2
30
405
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Care package
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The Best Motivational Token
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It was a late night on September 14th, and school was at an overwhelming high. My new organization had just kicked off so all of my time was completely taken over by it, I was behind on my chemistry homework and I hadn't even began studying for my psychology test that was the following day. I felt like I was about to break into a million minuscule pieces, and I felt so emotionally drained that I was putting my loved ones on hold.
I was avoiding the text messages on my phone to avoid further distraction and more procrastination, but after a sufficient amount of time I decided I earned a break long enough to read what they said. I saw I had a message from my mom, but before I read it I remembered she told me a few days ago that I had a package coming on the 13th. Assuming that's what her text was about, I went outside to check the mail at midnight. Inside the package was one of my mom's classic gifts, a cheesy desk decorations with a quote of some sort on it. She always gave me these, but this time it hit my heart much deeper. It read, "You Make My Heart Happy." Tears flooded my eyes instantly. In that exact moment, this little wooden piece of cheesy decor fulfilled the void in my heart in the utmost way I needed. A kind reminder that I am valued, which I knew would help me power through this rough patch of the semester.
Astonished by this powerful moment, I immediately begin to text to tell my boyfriend, who also loves moments like these, which I call "God Moments." But to my surprise, and further heart-filled satisfaction, I already had a text waiting from him that said, "Keep a smile on that face, you brighten the world with it." Another reminder. It was as if everything aligned in my life in that sweet moment and I just let out a much needed cry and counted my blessings. Who knew this tacky little piece of art would trigger this exponential amount of needed love?
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"You Make My Heart Happy"
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N/A
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9/14/17
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Melanie, 20, Psychology major
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best-motivational-token
Emotional Experience
Kitsch
Mothers & Daughters
Students
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/17/416/swan-2107052_1920.jpg
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Swan
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swan
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Graduate Student Residents 2020
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graduate-student-summer-residents-2020
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Through the Virtual Winter Residency
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George C. Berry, 26, MFA Candidate in Dance, University of Alabama
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December 2020
Source
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Matthew Bourne's <em>Swan Lake</em>
Description
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Matthew Bourne’s <em>Swan Lake</em> is a masterpiece that changed the way I view classical ballet as a queer person. Bourne’s reimagining of the classic story, <em>Swan Lake</em>, replaces all of the female swans with their male counterparts. Instead of classical white tutus, male swans are clad in only delicate feathery breeches, revealing their chiseled physiques to the audience. This juxtaposition of strength and fragility through costuming changes the traditional perception of the swans from classically romantic to sensuously carnal. As the Prince tentatively touches a male swan he foreshadows his inner struggle to accept the love he feels for him. This moment serves as a calling card for young gay male dancers to embrace who they are. <br /><br />Audiences are often not used to seeing the love between two men told through dance, and Matthew Bourne has seemingly shown us a beautiful, sensual love story. The way that Bourne weaves this story, carefully considering the accessibility and complexity, he establishes a new classic that has gained popularity among both the critics and the general public. Still, even as Bourne embraces the nuances of the inner struggle to find one’s identity, Bourne refused to attach the queer label to his work in an attempt to keep his story universal. Although this ballet was culturally received as supporting gay rights, Matthew Bourne has explicitly denied that this was his only intention. Instead of embracing the critics’ labelling of the work as the “Queer Swan Lake,” he pivots the narrative by announcing that the prince is not a gay man; he is just a Prince experiencing inner turmoil and the swan represents the freedom he seeks. <br /><br />My humanities moment is not Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and the joy and identity I found within it, but instead is an interview created for TenduTV in 2011 entitled "Matthew Bourne: Refreshing the Classics and Winning Audiences Over," during which he renounced any gay readings of the work. I was so affected by this ballet that he created, that hearing him brush off the queerness that seemed so obvious in his work left my soul crushed. Bourne claimed that he doesn’t want his <em>Swan Lake</em> vision to be labeled as “just a gay story,” choosing instead to emphasize its universal appeal, and of course implying in the process that gay stories are only suitable for gay audiences. I, on the other hand, believe that identity-specific stories can be relatable, and that this story shares a universal message about wanting to be loved and cared for. I believe that the protagonist’s sexuality does not detract from the work’s appeal, instead it humanizes the gay community by showing their wants and struggles. <br /><br />Bourne’s decision to brush the queer influences in his work under the rug are supported by a long history of queer-erasure in dance culture more broadly. Ballet dancers, choreographers and critics have attempted to separate the art from queer culture for centuries, going back as far back as King Louis XIV and the form’s origins. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, composer of so many beloved ballets, including <em>The Nutcracker</em>, suffered from lifelong depression and may have committed suicide, in part because of the pain of having to live in the closet. Today, I have seen many companies comprised of mostly gay men steer away from being labeled a gay company for fear of being ostracized by a mainstream audience. Homosexual men who have given their lives to the craft of ballet long for proud representation, and it was a tragedy that Bourne chose to take this away from us, even as he so obviously put it on stage. <br /><br />As a young dancer, classical ballet training forced me to learn only heterosexual princely characters based on my appearance. I fought back against these assumptions through my gender non-conforming appearance, at which point I was discarded and my talent deemed wasted. This style of education failed to account for my desire for self-expression and creativity as a budding artist; they asked me only to imitate a masculine ideal that was not part of who I am. Just as the Prince in Bourne’s <em>Swan Lake</em> longs for reprieve from his mother’s quest to find him an acceptable bride, male ballet dancers seek freedom from their oppression from centuries-old values. <br /><br />The Prince in this story goes to the swan lake to hide himself from the world, just as I and countless others were forced to hide our sexuality for our own safety. I was forced to hide who I was from my parents, kids at school, and my dance teachers. Embracing my sexuality was not an option in the ballet school I attended, and in fact I was mocked for my appearance. When I came out, my dance teachers were the most repulsed by how I wanted to express my gender identity. In an industry that was built by queer people, they only embraced boys who fit their mold of who a “man” is in classical ballet. Recognizing the many queer influences in ballet history can help to bring us out of the shadows and into the increasingly diverse field of public opinion, allowing everyone to embrace our differences.<br /><br />Despite Bourne’s rejection of gay interpretations of his work, I believe the evidence for that meaning is too clear to deny. Bourne breaks heteronormative boundaries by choosing a man to play the swan that attempts to protect the Prince. I see two beautiful men embracing each other in a tender way that, yes, maybe shouldn’t have to be labeled as gay, but I clung to this break from tradition as a sign of romantic acceptance. While I agree that cultural traditions of heteronormativity handicap young minds, and that it is wrong to automatically label male intimacy, or anything a male does outside the macho sensibility, as feminine or gay, the romantic overtones of Bourne’s work are undeniable. I am not the only queer person to see it, as Dr. Kent G. Drummond states: “In a broader context, (Matthew Bourne) also forces a long-simmering relationship between homosexuality and dance out of the closet and into mainstream popular culture” (Drummond 2003). For these reasons, and many others, gay men - a group of individuals wanting to be accepted - still claim and cling to Bourne’s work even as he fails to return the embrace. <br /><br />Bourne’s <em>Swan Lake</em> was a catalyst for gay men wanting to dance as themselves in the ballet world, and the success of the work additionally proves that two men dancing together in a loving and intimate way can be beautiful and marketable. It is a shame that even after the work’s adoring reception, Bourne was afraid that his work would be seen one-dimensionally and that society lacked the open mind to receive all that he had created. My two-fold humanities moment is the moment of how this ballet changed me, and the moment when Bourne’s interview changed my views on this ballet. <br /><br />I hope that Bourne’s views on representation have changed as society has evolved. I was hurt by seeing someone fail to give credit to a community that needs uplifting. When leaders fail, the community has twice as much work to do. Although my thoughts on the work have shifted, I can speak to the normalization of two men tenderly embracing that Bourne inadvertently created with this ballet. The embrace between the Prince and Swan inspires me to create work that is defined by who I am; to embrace who we are and where society is going. Young gay boys dreaming of dancing professionally will continue to cling to this work, dreaming to one day experience this type of freedom. I believe that a future of gender equality is just beginning to peek over the horizon. <br /><br />Kent G. Drummond (2003). "The Queering of Swan Lake." <em>Journal of Homosexuality</em>, 45:2-4,235-255, DOI: 10.1300/J082v45n02_11
Title
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Not the Gay <em>Swan Lake</em>
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not-the-gay-swan-lake
Bourne, Matthew
Cultural Awareness
Dance
LGBTQ Rights
Queer Theory
Self-acceptance
Swan Lake
-
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The Jesus Movement
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Graduate Student Summer Residents 2019
Description
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The National Humanities Center's graduate student summer residency program, <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/nhc-welcomes-graduate-student-summer-residents/">“Objects and Places in an Inquiry-Based Classroom: Teaching, Learning, and Research in the Humanities”</a> took place July 15–26, 2019. Representing 28 universities in 18 states, these participants worked with leading scholars and educators from across the United States as they learned how to add value to their research by focusing on teaching and learning.
