraged me to follow my own analysis, to try out what felt like a radical idea at the risk of being “incorrect”. Her comments were probably standard advice she gave to all her students, something she wrote on the endless papers that needed grading but for me, it was a formative moment of recognition of my voice and ideas. <br /><br />While the content of the poem escapes me (I think it was about feminism and potatoes) I can recall the feeling of that instructive moment and its effect on my journey as a reader and thinker lingers. Still to this day I remember the thrill of literary analysis, how we followed the teacher as she dissected poems, plays, and novels and somehow she made the students feel like they were necessary contributors to the study. Students brought different insights to the discussion and the teacher showed us how to see surprising connections between cultural texts. It felt like the possibility of meaning was both grounded in the teacher’s scholarship but also the exchange between the people gathered in the room. Through this process, the authority of knowledge started to feel slippery, which was a powerful exchange, especially in a university setting. It felt to me that the collective search for the answer to our questions required vulnerability from the teacher but also every student willing to participate in the conversation. It felt like we were not only discussing literary materials but also always debating how we should discuss them. What do we see on the page? What is missing? Where do we begin in our interpretation? With the author? Her environment? Essentially, how do we see? But also, how did the text even make it to us, the readers? Who preserved it? Why does that matter? <br /><br />I specifically remember how powerful it was to encounter feminist analysis, postcolonial and critical race theory, and to have access to new vocabularies to talk about power relations across time and space. The vocabulary of their insight even brought me closer to my original fascination with folklore, and I began to see the stories of my childhood not just as entertainment but as markers of power. Why were there so many ghost stories of young poor women that were haunting men of a higher class and stature? Could these stories tell us something about how colonialism conditioned gender and class relations in 19th century Iceland? <br /><br />In these encounters with the approaches of the humanities, or "humanities moments" it felt like we in the class were not just discussing an individual poem or story but our relations to, well everything. These memories of deep learning in the classroom continue to inspire my own practice of teaching. And while "thrill" is not necessarily an apt description for every one of my own classes the possibility of these humanities moments is something that continues to inspire me.
Title
A name given to the resource
Humanities Moment(s)
Identifier
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humanities-moments
Comparative Literature
Discovery
Feminism
Folklore
Humanities Education
Icelandic Literature
Learning
Relationality
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
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animal-vegetable-miracle
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Luke Rodewald
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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Dr. Andy Mink, NHC Graduate Student Summer Residency
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Luke Rodewald, 28, English Ph.D. Student
Date
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2012
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<em>Animal, Vegetable, Miracle</em>
Description
An account of the resource
For the first two decades of my life, food wasn't something to which something I gave much serious consideration. I was guided—as I suspect most young adults are—by taste, convenience, and price. I knew what I liked, where I could get it, and that I could get it for cheap. My lack of interest in what I ate directly paralleled my ignorance and detachment from the landscapes in which I lived. My family moved every few years; I barely got to know a place before we moved again, never bothering to seriously try and set down "roots." <br /><br />As a first-year graduate student in the heart of Iowa, I became friends with a number of budding writers and scholars who grew up with an entirely different mindset. Almost all of them were deeply interested in place, the environment, and how body and land are more intrinsically linked than we might otherwise believe. At our cozy shared office one day, one colleague dropped off Kingsolver's 2007 memoir, a year-long chronicle of her family's efforts and experiences to raise and grow as much of their food as possible. I didn't read it until the semester finished, when the freedom of summer allowed me to read, reflect, and honestly think about the text on a page.<br /><br />Kingsolver is a beautiful writer, and <em>Animal, Vegetable, Miracle</em> is further proof of this. Scenes chronicling the gradual growth and progress of rhubarb, asparagus, tomatoes, and potatoes are described in poetic rhetoric, detailing such small changes with a clear sense of wonder, awe, and reverence. Beyond these observations and recordings, however, the books is laced with commentary about our contemporary food systems—farming, restaurants, soil management, corporatization, commodification and seed patents—and how alternatives exist, both small and large scale, right before our eyes. <br /><br />I finished Kingsolver's book wanting—needing—to both eat differently and think more deeply about how I lived as a part of the natural landscape. Trips to nearby farmer markets, supporting local growers, spending my dollars on organic products, learning to garden, learning to cook—all of these were habits gleaned from her memoir, and behaviors that led to me becoming a more passionate environmental activist over time. <br /><br />Most of the courses I teach are grounded in environmental concerns—climate change, ocean acidification, soil erosion, drought—and how we write about them. What's made Kingsolver's memoir not only a personal favorite, but a classroom jewel as well, is that her book is empowering: my students frequently note in course evaluations that this memoir not only revealed and informed them about the realities underlying their current relationship with food, but also provided them with tangible, pragmatic solutions about how they might incorporate changes. Sometimes, I am self-conscious and wary when talking about what my research and teaching interests concern. I am a late-bloomer with my environmental passions; I didn't grow up strongly intertwined with a sense of place or spend my formative years actively thinking about issues that bridge human and nonhuman worlds. Kingsolver's writing, and this memoir in particular, show that it's never too late to start paying attention, begin learning, or caring about where you live—an inspiring message that's never more timely and needed than it is today.