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Washington, DC
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Azizou Atte-oudeyi, 50 years, PhD Student at Rice University, Department of Religion
Date
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August 2016
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The Cross of Jesus Christ
Description
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My humanities moment came with my conversion from Islam to Christianity. It opened a wide world for me and enabled me to see that my new faith was distinct, but shared some of its humanistic values which we find in religious traditions around the world. I began to see areas of difference and convergence with my African roots, my former religious community, Islam and decided that I will do graduate work in the human sciences. <br /><br />Ideas communicate the vision and often inspire people in ways that one did not expect. One of those ideas was the slogan of Rice University that talked about “unconventional wisdom,” which in the Department of Religion at Rice University invites a robust conversation about religions around the world. The quest for unconventional wisdom suit my goals, and the School of Humanities offers several opportunities for critical interdisciplinary research that will prepare me as a scholar of global Christianity in a multi-religion world. Christianity is rooted in Judaism and first developed as a Mediterranean religion which later spread to Africa, Europe, and rapidly became a world religion. <br /><br />I find studying religion within a global context meaningful because the Christian tradition’s emphasis on the humanity of Jesus humanizes religion. What Jesus did was to work with the community around him. Indeed, scholars describe his followers and their humanistic message as the Jesus movement which started within the Jewish community, but by the time of Jesus death, it had grown to a multi-ethnic humanistic program centered beliefs about God. This movement later developed into what is known as Christianity around 40 AD when the so-called pagans or gentiles coined this name in Antioch, nowadays Turkey. <br /><br />Christianity remains for me a humanistic journey and studying the humanities today will prepare me to research some of the issues people around the world face. For me, specifically, it means that I should strive to understand the relation between Christianity and economic development. The economy is not merely a dismal science because it is a necessary component of human development and well being. Studying in the school of humanities will strengthen my research as I examine what faith communities have done and what they can do for individuals and humanity as a whole, not only they are targets of conversion, but because the Christian tradition follows in the footsteps of Jesus who taught his followers to care about other human beings. <br /><br />However, I am in no denial of the negative role that religion played and continues to play in human relations with destructive wars, all forms of violence, and its corollary of human subjugation. But it is worthy to notice that studying the human dimensions of the movement, demonstrates that Christianity is indeed a humanistic journey. For me, religion in general is part of our humanity, and Christianity gives those who follow its path an opportunity to prioritize the human so that people can build a humane world. This is what humanities as a scholarly pursuit means to me.
Title
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What About the Jesus Movement?
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Jesus-movement
Christianity
Faith
Islam
Religious Conversion
Religious Studies
-
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Storm at Sea
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storm-at-sea
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
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NHC Graduate Student Summer Residency
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Philip Gilreath, 32, University of Georgia Ph.D. Student
Date
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2021
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<em>The Tempest</em>
Description
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When I think “humanities moment,” this song from William Shakespeare’s <em>The Tempest</em> pops into my head. It’s almost too fitting: “Full Fathom Five” is such a momentary diversion in the play—a random and beautiful intrusion to the plot. The song seems interested in how we process death—something I have been doing a lot lately. These are the words to the song: <br /><br />Full fathom five thy father lies; <br />Of his bones are coral made; <br />Those are pearls that were his eyes: <br />Nothing of him that doth fade <br />But doth suffer a sea-change <br />Into something rich and strange. <br /><br />A tree spirit named Ariel uses this song to get the attention of Ferdinand, a prince who has recently crash-landed on the island Ariel shares with a magician named Prospero. At this moment, Ferdinand believes that his father, the king of Naples, has drowned in the storm. The prince thinks he’s the only survivor, and Ariel sings to him, to get his attention, but also to offer a kind of consolation for his drowned father. <br /><br />The image the spirit describes—a human body mutating and transforming into coral and pearls, is one of the most beautiful images I have never seen. You have to imagine it: when you see The Tempest on stage, you hear Ariel’s description, but this otherworldly transformation is something that can only really exist as a poetic description (or maybe really good computer graphics). <br /><br />The other thing about the song that strikes me is its futility: try using these lines on someone grieving the death of a parent and see how far they get you. At the same time, this moment tries to give voice to forms of life outside of humanity as it attempts to explain something precious and important, not just about life, but art. Death is inevitable, and imagination, though it can never make up for that fact, does fascinating things when it tries. <br /><br />The last thing I’ll bring up is the way this song, which makes visible a new and strange transformation, becomes visible in other media: Julie Taymor interprets the song in her 2010 film adaptation of <em>The Tempest</em>; Jackson Pollack has a painting named “Full Fathom Five,” and Beck, back when I was a teenager, titled his break-up album <em>Sea Change</em>, an allusion to the weird expressions we give to grief. These artworks show us that, while a human body can’t really transform into coral and pearls, one poetic moment can transform into another.
Title
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New and Strange: Thinking About Transformation Through Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare
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new-and-strange
Adaptation
Drama
English Literature
Shakespeare, William
The Tempest
Theater and Drama
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/204/Ho_Chi_Minh_Trail_network_map.jpg
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Ho Chi Minh Trail network
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Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ho_Chi_Minh_Trail_network_map.jpg
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/13/204/Ho_Chi_Minh_Trail-sDnC8ANpwLk_x264.mp3
bf1fa21c67c479b71c87aba98995bb9a
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Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, 1945–75
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A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers
Description
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Taking place from July 16-27, 2018, <a href="A%20National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for Teachers">this National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute</a> explored modern Vietnam in order to situate the American War in broader spatial settings and longer historical contexts.
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contested-territory
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I discovered Humanities Moments while attending an institute at the National Humanities Center
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Alex Christman, 41, history teacher in Durham North Carolina
Date
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July 2018
Description
An account of the resource
When I was young my father, knowing of my interest in music and war, gave me a book entitled "Singing the Vietnam Blues: Songs of the Air Force in Southeast Asia." Actually, he had it hidden so well he lost it and gave it to me years after he intended. I ended up losing it again while in college before reading it, a missed opportunity I’ve always regretted.
Later on in life, I discovered a folk song through a project at Buffalo State University called Vietnam Veterans Oral History and Folklore Project. I found the song instantly haunting. Recalling my father’s gift, I have always yearned to share it with my father to get his opinion. Unfortunately he died before I could. The song is titled “Ho Chi Minh Trail,” although the tune is identical to the old country song “Billy the Kid” (this adds extra layers of meaning if you know the lyrics). The song describes the point of view of an American pilot trying to stop North Vietnamese trucks on the trail while facing anti-aircraft defenses and his own fears.
While participating in the National Humanities Institute on Contested Territory: America’s Role in Southeast Asia, I have gained an appreciation for the layers within the song and parallels to Vietnamese culture. Obviously the Trail was a “contested territory,” with the North Vietnamese on the ground and Americans in the air above. This difference of space itself is a reflection of the technological and cultural divide between the two sides. The author describes a pilot struggling in the dark while fighting to stay in the air. This recalls to me American administrations creating policy, struggling with their ignorance of Southeast Asia, while fighting to keep South Vietnam afloat. This song also represents a contested cultural territory in America. Folk songs were typically used by American protesters in the 1950s and 60s, but here the form is used to describe a military experience. The last verse of the song, about an overconfident youth, seems a fitting metaphor for America as a whole in the mid-20th Century. Finally, this song brings to mind the Vietnamese Ca Dao poetry, or folk poetry used by the Vietnamese peasants to describe and give meaning to their lives. This song is an American equivalent of Ca Dao; it would have been sung by and to other American pilots before they met their destiny in the contested space above the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The song makes me think of lost opportunities for communication between people divided by space, technology, politics, and culture, just as my opportunity to play this song for my father was lost by his death. Listening to this song, I am haunted by that realization of loss. As we hurt each other, we all lose opportunities to understand. We lose our youth, we lose our fathers, and we lose ourselves.
“Ho Chi Minh Trail” by Toby Hughes
Come along, boys, and I'll tell you a tale,
Of the pilots who fly on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Of Covey and Moonbeam and Nimrod you've heard,
Of Hobo and Spad and of old Yellow Bird.
The trucks load in Hanoi and Haiphong by day,
In singles and convoys they start on their way.
South by southwest in an unending stream,
Reaching the border at day's fading gleam.
They stop at Mu Gia or at Ban Karai.
And wait for the last of the daylight to die.
Under cover of night through the pass they set sail,
Out on the roads of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
As they roll on through darkness, not stopping to rest,
Miles away are the pilots whose skills they will test.
Who'll soon face the darkness, the karst, and the guns,
In the grim cat and mouse game that no one's yet won.
When you fly on the Trail through the dark and the haze
It's a thing you'll remember the rest of your days.
A nightmare of vertigo, mountains, and flak,
And the cold wind of Death breathing soft at your back.
But the trucks must be stopped, and it's all up to you,
So you fly here each night to this grim rendezvous.
Where your whole world's confined to the light of the flare,
And you fight for your life just to stay in the air.
For there's many a man who there met his fate,
On the dark roads of Hell, where the grim reaper waits.
Where a man must learn quickly the tricks of his trade,
Or die in the dark for mistakes that he's made.
And there's many a lad in the flush of his youth,
Who's still yet to meet with his moment of truth.
With wings on his chest and the world by the tail,
He'll grow up fast on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDnC8ANpwLk
Title
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Flying Over the Ho Chi Minh Trail
Source
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"Ho Chi Minh Trail" by Toby Hughes
Identifier
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flying-over-ho-chi-minh-trail
Ca Dao (Vietnamese Folk Poetry)
Fathers & Sons
Folk Music
Ho Chi Minh Trail
Hughes, Toby
Oral History
Singing the Vietnam Blues: Songs of the Air Force in Southeast Asia
Teachers & Teaching
Vietnam Veterans Oral History and Folklore Project
Vietnam War (1961-1975)
-
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0df2cb269d4bf8b400913e886fa88822
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Printz Prize Winners 2018
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printz-prize-winners-2018
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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.
Text
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Teacher's Advisory Council
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Scot Smith, 53, school librarian
Date
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February 5, 2018
Description
An account of the resource
<p>I was born and grew up in rural Southern Appalachia. Books and stories were my pathway out of the holler and into a world of hope and possibility. As a child and teen, I read and listened voraciously, and those stories found in books helped to save my life. Without them, I am not sure where I would be right now. During my early years as an adult, I searched for a career that would pair my enthusiasm for literacy and literature with my profession. I finally found that perfect match as a librarian.</p>
<p>As a middle school librarian, I fell in love with Young Adult literature, books written for teens between the ages of 13 and 18. When I am asked why I seldom read “adult” books, I respond that I believe that some of the best books—both fiction and non-fiction—written today are being published for teenagers. In my defense, I am quick to cite numerous studies that indicate between 48–52% of the YA books being checked out at public libraries and purchased in book stores or online are to readers over the age of 24, in other words, readers like myself. What does that tell us? That these books written for teens possess value and quality for people of all ages.</p>
<p>In 2017, I had the opportunity to serve on the Michael L. Printz Award committee for the American Library Association. This prestigious award is administered by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) and sponsored by Booklist. The winner and honors must exemplify literary excellence in young adult literature. Over the course of 12 months, I worked with a committee of eight other librarians from across the US. As a committee, we read hundreds of novels, biographies, and non-fiction titles written for teens. We convened online and in person, wrote about the books we had read, and in February of 2018 met in Denver to decide which titles we would select for the Printz Award. After two days of intense debates, we chose diverse five titles. The committee selected <em>We Are Okay</em> by Nina LaCour as the winner of 2018 Printz Medal and recognized four books with Printz Honors: <em>The Hate U Give</em> by Angie Thomas, <em>Long Way Down</em> by Jason Reynolds, <em>Vincent and Theo</em> by Deborah Heiligman, and <em>Stranger the Dreamer</em> by Laini Taylor.</p>
<p>As the awards were being announced at the ALA conference on February 5, I sat in a packed auditorium as tears rolled down my face. And why is this my Humanities Moment? Because this moment validates what I have always felt about YA literature. My experience on the Printz Committee and the five books we selected affirm two of my core beliefs—that some of the best books being written today are being published for teens and that anyone, young or old, can find beauty and meaning in the pages of YA. As a middle school librarian, I remind myself that I have the power to hand a student the right book at the right time in his or her life, a story that might change a life forever. And that is the power of literacy for teens….showing young readers a pathway to the future and inspiring them with hope and promise.</p>
Title
A name given to the resource
Why I Read YA
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
why-I-read-ya
Education
Librarians
Libraries
Literacy
Literary Prizes
Young Adult Literature
-
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7740f580dd7c3b6b12e038fe97367fe5
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
baseball
Description
An account of the resource
baseball
Identifier
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baseball
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
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Professional Development.
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Contributor
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Randee Wittkopf, 46, high school social studies teacher, mom, wife, sister, daughter and lover of the Humanities
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
July 2019
Description
An account of the resource
This past summer, my son was offered an opportunity to represent the United States and play baseball in Belgium and Holland. Naturally, I took one for the team and volunteered to chaperone him on the 10-day tour. I had never been to the Continent, only to England and Scotland, and was eager to collect more stamps for my passport. I knew that traveling to these medieval cities and touring the places that I had only taught about would impact me, but I just didn't know how much.
Our first day, we took a day tour to Bastogne and spent time at the Battle of the Bulge Museum and the memorial there dedicated to the paratroopers and Patton's 3rd Army who fought and saved the town. Standing on top of the memorial and scanning the panoramic views of the village around us, I couldn't help but sense the honor and sacrifice so many made to hold that town. I can still smell the air, feel the breeze in my hair, and the pride I felt as I watched my 12-year-old son read the plaques dedicated to those men who fought so bravely to save the world.
It just so happened that the museum, which if you haven't visited I highly recommend, was also hosting an exhibit that contained art painted on sections of the Berlin Wall. It also had cars from East Berlin that were painted and represented the attitudes of the artists and their conceptions of liberty, freedom, confinement, denial and oppression. The pieces took my breath away...the visions these artists expressed on the symbol of the Cold War were hauntingly beautiful yet also loud and defiant. I will never forget them.