Title
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From The Page to The Garden to The Fridge
Creator
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Barbara Kingsolver
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page-garden-fridge
College Teaching
Environmental Activism
Environmental Humanities
Kingsolver, Barbara
Landscapes
Sustainability
Teachers & Teaching
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/18/458/HM_Bones_Image.jpg
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Bone scan
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Pixabay
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bone-scan
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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.
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Graduate Student Summer Residency 2021
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Eunice Ying Ci Lim, 29, Ph.D. Candidate, Pennsylvania State University, Comparative Literature and Asian Studies
Date
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2010
Source
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"Bone Scan"
Description
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Gwen Harwood's "Bone Scan" will always have a place in my heart when it comes to my inspiration for teaching Literature and my abiding interest in the humanities. Growing up in Singapore, the educational environment I was in did not prioritize literature and the humanities very much, and math and science were the core subjects that we were expected to focus on. <br /><br />However, when I was 18, I had a literature teacher who taught and prepared us to appreciate unseen poetry for the A levels and among the poems she introduced us to was "Bone Scan," which we later realized was her way of explaining her long absence from the classroom near our national exams. She was struggling with cancer and her teaching allowed us to appreciate that the poem's use of the word "scintillating" and the use of sibilants represented her desire to regard her struggle with cancer as a positive and hopeful journey rather than one to think about negatively and pessimistically. Although she eventually passed on, her influence continues to inspire me to be a better teacher and reader of literature, and continues to remind me of the importance of being attentive and committed to the text before us. I continue to return to "Bone Scan" and think how we approach, study, encounter, and teach literature reflects how we approach, encounter, and interact with others in our lives as well.
Title
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"on a small radiant screen honeydew melon green are my scintillating bones"
Creator
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Gwen Harwood
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on-a-small-radiant-screen
Harwood, Gwen
Illness
Poetry
Self-Realization
Teachers & Teaching
-
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b023cc2d689cb2b98b64b1c5fd3144ad
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Abstract Cubes
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Pixabay
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abstract-cubes
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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.
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NHC GSSR
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Madeline Krumel, 24, Ph.D. Student
Date
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June 2021
Source
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"Baby, Baby" by Louisa Chase (1991). Etching on aquatint.
Description
An account of the resource
This summer, I am working with the Syracuse University Art Museum to create English-specific teaching resources. The goal is to make the museum's collections more accessible to instructors for both teaching and research purposes. The job came with the underlying assumption that artwork is a valuable tool for all kinds of academic or humanistic endeavors: close reading, interpretation, question-asking, theory application, etc. <br /><br />As I dug around in the collection, I came across a piece by Louisa Chase, "Baby, Baby" (1991) and had a breakthrough moment. The abstract work, and Chase generally, uses geometric shapes to shadow or mimic forms--in this case, rectangles and squares to mimic a baby--and chaotic, heavy lines to disrupt the image. The work is striking in itself, but I was inspired by the way in which it perfectly represents the Lacanian idea of the "Mirror Stage." <br /><br />A professor I work closely with describes pre-Mirror Stage identity as the formless, wild, confusing, cloudy, and chaotic experiences of an infant's sense of "self." And Chase's work shows that exactly, without the use of so-called "high theory." I was excited to show my professor, who was equally excited, and I went on to develop an entire module on the "Mirror Stage" and Identity out of paintings, photographs, cartoons, and other artworks of diverse mediums. <br /><br />This module, once completed, will hopefully help to illuminate Lacan's theory by showing how humans find (or construct) their identity via images, representations, objects, and other things on the outside. I'm excited to continue to research the collection this summer to identify other artworks that can help students and scholars achieve understanding, find inspiration, and communicate ideas.
Title
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A Painting, A Baby, and Jacques Lacan Walk into a Syllabus...
Creator
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Louisa Chase
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painting-baby-jacques-lacan-walk-syllabus
Art
Chase, Louisa
Identity
Lacan, Jacques
Museum Curatorship
Museums
Psychoanalysis
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Sheet music
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Pixabay
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sheet-music
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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Through the National Humanities Center summer intensive program
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Megan Kitts, 25, Philosophy Ph.D. Student
Date
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2012
Source
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J.C. Bach's Viola Concerto in C Minor, 2nd Movement
Description
An account of the resource
I was around 16 years old at the time of my humanities moment. I had been playing the viola for 7 years. As usually occurred, I became bored with practicing the first movement of J.C. Bach's Viola Concerto in C minor that my teacher had given me for an upcoming recital, so I decided to skip to the next movement. The second one was not one that my teacher ever assigned her students, so I hadn't heard it before. After a somewhat cobbled together sight-reading attempt, I decided to look up a recording.