Our first baseball game wasn't until day 4 of our trip, and we arrived to my delight to a ball field that looked like it was built right after World War II...which it was. It was right next to the local airport that was still in use and I could visualize the GIs playing ball, teaching the Belgians the art of the game, sowing the seeds of peace and fraternity while healing the wounds of occupation and oppression for so long.
There are so many moments from this trip that moved me, but the one place that I will never forget and will always keep in my heart was the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. I really have no words to express the sorrow, the inhumanity and the anger I felt as I moved through the house. The last room which held her personal diary, her writings, her stories instilled a sense of loss and sadness in me that I still can't express in the right words. It brought back memories of my grandparents' friends, one of whom had numbers tattooed on her arm. I didn't understand then what they meant, and I wish so much that I still had my grandparents here now so that I could understand what their friends went through. So I could continue to tell their story. The Anne Frank House exemplified Humanity. Life. And it showed what happens when we forget that we are all human and we all should see each other as mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters. Humans.
Title
A name given to the resource
How Baseball Leads to Profound Moments
Identifier
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how-baseball-leads-to-profound-moments
Anne Frank
Baseball
Battle of the Bulge
Battlefield Monuments
Berlin Wall, 1969-1989
Cold War
Cross-Cultural Relations
Teachers
World War II (1939-1945)
-
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4aca20a7b0533323561ec9fe705661a8
Dublin Core
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Title
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Dock at Sunset
Source
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Pixabay
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dock-sunset
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
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Teacher
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Contributor
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Brian Blankenship, 19, student
Date
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2018
Source
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"(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding
Description
An account of the resource
When I was in a dark place in my life, Ottis Redding's song, "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay" helped me get through the hard times.
Title
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Overcoming with Otis
Creator
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Otis Redding
Identifier
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overcoming-with-otis
Music
Therapy
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/331/ousa-chea-gKUC4TMhOiY-unsplash.jpg
7cd1686e156c07148c8c3006882e6e39
Dublin Core
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Title
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microscopes
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microscopes
Source
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Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/gKUC4TMhOiY
Description
An account of the resource
Microscopes
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Referrer
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from my brother
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Connie, age 54, sales analyst
Date
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July 2018
Source
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a documentary
Description
An account of the resource
I had heard about this documentary, <em>Three Identical Strangers</em>, from a co-worker - she said I absolutely had to see it! I am fascinated by the nature vs. nurture discussion and I could not wait to see how this was represented in the film. At the beginning of the story, I was 100% on board the "nature" wagon. Genetics had to be the reason we are who we are. The documentary played right into that thinking, citing the similarity of the likes, preferences, physical gestures, etc. of the triplets. But as the movie went much deeper into their lives, all of the superficial "sameness" lost its value, and the "nurture" argument began to gain strength. <br /><br />This movie flipped my thinking completely, proving how much impact one's environment has on one's mentality. These were no longer identical strangers, but rather three very different people, clearly molded and influenced by their loved ones and surroundings in their formative years. I shocked myself with my change of mindset and began to think more critically about how our own "hard-wit\ring" could be undone - to either our success or our detriment.
Title
A name given to the resource
Three Identical Strangers - not really...
Identifier
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three-identical-strangers-not-really
Documentary Films
Genetics
Science & the Humanities
Three Identical Strangers
Wardle, Tim
-
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e9278265c2a75fd84c7bc4d790545390
Dublin Core
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Title
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Ken Burns
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595930a8dd36baa2e081af7fdcdaaa31
Dublin Core
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Title
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Ken Burns
Description
An account of the resource
This collection includes contributions by the renown filmmaker Ken Burns.
Identifier
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ken-burns-humanities-moments
Moving Image
A series of visual representations imparting an impression of motion when shown in succession. Examples include animations, movies, television programs, videos, zoetropes, or visual output from a simulation.
Player
html for embedded player to stream media content
<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/263519438" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Why We Always Come Back to Abraham Lincoln
Description
An account of the resource
Ken Burns describes how lines from a historic speech given by 29-year-old Abraham Lincoln have “haunted and inspired” him for nearly 40 years. Expanding on what is revealed in those sentences, Burns discusses how they speak not only to Lincoln’s basic character and optimism, qualities that proved essential to his presidency. He goes on to note that Lincoln’s words, here and elsewhere, are suggestive of what is best in the American character.<br /><br />“A handful of sentences” from Lincoln’s 1838 Springfield speech on national security left a deep imprint on the filmmaker’s own philosophy. For Burns, Lincoln’s narrative illustrates how, as a nation, we are “still stitched together by words and, most important, their dangerous progeny, ideas.” Time and again, Lincoln’s eloquence and vision has guided Burns as he enlists documentary film to tell the story of the United States and its citizens.
Contributor
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Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker
Identifier
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ken-burns-abraham-lincoln
Source
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Abraham Lincoln's 1838 speech on national security delivered in Springfield, Illinois
American Speeches
Civil Rights Movement (United States)
Documentary Films
Filmmakers
History
Liberty
Lincoln, Abraham
National Security
Optimism
Oratory
Presidents of the United States
Slavery
Springfield, Illinois
United States History
-
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3d221e5e28543419610b48f2281ca257
Dublin Core
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Title
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Ebony Fashion Fair designer fashions, NCMA
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Olympia Friday
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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Title
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Haute Couture: Fashion Fair and the Empowerment of the Black Community
Description
An account of the resource
<p>I recall flipping through <em>Ebony</em> magazine as a child in the 80s and often seeing pictures of Fashion Fair models. It didn’t dawn on me then how the power of fashion was being used to inspire an entire community. After seeing “Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair” at the North Carolina Museum of Art, it became clear to me. I developed a deeper sense of the importance of John and Eunice Johnson’s creation.</p>
<p>The Johnsons started Fashion Fair in 1958. This quote by Mr. Johnson, which was a part of the exhibit, placed Fashion Fair into greater context for me:</p>
<p>“<em>Ebony</em> was founded to testify to the possibilities of a new and different world. In a world of despair, we wanted to give hope. In a world of negative Black images, we wanted to provide positive Black images. In a world that said Blacks could do few things, we wanted to say they could do everything.” –John H. Johnson, from his autobiography, <em>Succeeding Against the Odds</em>, 1989</p>
<img width="600" height="464" src="http://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/john-johnson-ebony-quote.jpg" />
<p>Fashion Fair was more than models strutting the runway in expensive designer clothing. It was an empowering and uplifting cultural force and antithetical to the negative portrayal of Blacks at the time. Fashion Fair debunked commonly held beliefs about Blacks. It showed them as beautiful, successful, glamorous, classy, and dignified. Ebony Fashion Fair ended in 2009. Yet, it cemented its place in history.</p>
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair</em>, an exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
John and Eunice Johnson
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Olympia Friday, Digital Engagement & Marketing Coordinator, National Humanities Center
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
fashion-fair-black-community
African American History
Art Museums
Black History
Ebony Fashion Fair
Ebony Magazine
Fashion Design
Hope
Identity
Inspiration
Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair
Johnson, Eunice
Johnson, John
North Carolina Museum of Art
Raleigh, North Carolina
-
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db3bb2e74794e16a8d80a1c437518399
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Florida Landscape
Source
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Pixabay
Identifier
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florida-landscape
Dublin Core
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Title
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
Identifier
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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Referrer
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NCH Summer Graduate Student Residency
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Contributor
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Rebecca Earles, 27, graduate student (Rice University)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2005-2010
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Bite Me!</em>
Description
An account of the resource
People frequently talk about being haunted. Usually by spirits, both by the friendly Casper types and the decidedly less friendly Poltergeist types. Sometimes people are haunted by bad decisions. This is a spectrum too. Some must repeatedly face the time we developed a temporary and acute stutter during an eighth-grade presentation. While others face a scarier specter born of a truly terrible decision, like buying a monitor lizard as a pet. Perhaps one of the most pervasive and long-lasting hauntings of all is that of our hometowns. We swear that we’ll leave it forever. Pack our bags and only talk about home to family and in the occasional childhood anecdote while we live somewhere exciting and exotic. This attitude was especially pandemic to my hometown of Orlando, FL.<br /><br />You see, Florida is often presented as an exciting place for people to visit. And they do, by the millions. Everyone eventually comes to Florida, at least for a while. To quote Jerry Seinfeld: “My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.” <br /><br />To offer a few examples of this phenomenon: The spiritualists founded the town of Cassadaga, FL (which still has a major spiritualist camp). Jack Kerouac bought a house in Orlando to quietly read and write. Laura Ingles Wilder briefly came to the state for her health. Ernest Hemingway, on the other hand, famously came to stay. He went so far as to buy a house and began a long line of six-toed cats. The cousins of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (grandchildren of Alexander II) came to South Florida after the Revolution. One even became the three-time mayor of Palm Beach. Florida is a holiday and a safe house. It is where people come to escape—they escape the grind of daily life, illness, political prosecution, revolutions, icy winters, writer’s block, and sometimes even the law. <br /><br />In these imaginings, Florida then is understood as a land where people bring "culture." The locals are people who supposedly accept "culture." This view is pervasive, and many (including me in my teenage years) believed this. It was for this reason that my friends and I dreamed of leaving Orlando and go somewhere where things happened. It all changed one afternoon, thanks to a rather unexpected humanities moment. <br /><br />How I got the book in the first place is part of its random charm. In 2005 or 2006, Tom Levine—a local fisherman, author, and “character”—showed up in my parents’ two-person CPA business in Orlando, FL. Levine periodically sells his books business-to-business or in farmers’ markets in Central Florida, using his charisma and humor in equal measure. My parents declined to turn their office into a small-scale bookstore but did buy a couple of his books—including Bite Me! I, a twelve-year-old girl who didn't fish, was clearly not the intended audience. And yet, I quickly came to love this book. <br /><br />Tom Levine’s <em>Bite Me!</em> is an admittedly unusual choice for an inspirational book. It’s a slender collection of essays about Levine’s travels. Described in one paper as “Part Hiaasen, part Hemingway,” Levine writes to celebrate nature, critique the overdevelopment of “paradise,” and of course to support his fishing expeditions. On the surface, his book <em>Bite Me!</em> is a humorous take on his journeys around the world. But what truly struck my interest was his deep and open love for the natural world of Florida. Levine articulates a clear argument for preserving our natural splendor. Not for tourists to ogle on vacation, but because the swamps, coastal wetlands, and pinewoods of Florida were innately valuable and worth saving—just as much as any mountain, scenic alpine lake, or rocky beach. It changed my relationship with my surroundings, I started thinking of Florida as a place within the world rather than a suburb outside of it. <br /><br />This new appreciation, in turn, led me to investigate my state’s history, environment, and literature. I started reading in earnest the works of Zora Neale Hurston, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Carl Hiaasen, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, and others. I realized that there was a cacophony of voices in the state who all have painted a full picture of Florida as a strange and special place that doesn’t need others to determine its worth. That the land and its many peoples are historied and important, and that Florida's troubled past and diverse actors deserved consideration. The land they lived on transformed from a boring backdrop to a central part of the Flordia story. <br /><br />This radical new point of view ultimately brought me to a MA and Ph.D. on Florida’s colonial past. You can say that Florida has become, to my great surprise, my life’s work. <br /><br />When I moved away for graduate school, I thought I may feel triumphant in realizing my childhood goal of leaving. Instead, I have found myself longing for the woods and beaches I used to traverse. Every time I return to this unexpected book, I feel like I’m with Levine searching the waterways and coastlines of the world to rediscover Florida and an elusive bite. From where I sit today, the ghost of my hometown still sits at my side. It floats around in my thoughts and writing and appears to have settled in for good.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>Bite Me!</em>- A Florida Humanities Moment
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tom Levine
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
bite-me-florida-humanities-moment
Colonialism
Culture
Florida
Levine, Tom
Memory
Southern United States
Storytelling
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/4/524/miniature-3589682_640.jpg
f695f64b9538c81641d843818f6ea156
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Miniature City
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Pixabay
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
miniature-city
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
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.
FCPS Summer Curriculum Development project work
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Kim Karayannis, FCPS Social Studies teacher
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1991
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
8th grade US History class
Description
An account of the resource
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
A name given to the resource
The Day I Knew I Was Going to Teach History
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
day-knew-teach-history
Connection
History Education
Teachers & Teaching
U.S. Civil War (1861-1865)
U.S. History
-
https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/4/512/Auschwitz.png
36b3932ee9dfcaf970464a5cf01132cb
Dublin Core
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Title
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Auschwitz-Birkenau
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auschwitz-birkenau
Source
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Rebecca Watt
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
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.
professional development
Dublin Core
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Rebecca Watt, Social Studies Teacher and avid traveler
Date
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2008
Source
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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)
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https://humanitiesmoments.org/files/original/118/Lake_Nicaragua.jpg
e764cecbe470aad5139598d0a763d2e7
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Lake Nicaragua
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Title
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A House
Description
An account of the resource
Every single year, from first grade all the way up to senior year, we heard about one man: Ruben Darío. Growing up in Nicaragua, where this internationally renowned poet/writer is from, one would expect that. We covered his biography life’s works multiple times in our literature classes. I recognized his undeniable talent, but somehow I had managed to overlook the simple fact he was Nicaraguan. It was not until 11th grade when we had a field trip to his house, which is now a preserved landmark 45 minutes away from my school, that I truly understood he was truly Nicaraguan.
Coming from a small country, one that is often overlooked, I was ready to dismiss any accomplishment produced by it. So much, that I did not see around me the beauty in my country that inspired Dario. I regarded his work as a piece of art separate from Nicaragua, not born from it. This moment helped me regain confidence in telling other people where I was raised. It helped me see the beauty of a country.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Coming from a small country, one that is often overlooked, I was ready to dismiss any accomplishment produced by it. So much, that I did not see around me the beauty in my country that inspired Dario. I regarded his work as a piece of art separate from Nicaragua, not born from it. This moment helped me regain confidence in telling other people where I was raised. It helped me see the beauty of a country.
Source
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“Primaveral” by Ruben Dario
Creator
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Ruben Dario
Date
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2015
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Alejandro, 19, student
Identifier
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a-house
Beauty
Ciudad Darío, Nicaragua
Darío, Rubén
Nicaraguan Poets
Poets
Primaveral
School Field Trips
Students
-
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Dublin Core
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The Middle East
Text
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Witnessing the Effects of Near-History in Iraq
Description
An account of the resource
I was a newspaper reporter covering the War in Iraq in the late 2000s. My assignment was exciting, but often lonely. I bounced from town to town, usually embedded with the U.S. Army. At the end of a long day, there often was no one to talk to, grab a bite with or even watch a bootleg movie. What I did have, though, was a paperback copy of <em>The Great War for Civilization</em> by Robert Fisk. The book helped describe the near-history events that led to the real-time history I was witnessing on a daily basis. Through thorough research and masterful storytelling, I could better understand how an event decades earlier would reverberate throughout the entire region, setting the stage for what I was witnessing: more than 100,000 American troops trying to hold together a country that had fallen apart, creating a proxy war that drew in interests from the entire region. What I was witnessing firsthand provided the color, but the book added depth of understanding.<br /><br />I did not start my assignment as a Middle East or Iraq expert; rather, my expertise lay more in knowledge of the U.S. military. The book provided a crash course in how the region got to where it was at that point, and it made an indelible impression on my understanding of the Middle East.