The song was hauntingly beautiful, filled with slow, elongated melodies and fast, anxious lines. I don't know what Casadesus intended to communicate with it, but, for me, it was a song about grief. The slow passages are restrained emotion, how one might feel when they are trying to keep themselves from feeling their sadness. The piece then becomes more anxious, as if unable to stop from considering what's going on. After the climax, it wanes, as if exhausted by the full cycle of the feeling. All of this was clear to me immediately upon listening.
The piece both changed the way that I played music, but also changed the way that I considered music in my life. It was what I turned to play immediately after the passing of a loved one. I played it in my senior recital. I have returned to it over and over ever since. It encouraged me to seek out musical moments in my life, and to consider the emotional and personal significance of humanities works.
Title
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J.C. Bach and the Exhaustion of Feeling
Creator
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J.C. Bach
Identifier
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bach-exhaustion-feeling
Bach, J.C.
Classical Music
Emotional Experience
Music
Music Appreciation
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Statues
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statues
Text
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From one of my graduate students at Penn State (Morgane Haesen, whose "Moment" you published)
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Willa Z. Silverman, 62, Malvin E. and Lea P. Bank Professor of French and Jewish Studies, Penn State University
Date
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Spring 2021
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<em>Night and Fog </em>(1955)
Description
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“Nothing distinguished the gas chamber from an ordinary blockhouse,” writes Jean Cayrol in the screenplay for Alain Resnais’ iconic filmic meditation on the Shoah, Night and Fog (1956). “Inside, a fake shower room welcomed newcomers. The doors were closed. The newcomers were observed. The only sign – but you must know this (il faut le savoir) – is the ceiling worked over by fingernails. Even the concrete was torn.” At this point in the film, like an insistent investigative eye, the camera pans to the ceiling of the gas chamber, revealing the telltale scratch marks. The image of fingernails clawing into concrete in a desperate attempt for survival recurs in another work about Holocaust memory that we read this semester, Georges Perec’s W, or the Memory of Childhood (1975). Recalling an exhibit he had visited with his aunt shortly after the war – the same one, in fact, that led producers to ask Alain Resnais to create the film that would become Night and Fog -- the child survivor narrator writes: “I remember photos showing the walls of the ovens, lacerated by the fingernails of those who had been gassed.”
Il faut le savoir. The phrase has haunted me throughout the semester. You must know this. Because it happened. Because many would deny that it did, depriving the victims of dignity and history of truth. Fingernail scratches in the crematoria walls of Auschwitz, asks the neo-Nazi website The Stormer? “Jewish mythology says ‘yes.’ Science says ‘no.’” You must know this, because soon there will be no more survivors, and those still alive often find it too painful, or shameful, to share their testimony, or else they have learned to suppress it so as not to trouble others. “No one wanted my memories,” writes Birkenau survivor Marceline Loridan-Ivens in But You Did Not Come Back. You must know this, because 2/3 of young Americans, according to a 2020 national poll, lack a rudimentary understanding of the Holocaust. “Where did the Holocaust happen?” educator Rhonda Fink-Whitman asks a Penn State student in her 2012 documentary, 94 Maidens. “I have no idea.” You must know this, as Cayrol writes in Night and Fog, because “war is sleeping, but with one eye always open.” As I write, genocide continues to be perpetuated against the Muslim Rohingya people by the military in Myanmar. “Who among us keeps watch from this strange watchtower to warn of the arrival of our new executioners?”
But to know – and this is a second meaning of il faut le savoir -- one must be ‘in the know,’ know where to look, how to be on the lookout, how to decode the signs. You have to be tipped off to find the “Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation” (1962) tucked in a small square behind the behemoth of Notre-Dame Cathedral, just as you must be ‘in the know’ to be disturbed by the memorial’s identification of those deported from France as willing “martyrs” to a cause rather than victims of state persecution by both the Nazis and the Vichy regime. The French State headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain is nowhere mentioned in this memorial monument, yet it deported over 75.000 Jews from France to their deaths, along with, in smaller numbers, Roma, the disabled, Jehovah’s witnesses, gay men and lesbians, and other ‘undesirables.’ Stroll around to the main façade of Notre-Dame to contemplate the two female allegorical figures framing it; only if you’re ‘in the know’ about the anti-Semitic underpinnings of European Christianity through the mid-20th century will you understand that one figure represents the Church triumphant, while the other, with downward cast, blindfolded gaze and broken Torah tablets at her feet, symbolizes the Synagogue. As only one photograph of this event remains, you need to be on the lookout for the tiny plaque at the foot of a bustling Parisian office building marking the site of the former Vélodrome d’hiver, an indoor bicycle track where over 11,000 Jews, including over 4,000 children, were packed for several sweltering days in July 1942 before being herded to their deaths. “A peaceful landscape,” writes Cayrol, “An ordinary field with flights of crows, harvests, grass fires. An ordinary road where cars and peasants and lovers pass. An ordinary village for vacationers – with a marketplace and a steeple – Can lead all too easily to a concentration camp.” Il faut le savoir.
“Every hour of every day,” writes Hélène Berr, a young upper-class French Jewish woman who survived a year in deportation before being beaten to death in Bergen-Belsen, “there is another painful realization that other folk do not know, do not even imagine, the suffering of other men, the evil that some of them inflict. And I am still trying to make the painful effort to tell the story. Because it is a duty, it is maybe the only one I can fulfill. There are men wo know and who close their eyes, and I’ll never manage to convince people of that kind, because they are hard and selfish, and I have no authority. But people who do not know and who might have sufficient heart to understand – on those people I must have an effect.” Let us – we who in Primo Levi’s words “live safe in [our] warm houses,” armed with all we have learned this semester, make the “painful effort to the tell the story” to all those who will listen, “those with sufficient heart to understand.” Because the world must know. Yes, il faut le savoir.
Title
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“Il faut le savoir:” Reflecting on France’s Holocaust History and Memory
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Jean Cayrol, Alain Resnais
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il-faut-le-savoir
Documentary Films
Emotional Experience
Film and Movies
Historical Memory
History
History Education
Holocaust
Memorials
Memory
Teachers & Teaching
War
-
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Book cover
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book-cover
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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From the National Humanities Center Virtual Winter Residency
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Cristovao Nwachukwu, 27, Graduate Teaching Assistant
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2016
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<em>Americanah</em> by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Description
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<p>My humanities moment is a novel that changed my life and informed my path as an educator and researcher. But before I expound upon it, I need to tell you my story. I was born in Brazil as the only child of my Nigerian mother, who migrated to complete her undergraduate studies. Because of that, I constantly felt like I was living in-between, bridging the gap between Brazil and Nigeria. As I grew up, I struggled to find a sense of belonging, trying to conflate the Brazilian culture I learned at school with my Nigerian upbringing at home and fully identifying with neither. I was the other, a native foreigner.</p>
<p>To appease my ever-growing alienation, I plunged into literature, film, and music, anything that I could hold onto to calm my disquietude. Yet, I did not know at the time that I yearned to better understand who I was by seeing myself through the worlds of others. This unconscious search led me to study English and Portuguese language and literature at the Federal University of Bahia. However, as an undergrad, I did not search for myself as much. I still maintained this unbreakable connection between my subjectivity and literature, but, at the same time, I read more as an observer than a participant. Throughout most of my formal education, white authors, both from Brazil and Europe, represented the standard in literary studies, while Black authors, albeit abundant, were rarely mentioned.</p>
<p>Things changed when in 2016 I decided to read the novel <em>Americanah</em> by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I had already watched her famous Ted Talks “The Danger of a Single Story” and “We Should All Be Feminists”, and I got curious to read her work. This was the moment. Ifemelu’s journey as a Black Nigerian immigrant in the United States enthralled, moved, and inspired me. Adichie’s intricate and poignant representation of Black people in the U.S., the U.K., and Nigeria veered from the stereotypically negative and dehumanizing portrayals of Black people I was used to seeing in the media. In the novel, Adichie explores several facets of Black experiences, and I still remember that reading it felt like finally arriving home after spending your entire life squinting at the horizon, wondering if you would ever reach your destination. After years searching, I saw myself through the writing of someone who looked like me.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, I was not satisfied. I started reading Chinua Achebe, Sefi Atta, Wole Soyinka, and decided to translate this hunger for self-representation into a research project for graduate school. In 2018, I started following Ifemelu’s path as an immigrant in the U.S. to continue this intellectual and subjective query about the diversity of Black experiences across the world. I had found my home in African literatures and decided to never leave. I wanted to get closer to a mirror that had always been turned the other way, a lack of seeing that confined me to the role of the other. I wanted to stay, to sink “roots in without the constant urge to tug them out and shake off the soil” (Adichie 7).</p>
<p>Eventually, my research and teaching started to overlap. Curiosity prompted me to seek literature and film in which students who were also considered the other could see themselves represented as well. For students who were used to seeing themselves represented in all spheres of life, I also introduced them to works from diverse authors in order for them to move the mirror, look around, and get in contact with different realities and worldviews. These carefully devised choices of the texts I teach have turned my classrooms into safe spaces where diversity is the norm, and all students are heard and included.</p>
<p>Therefore, teaching African narratives about Black immigrants irreversibly converged my teaching philosophy and research. People still ask me nowadays which culture I identify with the most or even suggest that one day I will finally decide which country I consider to be my home. I never know how to answer this question because it is hard to convey what growing up in the diaspora is like. At least for now, I can say that every time I read <em>Americanah</em> again it takes me back to when this journey started, and I am excited to see where it will lead me.</p>
Title
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To See Myself
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to-see-myself
African Literature
Books & Reading
Diaspora
Ngozi Adichie, Chimamanda
Race Identity
Self-Realization
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Stone Fresco