Subject
The topic of the resource
I did not start my assignment as a Middle East or Iraq expert; rather, my expertise lay more in knowledge of the U.S. military. The book provided a crash course in how the region got to where it was at that point, and it made an indelible impression on my understanding of the Middle East.
Source
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<em>The Great War for Civilization</em> by Robert Fisk
Creator
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Robert Fisk
Date
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2008
Contributor
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Scott, 34, former journalist
Identifier
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witnessing-effects-near-history
Armed Forces
Fisk, Robert
History
Iraq War (2003-2011)
Journalism
The Great War for Civilization
The Middle East
Writers
-
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2235b10cd0771baa73012a04f6d68487
Dublin Core
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Science Fiction Machine
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science-fiction-machine
Dublin Core
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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NHC Graduate Student Summer Residency
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Dawn Jacob, Ph.D. student in Philosophy
Source
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"The Machine Stops"
Description
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I was always a voracious reader with a preference for fiction. My family made regular trips to the library growing up, so I had a never-ending supply of books at hand. Yet, one story I read in my high school British Literature class stands out as influential: E. M. Forster’s short story "The Machine Stops." The story itself captivated me. In it, humanity lives underground, reliant on “the machine” for all means of life. There is no need to visit others face to face: all communication is carried out through video conferencing and messaging systems. There is no need to leave one’s room or rely on one’s own muscles for support: everything needed is delivered, including air to breathe. One young man is dissatisfied with this life. He develops his strength by walking the hallway and eventually visits the surface, wearing protective gear. Throughout the story it is palpable how much humanity loses in giving up a connection to each other and nature and in rejecting self-reliance. The other characters, however, don’t realize their weakness until the day the tragic machine stops.
This is the earliest book I remember prompting me to think in depth about the human condition and about what we might need for fulfilling and flourishing lives. Forster’s story didn’t just entertain me; it promoted an interest in questions that continue to vex me and which I now pursue through philosophy. It was also one of the first ‘school assigned books’ that made me want to learn about the author’s life and read everything else the author had written. Forster is still one of my favorite authors. Although none of his novels are science fiction, as "The Machine Stops" is, all his writing depicts the melancholic beauty of humans in search of authenticity. But it didn’t stop there. Most of Forster’s novels have been adapted to films, and in pursuing those I developed a more general love of Merchant Ivory films. My friends may tease me for being moved by “sweeping British landscapes and gents leaning on mantles,” but for someone who grew up in the working class Midwest, these movies and Forster’s novels helped open new worlds to me and nurtured questions and concerns that have followed me over the years.
Title
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"The Machine Stops" is Only a Start
Creator
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E.M. Forster
Identifier
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machine-stops-only-start
Books & Reading
Dystopian Fiction
Forster, E.M.
Literature
Modernism
Philosophy
Science Fiction
Short Stories
-
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92b76e10490318cb1b863dc2fa2685c0
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<em>Torso with Hands on Hips</em>, 1994, by Nancy Fried, American, b. 1945
Description
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12” x 17.25” x 7”
Terra-cotta
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From the author of this Humanities Moment, Ann Fox
Moving Image
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tE_5S052MOI" 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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VAE exhibit / Don Solomon
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Contingent Bodies: Encountering The DisAbility Project
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The DisAbility Project
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Ann Fox, professor of English at Davidson College
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contingent-bodies-disability-project
Description
An account of the resource
<span>Ann Fox describes her first encounter with The DisAbility Project, a St. Louis-based performance group. Humor, skits, and monologues reflecting the experiences of disabled people helped her understand disability politics, and realize the pleasure and creativity possible in bodily variation.</span> <br /><br />Curator’s note: Read Ann Fox’s essay, <a href="https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/site-dev/wp-content/uploads/fox-claiming-identity.pdf">“To Be Rather than To Seem: Claiming Identity in Art, Curation, and Culture.”</a> It discusses the intersections of art and disability studies that accompanied the National Humanities Center’s exhibit, <em>Esse Quam Videri</em>.
Davidson College
Davidson, North Carolina
Disability Studies
Diversity
Humor
Intersectionality
Performing Arts
Professors
St. Louis, Missouri
Teachers & Teaching
The DisAbility Project
Washington University
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“Persepolis,” by Marjane Satrapi
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Educators
Description
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This collection features contributions by teachers, education administrators and others involved in teaching at levels K-16.
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educators-humanities-moments
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/269216177" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
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What Happens When We Share Our Stories?
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Theresa Pierce, Rowan County Early College
Description
An account of the resource
Teacher Theresa Pierce discusses how the accumulation and sharing of personal narratives help generate individual moments of realization among students as they also help build a sense of community. <br /><br />Books, maps, and works of art consistently facilitate connection and shared experiences among Pierce’s diverse group of students. For example, Marjane Satrapi’s graphic autobiography <em>Persepolis</em> moved one young woman to reflect on her own family’s narrative. This communal sharing of stories helps Pierce’s students to realize that the world “isn’t a bubble” but a “huge interconnected thing.”
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sharing-stories-fostering-understanding
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<em>Persepolis</em> by Marjane Satrapi
Books & Reading
Graphic Novels
Persepolis
Professors
Satrapi, Marjane
Storytelling
Teachers & Teaching
-
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1a029127aa9c1001b30d6853fbeb846a
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Jackie Robinson
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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.
Text
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Baseball, Jackie Robinson, and Racial Identity Formation
Description
An account of the resource
As I grew up in rural South Carolina in the 1980s, baseball was my favorite hobby and pastime. For most of my 7 year Dixie league/recreational league baseball career (ages 5 to 12), my dad was my coach. I don’t remember watching baseball on television because we only had three to four channels and did not have cable.
On my first baseball team, I was the only black player; and then after that most of my teams were majority black. At this time I only had vague notions about race, although I knew that I was black. Because both of my parents worked, my brother and I attended a day-care facility in town. The day-care provider was a thirty-something year old white woman and most of the children in her care were also white. Again, I had little sense of my blackness.
Of the many books on hand at the daycare, one day I discovered a children’s book about Jackie Robinson. By this time, I’m in the third grade and am a good reader, so I read the book very quickly. Just as quickly, it becomes one of my favorite books.
I was extremely excited for several reasons: Never before I had a read a book with a Black main character. I knew there were black baseball players, but did not feel like I knew any very well. The book discussed racism that Robinson faced and how he overcame it and became one of the best baseball players in his generation (Rookie of the Year and MVP). It was the first example of people facing hardships because they were black and Jackie Robinson overcame the hardships. And lastly, a big part of my own racial development and understanding was that being black was not just about facing hardships in the past and overcoming them.
I continued to study Negro league baseball. Read several books and became fascinated by these invisible men who participated in a separate but unequal league, but had equal or superior baseball talent.
Subject
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Reading a short biography on Jackie Robinson and developing my own racial identity were important ways that the humanities helped me in this moment.
Source
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A children's book about Jackie Robinson (I don't remember the title)
Creator
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N/A
Date
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I was a third grader in the 1980s.
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<a href="http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/education-programs/teacher-advisory-council-2017-2018/">Jamie Lathan</a>, 39, teacher and school administrator, husband, father, son, brother, friend.
Identifier
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baseball-and-racial-identity
African American History
Baseball
Biography
Black History
Books & Reading
Children's Literature
Introspection
Literature
Negro Leagues
Race Identity
Robinson, Jackie
South Carolina
Teachers & Teaching
-
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7ec5779a10767854055608c3b379f980
Moving Image
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My school, Mountain Heights Academy, had an assignment to make one.