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Pixabay
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stone-fresco
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web search
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Samia Rab Kirchner, 57, Associate Professor of Architecture at Morgan State University
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1985
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19th century Frescoes on wall of the Lahore Fort in Pakistan
Description
An account of the resource
My "humanities moment" occurred during my undergraduate studies at what was/is essentially a trade school in Pakistan (with no GenEd courses and only one course on Art or Art History offered among the subjects listed on your website. Specifically, during field trips to the Lahore Fort, where we saw 19th century frescoes brightly decorating the interior walls during our first visit and a month later they were gone (plastered over)! I had drawn those frescoes in my sketchbook, taken photographs and was planning to integrate these in my Architecture Thesis project for Punjab House in Islamabad. I can still feel the freezing of my body, the numbing of my mind, and the visual shock to see the plastered surface that hid my frescoes. Even as a 4th year undergraduate student, I pulled myself together to write a letter of inquiry to the Pakistani Minister of Antiquities. Long story short, my quest to uncover histories and safeguard monuments of the dispossessed began, WITHOUT being exposed to general education requirements or humanities curricula.
Since then, having spent more than 3 decades in American Higher Education machine, I wonder why have the humanities come under attack since the 1990s? Yes, neo-liberals may be blamed for everything these days, but there is a major disconnect between humanities scholarship and the public imagination/perception of the value of humanities (precisely why you are seeking "humanities moments", right?). These "moments" are not going to "mind the gap" between public comprehension of the value of The Humanities to humanity. We as humans must remove (dismantle) the colonial industrial machine of higher education, which has perfected the European division of Arts/Humanities and the Sciences, through decolonizing curricula. And please do not get me wrong, I am not calling for "multi" or "trans" disciplinary approaches, rather for taking an ANTI-DISCIPLINARY comprehension of ECOLOGY, SPACE + TIME.
Sometimes I wonder why I sought higher education in the "land of the free" when the toil I pursued back home placed me closest to the humanity of my ancestors!
Title
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humanity without The Humanities
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humanity-without-the-humanities
Art
Cultural Awareness
Cultural Relations
Human Beings
Humanities Education
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Milky Way
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Pixabay
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milky-way
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E-mail
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John Cleary, 60, Associate Professor of Philosophy
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The advancement of civilization as it is often situated in the narrative of scientific inquiry is matched by the enlightened aims of the humanities; both are dedicated to improving the human condition. As such, they are undergirded by a critical interplay between discovery and creativity.
There is reason enough to feel a sense of wonder and awe about the complexity of the universe. The spectacular nature of the solar system is often punctuated by a vastness that may agitate our existential uncertainty and, further, it has often made us recognize how this pertains to our experiences of boundlessness and incomprehensibility in nature and, in turn, our responsibility to ponder its meaning as it applies to science, (e.g. physics and astronomy) philosophy and literature.
The facts and theories of scientific progress, inventive as they are in the pursuit of knowledge, (discovery) can tell us much about the grandeur and magnificence of the heavens. In a similar way the humanities, (creativity) by utilizing the lantern of imagination, has offered ways of constructing a view of space (the night sky) through the explanatory power of metaphor and narrative.
How can our understanding of astronomy be complemented by poetic experiences such as what is often illustrated in theatre? For example, Bertolt Brecht's play "Galileo." In addition, how might we see these kind of ideas converge, and what new relevations and teaching strategies could arise from them?
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Discovery and Creativity
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discovery-and-creativity
Creativity
Interdisciplinarity
Philosophy
Science & the Humanities
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Geodesic Dome
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Pixabay
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geodesic-dome
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E-mail
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John Cleary 60 Associate Professor of Philosophy
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Science Seminar Presentation at my College
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My interest in the relationship between the Sciences and the Humanities
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Analytic and Creative Thinking:
Conventional descriptions of the way teachers and students learn about Science and the Humanities are under-girded by the assumption that these disciplines are cognitively exclusive. That is, what is taught by scientists falls under the vocabulary of the analytic and that what instructors of Humanities do is congruent/appropos with creative thinking. Closer analysis reveals, however, that both camps share more than they realize, and that a not-so-evident part of what it means to think like a scientist requires forms of creative thinking in the same way that analytic thinking is part of the project of thinking like an artist. A good example of this is what architects do. Inventive architects, like Buckminster Fuller, required themselves to think about the aesthetic value of a structure (e.g. a geodesic dome), as well as its alignment with geometric forms. It is for this reason that teachers should allow themselves to think in a interdisciplinary way. When students see that their imaginations are part of what it means to think like a scientist, they can also understand the precision is part of what artists do too.
Title
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Analytic and Creative Thinking: A Conversation
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analytic-creative-thinking
Architecture
Creativity
Interdisciplinarity
Science & the Humanities
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Image of Sir William Osler
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image-of-sir-william-osler
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JcAuft9uZ0w" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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Using Language to Humanize Healthcare
Description
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In this video, Dr. Michael Stanley celebrates a philosophy of healthcare that sees patients as more than the sum of their medical symptoms, drawing from the rich legacies of philosophy, mythology, and literature to understand individuals and their circumstances. Sir William Osler, one of the earliest proponents of such logic, articulates the manner in which the hospital can so often become a stage for the drama of interdependent human existence: "The comedy, too, of life will be spread before you, and nobody laughs more often than the doctor at the pranks Puck plays upon the Titanias and the Bottoms among his patients. The humorous side is really almost as frequently turned towards him as the tragic.... yet it is an unpardonable mistake to go about among patients with a long face."
In reflecting upon the influence of Osler and other mentors, Dr. Stanley suggests that a humanistic perspective plays a key role in helping doctors to be personally engaged in fostering interpersonal recognition and community through their work.
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using-language-to-humanize-healthcare
Doctors & Medicine
Illness
Language
Medical Personnel
Medicine
Philosophy
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Broken glass
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Pixabay
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broken-glass
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TAC member referral
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Secretary Atif Qarni, Virginia Secretary of Education
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2003
Source
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Operation Iraqi Freedom
Description
An account of the resource
In 2003, while deployed to Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom, I went on various convoys and used to see many children in small towns and neighborhoods running around barefoot playing with their friends. One thing I noticed is that there was a lot of loose trash and broken glass. I noticed that many children did not have shoes on. I also wondered if these children in this war-torn nation were not going to school and the adverse impact it can have on their future. This imagery of children in poverty running around with broken glass barefoot has stuck with me. <br /><br />As I reflected on my time while deployed it made me realize that I needed to make a difference and make an impact on people who are in poverty and in most need. My grandmother and mother were both educators, so I could not think of a better calling than to become a teacher myself. I intentionally only interviewed at schools where I could make the most difference. Teaching in a setting where many students were economically disadvantaged and had faced trauma really allowed me to gain more empathy for the challenges many of our community members face. <br /><br />As a policy maker I keep the stories of my students and those images from my time in Iraq in my mind, which remind me that there are a lot of folks living in high concentrations of poverty. These memories are a constant reminder that I should not be complacent. Instead, I take pride in being assertive and intentional about helping, respecting and being empathetic to as many vulnerable children and adults as possible. <br /><br /><br /><em>Prior to his appointment as Governor Northam’s Secretary of Education, Atif Qarni taught at Beville Middle School in Prince William County, leading courses in civics, economics, U.S History, and mathematics. He also served as a GED Night School Instructor. In 2016, Atif was recognized as the Dale City Teacher of the Year.</em><br /><br /><em>In addition to his work as an educator, Atif is a former Sergeant of the United States Marine Corps, and was deployed to Iraq in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He has also served at the state level, having been appointed by Governor Terry McAuliffe to the Small Business Commission in 2013.</em>
Title
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Broken Glass and the Path to a Career in Education
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broken-glass-path-career-education
Education
Iraq War (2003-2011)
Military Service
Poverty
Teachers & Teaching
-
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c6b20b8baa5fb3983d8b9200ec450673
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Pencil and Sharpener
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Pixabay
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pencil-and-sharpener
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FCPS Social Studies Blended Learning Cohort.
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Anonymous
Date
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1981
Description
An account of the resource
School was not a challenge for me growing up. I was usually bored and busy talking. It was not until my junior year when my APUSH teacher Mr. Greenfield informed me on day 1 that he was aware that I was smart and that he would be challenging me. He did not allow me to use the textbook. All my learning came from primary resources and outside of the classroom research.
The surprise to me was that I absolutely loved the challenge and the feeling of accomplishment of learning it on my own. This year I am split between teaching US/VA History Honors 11 and English 8 and I can’t stress enough how much my heart sings while guiding my history students in their own explorations for learning. I know Mr. Greenfield would be!