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FxhLfswAn7Q" 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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Evalin Musser, a 2020 senior at Mountain Heights Academy
Date
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2017
Source
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Guillermo del Toro, “Pan’s Labyrinth”
Description
An account of the resource
<p>Seemingly small moments, unexpected and beautiful, make this world interesting. Noticing the beauty all around is a pastime that comes with many benefits, especially in the field of the humanities. Art, music, and film—they are areas I will always enjoy, but one specific night heightened my love for all three, and it happened in the most humble of places.</p>
<p>First of all, some background would help show the context. In 2017, I was 15, and had not seen an R-rated movie in my life (knowingly, at least—I don’t count the movie I saw with my friends that we all thought was PG-13 and was, in reality, R-rated), and my parents were pretty strict on that rating. Furthermore, I was understandably surprised when they insisted on me watching an R-rated film with them. The fateful movie was called <em>Pan’s Labyrinth,</em> directed by Guillermo del Toro in 2006. I was skeptical due to several factors, including the rating and language, which was Spanish, so we needed English subtitles. Even so, I gave it a chance, thinking that a movie with the rating it had would have to be amazing for my parents to let me watch it. That reasoning turned out to be true.</p>
<p>In the cozy bedroom of my parents, I didn’t simply watch a movie; I experienced an epiphany, or at least my Humanities Moment. I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone, because they need to see it for themselves, so I’ll give a general premise. <em>Pan’s Labyrinth</em> is a fantasy drama film following the adventures of 10-year-old Ofelia, who finds a labyrinth near her new home in 1944 Spain. A faun-like creature meets her there, who gives her tasks to complete. Meanwhile, her pregnant mother marries a new husband, Captain Vidal, who is a cruel Falangist hunting down rebels after the Spanish Civil War. The film blends fantasy and reality together so that it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between them. The film hit me hard with its brutal representation of war and violence, and the fantastical beauty found within those moments of cruel reality. I’ll be totally honest: I was sobbing uncontrollably by the end, and could hardly go to sleep that night because of the thought of this movie. Two main factors, other than its artistic choices, acting, etc, have influenced me and changed my perspective: music and history.</p>
<p>Much of the music made for this film was hauntingly beautiful. Whole stories can be kept within a single song, which was shown in <em>Pan’s Labyrinth</em>’s music. Emotions and unspoken thoughts were woven into the hummed tune of Mercedes’ lullaby, which was the song that inspired me the most. Simply through the music, it gave me so many ideas for characters in the story I was writing, which led me to animate to the lullaby. It also led me to learn the music on the piano. <em>Pan’s Labyrinth</em> gave me a wonderful example of what music can do.</p>
<p>Second, the realness from the movie staggered my perspective of the world. It showed me how many violent battles and wars have happened all over the earth and are happening right now. The aftermath of the Spanish Civil War left people divided into political parties, and the violence caused by Captain Vidal, a fascist sort of monster, harmed and killed the rebels of different ideals (“Pan’s Labyrinth”). It left me wanting to learn more about the present conflicts in our world, just to have the knowledge so as not to fall into the trap of ignorance.</p>
<p>To say the least, <em>Pan’s Labyrinth</em> created a Humanities Moment for me, forever to change my perspective on war, and inspire me to create works of art.</p>
Title
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Making Magic Through Film
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making-magic-through-film
-
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Dublin Core
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Greek soldier
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Pixabay
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greek-soldier
Dublin Core
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
Identifier
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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Emily, 32, American Studies Ph.D. Student
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>300 </em>(2006)
Description
An account of the resource
I don't remember much about going to see <em>300</em> except that I left the theatre with an uneasy feeling. Something didn't sit right about the way the characters were portrayed. My father was a high school film teacher, so I had been given the tools to analyze a film's ideology and meaning, but this was the first time I really did it by myself. <br /><br />I recognized the way the Spartans could easily be replaced with Americans, and that the Persians were kind of meant to be Al Qaeda or the "evil" Middle East. The film was a fantasy for a post 9/11 United States audience. And it didn't end there. I was actually most struck by the way the Persians were queered in the film, and the Spartans were the peak of heterosexual hyper-masculinity. I began to think: How would this film affect the way people view current events and, more importantly, other people? What are the stakes here? <br /><br />Suddenly I understood the importance of meaning-making and what studying the humanities was all about. I talked about the film to anyone who would listen for weeks: "Don't you see how this film conflates queerness and femininity with evil?" and so on. I felt such urgency about it. It was a major turning point for me in understanding how ideas are disseminated and perpetuated. It was somewhat of a dark experience, but one that changed my life forever. <br /><br />When I got to grad school and began to learn about hegemony, power, and ideology I always went back to <em>300</em> in my mind. It's how I learned to make sense of these vital concepts. As I grew up I learned that many critics had seen the same things I had seen in the film, and that my ideas were not nearly as novel as I thought in my youth. This just further cemented my desire to pursue this kind of work. Now I study American Studies and I focus on film and how Americanness is depicted and designed. So I guess it turns out that even the works of humanities that you don't like can change your life for the better and help you find your path.
Title
A name given to the resource
What You Don't Like Can Still Guide You
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
what-you-dont-like-can-guide-you
Ancient History
Cultural Awareness
Film and Movies
Stereotypes
War
-
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8e311a788a94a8f8437c32570515c009
Dublin Core
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Title
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Television
Source
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Pixabay
Identifier
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television
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.
On the Humanities webpage
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Akshita, 24, M.A.
Date
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October 2017
Description
An account of the resource
It was a balmy October night in 2017, when I lay pondering in a tiny rented room in a city that wasn't "home" both literally as well as metaphorically. I wished for a brief distraction from my mundane routine, and then I clicked on <em>A Death in the Gunj</em>, the movie that I noticed each time on the Amazon Prime homepage but ignored. And soon I discovered it was exactly all that I wanted. <br /><br />A story of a college graduate who joins his cousins on a vacation to their ancestral home in a sleepy town of McCluskieganj just to escape the monotony and sadness that enveloped him. The vacation didn't turn out as he had planned. More than a jovial family vacation, it was a weeklong account of his personal struggles with mental health, his peripheral silence, all ensuing in a titular death. This movie resembled many similar struggles that I was grappling with at that time. It brought me pain, shock and tears and has managed to stay with me all through the years. I visit it every now and then. In fact, this movie prompted my interest in Spatial Theory. <br /><br />There aren't any happy memories associated with this movie, but revisiting it every now and then makes me realize how far I have come. It has shaped my whole perspective, and has given me moorings on the intricacies of mental health. This movie will stay with me for a little longer or maybe forever.