Title
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Learning By Myself
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learning-by-myself
Critical Thinking
Students
Teachers & Teaching
-
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Auschwitz photograph
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Pixabay
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auschwitz-photograph
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Through Professional Development
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Josh Britton, 23, High School History Teacher
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
Summer after my Sophomore Year of College
Description
An account of the resource
For years, every time we covered World War II and the Holocaust in school it was just a fact memorization activity. "Hitler was bad and did bad things." When I was afforded the opportunity to travel to Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic in college, I got to look at the Holocaust in a new light. It was not just a fact dump but instead a philosophical inquiry.
We used the Holocaust and the work of the Third Reich as a jumping off point to debate and consider questions like: How are values and ethics established in individuals, groups and organizations? What are the responsibilities of leaders to establish ethical climates in their organizations and communities? What are the responsibilities of followers and bystanders? How does this all relate to the world today?
This experience put the power into my hands to guide my educational experience and allowed me to truly reflect on not just events that happened in history but how and why they happen. Now as a World History teacher who covers both World Wars I and II, I attempt to provide this same energy and power to my students by bringing historical dilemmas and events into modern terms that promote inquiry and self reflection.
Title
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Turning Historical Events into Modern Reflective Inquiries
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turning-historical-events-into-modern-inquiries
Critical Thinking
Genocide Prevention
Teachers & Teaching
World History
World War I (1914-1918)
World War II (1939-1945)
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Title
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Machu Picchu
Description
An account of the resource
Machu Picchu
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machu-picchu
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Through professional development
Dublin Core
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Wendell Johnson, 52, Social Studies Teacher
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March, 2002
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Hiking the Inca Trail, visiting Machu Piccu
Description
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Sure, I had studied the Incas in school. I knew about Machu Picchu or I thought that I did. "You cannot judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes" from <em>To Kill a Mocking Bird</em> describes my moment. <br /><br />The trail went through the Andes, we were able to interact with local villagers. We were able to see how they lived, in the altitude where food was scare. It was eye opening. We camped along the trail, seeing more stars than I could have imagined. I was able to the see the Southern Cross in the sky, bringing up images of people using the stars as navigation points. The engineering of the trail and Machu Picchu spoke to the Incas' advanced society. That being said, the trail was tougher than anticipated. But worth the trip due to your view of Machu Picchu as you come up to it. It is a spiritual place and when I first saw it I could not move, I just stared at it. <br /><br />Walking throughout the area brought to life for me all that I had studied. We were able to see the terrace farming concept, the temples, all at this altitude, making me wonder about how this was accomplished. The manpower needed. . . This has impacted how I teach the Incas to students. It enables me to tell stories that they might not be able to read about in the class, showing pictures from Machu Picchu. For me when I teach this to students it brings back the memories.
Title
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The Inca Trail
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the-inca-trail
Agriculture
Cross-Cultural Relations
Inca Civilization
Inca Trail
Lee, Harper
Machu Picchu
Peru
Teachers & Teaching
To Kill a Mockingbird
UNESCO World Heritage Site
World History
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https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/334/ed-robertson-eeSdJfLfx1A-unsplash.jpg
635065a940cf2e414bb0a42a0db861ff
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books
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books
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Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/eeSdJfLfx1A
Text
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Professional Development
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Mary Catherine Keating, 52, Teacher
Date
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Middle School and High school
Source
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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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New England landscape
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new-england-landscape
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from a professional development project
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Cheryl Gannaway, 39, High School Teacher
Date
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Summer 2019
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Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Connecticut
Description
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My humanities moment occurred while visiting the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Connecticut.
This was my second to visit to this amazing museum and research center. I had stumbled upon it about 10 years ago when studying at Brown University in Rhode Island. A National Park tour guide at another site had seen my interest in Native American studies and had asked me if I had ever visited the Pequot Museum. I told him this was my first visit up to New England and had not heard of the museum. I had an extra empty day in my schedule, so headed out towards Connecticut to visit the museum. I remember being struck by the point of view of the events displayed in the museum and realized quickly that I would need to return for a much longer visit.
This summer, I decided to take my family to visit this museum. My family consists of 3 young boys (ages 10 years to 2 years). I wanted them to see the point of view of the Native Americans from a young age. My boys were very engrossed in the exhibits! It is always eye opening to see historical events from a young child's eyes. The museum is organized by historical time period where you take a self-guided tour starting with the Ice Age and going through modern times. My boys were fascinated by the hunter and gatherer exhibits and then by the Pequot Wars. They asked tons of questions and we spent a lot more time in the exhibits than I thought they would. Even my 2 year old stayed engaged throughout our entire visit. One thing my family and I loved about the museum is that their cafe serves food from that culture. By eating a delicious lunch, we learned about the native foods and plants of the area.
Personally, what really struck me about my first visit was the Pequot War. The movie is extraordinary and a 'must see.' So for my second visit, even though the sign said not to take small children in to the theater because of the content, I did take my children in and they were awestruck by the events. My second son is autistic and I worried about him watching the video with his sensory issues, but he is the one that probably took away the most from the video and asked me many in-depth questions afterwards.
What struck me the most about my second visit was a short video about the Wampum beads that were used as currency and as jewelry. The display after the video really showed the usage of these beads and I was struck that they worked with this delicate material by hand. It truly shows the focus and skills of the Pequot culture.
Title
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Visiting the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center, Connecticut
Identifier
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visiting-the-mashantucket-pequot-museum
Family
Museum Exhibits
Native American History
Teachers & Teaching
U.S. History
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29ac8e24fbae9306e905eaaa83934d85
Dublin Core
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Human Geographies
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human-geographies
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Teacher Advisory Council
Description
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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.
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Clark University.
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Craig Perrier (46). Educator, curriculum specialist, teacher, adjunct, and digital history project designer.
Date
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1992
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This moment was inspired by Dr. Martyn Bowden during his class "The End of America, Los Angeles."
Description
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While discussing N. Scott Momaday's novel A House Made of Dawn, Professor Bowden introduced a new concept - geosophy. It was an unexpected moment during an undergraduate geography class that ultimately opened mental doors and windows to the world. Geosophy, an idea promoted by John Kirtland Wright in the 1940's, "is the study of geographical knowledge from any or all points of view. It is to geography what historiography is to history... it covers the geographical ideas, both true and false, of all manner of people—not only geographers, but farmers and fishermen, business executives and poets, novelists and painters, Bedouins and Hottentots—and for this reason it necessarily has to do in large degree with subjective conceptions."* In short, humans give meaning to the physical world.
I felt like I knew that before this moment. However, this humanities moment was a crossroad that never left me. In fact it caused a shift in my psyche. I remember feeling I understood life better, clearer, and with more agency. After all, the spirit of geosophy applies to everything external and physical (including other people), abstractions, events (past and present) and yourself. As a teacher I made sure I introduced this idea to my middle school and high school students. I remember seeing "a-ha" moments in their eyes. Things clicked. They were constructing meaning and felt empowered to explore and develop their ideas and convictions. It is like what Lionel Trilling reminded us; establishing systems of objectivity that people agree to and can interact in is the hardest, and most important, thing for humanity to develop.
*Quoted from:
Wright, J. K. Terrae incognitae: The place of the imagination in geography. Annals of Association of American Geographers, 1947, 37(1): 1-15.
Title
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Humans Give Meaning to the World
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humans-give-meaning-to-the-world
College Teaching
Geography
Geosophy
House Made of Dawn
Momaday, N. Scott
Subjectivity
Teachers & Teaching
Wright, John Kirtland
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Dim Sum
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Pixabay
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dim-sum
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Teacher Advisory Council
Description
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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.
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Social Studies Department
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Binh Tran (26), World History teacher
Date
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Many times throughout this year so far (since mid August)
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The source of my Humanities Moment is the recent film The Farewell
Description
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The guiding question for my Humanities Moment pertains to the most recent film that I cannot stop talking about with my peers, friends, family and strangers. As a self-described film aficionado, I typically find myself at the movie theater 2-3 times a week. I definitely appreciate the power and effect films can have on our society, ways of thinking, and learning. The film that has struck me the most this year was <em>The Farewell</em> by Lulu Wang. <br /><br />Without spoiling too much of the picture, the film explores various aspects of traditional Chinese culture in regards to food, family, and grief. This exploration is juxtaposed with a first generation Asian-American protagonist, her upbringing, relationship with her extended family, and her identity as a Chinese-American. The reason I found this story so compelling was because of the well balanced discussion of cultural differences between China and America as well as the cultural clash experienced by first generation Asian-Americans, especially when visiting their families' native country. <br /><br />Viewing the film from an educator's standpoint, I was fascinated and impressed by the honest portrayal of shared grief and its differences between traditional Asian and American families. I couldn't help myself but discuss the film's messages and concepts with other viewers while also making connections to the film and my profession of teaching World History. I questioned to myself how much of my instruction, and curriculum, is taught through a lens of ethnocentrism as well as how I could potentially tackle this issue in my planning. Is it possible to survey various ancient civilizations (or cultures) without having judgment? Or are we cursed to look at history through our own cultural lens?
Title
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The Farewell: Teaching and Talking about Ethnocentrism as an Asian-American
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the-farewell-teaching-and-talking-about-ethnocentrism
Cultural Awareness
Ethnocentrism
Teachers & Teaching
The Farewell
Wang, Lulu
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https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/9/327/Scotland_HM_image.jpg
2a9b1d254c7817474aa74d4e3671fcda
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Scottish Highlands
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Pixabay
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scottish-highlands
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Teacher Advisory Council
Description
An account of the resource
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
Identifier
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scottish-highlands
Colonialism
History
Scotland
Teachers & Teaching
Travel