Title
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A Movie That Stayed Longer than I Expected
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movie-stayed-longer-expected
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<em>A Death in the Gunj </em>(2016)
Critical Theory
Film and Movies
Self-Realization
-
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Runnel Walk
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runnel-walk
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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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NHC Graduate Student Virtual Summer Residency
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Genevieve Guzmán, 37, PhD student
Date
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June 2021
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<em>W;t</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Late this spring, my foster dog Sally unexpectedly died. I should’ve known she had cancer, but I not a veterinarian, and I didn’t think to apply Occam’s razor to the growing list of her ailments. She came to me rotund with extra weight, and over the course of eight months, lost so much that her beautiful tawny fur hung off her in ripples. She started to stumble into walls, and the short trip to the front yard left her breathless. One Sunday in May, she had a seizure, and I knew something was terribly wrong. All the way to the emergency room, her heart beat steadily under my palm, but within the hour, the critical care vet had diagnosed anemia, severe muscle wasting, and metastatic cancer. I was bereft. I let her go. <br /><br />I’ve had chronic fatigue syndrome for over fifteen years, and for my comprehensive exams in English literature, I put together a list of twentieth-century illness literature. It’s not a death list, but narratives in the cancer section often end with that unauthorized coda. I had assumed that <em>W;t</em>, Margaret Edson’s 1993 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, was autobiographical and thus a story of survival, but it is completely fictional, a composite of the playwright’s work in the cancer and AIDS unit of a research hospital while she was in college. The action follows Donne scholar and university professor Vivian Bearing as she enrolls in experimental chemotherapy for stage IV ovarian cancer. From her sick bed in the hospital, Vivian leads us through an analysis of Donne’s <em>Holy Sonnets</em> until she can take us no farther, and then the research intern and head nurse take over to close out the play.<br /><br />Since Sally passed, the netherworld of death has hovered very close, a ghostly afterimage blurring my otherwise vivid existence. I can’t decide which plane of reality is more real: that of life or of death. Not unlike Donne and Vivian, I can’t reckon with the dull, mad fact of absolute oblivion; really I can only handle the relative truth that for now, I must live without my dog. In its split-stage conclusion, <em>W;t</em> poignantly captures this paradox of the human condition. On the spiritual plane, as Vivian’s life slips away, she steps out of bed, disrobing from her hospital gown and bracelet, to reach for the light shining above her; on the physical plane, the research intern confronts his unexpected grief at her loss when he forgets her do-not-resuscitate order and calls in the code team to revive her. The team scoffs at his amateur error and leaves; meanwhile, Vivian has transcended to Donne’s afterlife, wherever it is. I admire this scene for its brilliant use of the dramatic format and Edson’s graceful display of how life goes on even as it ends.
Title
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Bright Sun Before Nightfall
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bright-sun-nightfall
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Margaret Edson
Cancer
Death
Donne, John
Drama
Edson, Margaret
Grief
-
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Preparing for the North Carolina Symphony's visit
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State Archives of North Carolina
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https://www.flickr.com/photos/north-carolina-state-archives/41639717740/in/album-72157698683068684/
Moving Image
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Robert Newman
Player
html for embedded player to stream media content
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DNGOHy1vA50" 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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Title
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Hearing an Orchestra for the First Time
Description
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Charles Frazier recalls when the North Carolina Symphony traveled to the small towns of western NC on their annual state tour. The symphony’s visit to the rural and relatively isolated communities exposed Frazier and his classmates to a bold new type of sound—and a new way of thinking about art.
Source
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The North Carolina Symphony
Contributor
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Charles Frazier, award-winning author of <em>Cold Mountain</em>, <em>Varina</em>, and other novels
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charles-frazier-nc-symphony
Asheville, North Carolina
Music
North Carolina Symphony Orchestra
Rural Communities
Symphony Orchestras
Teachers & Teaching
Writers
-
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Harp
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Pixabay
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harp
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Graduate Student Residents 2021
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graduate-student-residents-2021
Text
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NHC Summer Residency
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Anushka Sen, 30, Ph.D. Candidate, teacher, emerging translator
Date
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Spring 2021
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<em>Have One on Me </em>(2010) by Joanna Newsom
Description
An account of the resource
As I considered a range of options for my Humanities Moment, I instinctively knew it would come down to music, which is the element that moves me most often and intensely in my daily life. However, my tendency to live within particular soundscapes for hours or days on end also means that my moment is entangled with longer histories and hard to pin down in time and space. If anything, the album <em>Have One on Me</em> that yielded my “moment” has taught me a different, more unbounded relationship with time. But first, a little bit of background on the artist and how I discovered her. <br /><br />I found Joanna Newsom in a Facebook post by a scholar I had met at a James Joyce summer school in Trieste, Italy. I had loved this person's academic work on literary hoaxes but as our social media afterlives showed us, our most vital point of connection was our love for women musicians with strange voices. I made it a point to check out any song he posted, and in late 2015, one of those songs turned out to be "Sapokanikan" from Newsom's latest release, <em>Divers</em>. "Sapokanikan" is notorious (within admittedly niche circles) for rhyming its titular word--an indigenous place name--with "Ozymandian"--an adjective crafted from Shelley's famous poem ("Ozymandias") about transience, infinity, and human hubris. This parallel is a neat glimpse into how the rest of the song traces the ebb and flow and layering of human histories in a single place. The audacity of it could be obnoxious, just as the music video of Newsom skipping down the streets singing straight into the camera could be precious. But none of it felt overindulgent to me. <br /><br />The density of the lyrics allowed Newsom's voice to soar, at moments to hair-raising pitches that could have come straight from her harp or accompanying strings. Her earnest playfulness presented the mythic scope of her song with a disarming wink. And so my love for Joanna Newsom sprouted, easily and effortlessly. At times, I was troubled by how her love of myth led her to paint mystical pictures of "ethnic" cultures, or to string together different cultural references a bit too lightly and whimsically for the material histories of inequity that they grazed against. Nonetheless, I found the grand scale of her work personally liberating, and she always seemed to be aware of the fragility inherent in any overinflated image--whether in the way men saw women, or civilizations saw themselves. <br /><br />But while I grew obsessed with Newsom's discography, I could never seem to get into her album <em>Have One on Me</em>. An over two hour-long triple album, it already posed a challenge to attention spans, almost testing the quality of her fans’ devotion. But a bigger problem for me was that the album seemed to lack her trademark energy and graspable forms that usually provided an entry point into her complex compositions. Unlike the sparkling and robust folk tunes of her debut, or the almost classical shifts in pace and melody in her later work, <em>Have One on Me</em> had a meandering, repetitive quality to my ears. The lyrics were devastating as usual, the singing was heartfelt, the overall sound was polished, but I failed to find that hook, that leap, that burst of vibrancy or ethereal lull that would transport me to Joanna’s universe. <br /><br />At some point in the Spring semester of 2021, I was relying desperately on music to help me complete a dissertation chapter draft while my country was being ravaged by the second wave of COVID-19 and the disregard of a cold-blooded central government. My nerves were frayed--I craved a protective cocoon of music but not one so stimulating that I would be led away from my work. <em>Have One on Me</em> suddenly seemed like a good option. It may have been my least favourite Joanna Newsom album, but it was still Joanna Newsom. The album was expansive, elegant, and my distance from it could only help my focus. It turned out to be a great choice--the intricacy of the sound became a calming swirl around me as I plunged into the depths of my writing. <br /><br />But after days of writing successfully to <em>Have One on Me</em>, something changed. The album was no longer a soothing but distant friend, no longer an amorphous mass of pretty and mysterious textures. I felt as though I had suddenly obtained the ability to see and hear at close range. Songs had intimately familiar outlines and phrases. The album wasn’t untethered, it was a deeply emotionally grounded narrative that left no stone unturned for the sake of the story that might lurk beneath. In a sense, <em>Have One on Me</em> occupies the most relatable of genres--the breakup album. But like Bjork’s <em>Vulnicura</em>, it is a breakup album that stretches and grasps and generates more than it fixes, fixates, or breaks down. The title track laughingly announces the singer’s separation from a hurtful ex-lover. “Baby Birch” mourns the loss of a baby, never held or seen. “California” makes an emphatic choice to protect the “border of… [the singer’s] heart” but still admits that the powerful habits of love wind her up like a cuckoo clock. It is easy to confuse something capacious for something overindulgent if we have been taught to trust bite-size pieces of wisdom and catharsis. <em>Have on One Me</em> was a vital corrective to those habits that I’ve acquired. <br /><br />And I could not have been more wrong about the album’s pacing--I realized that everything about it was dynamic. Some songs, like the title track, are a richly embroidered tapestry, with subtle incremental shifts in the musical pattern. “Baby Birch” starts as a slow, pained crooning and swells into a tumultuous but triumphant section with strong percussion. “Go Long,” a bewilderingly compassionate indictment of toxic masculinity, switches between a regular and a high register with an unearthly ease while the shimmering harp in the background takes over in a wordless concluding meditation. The final song, “Does Not Suffice,” imagines the ex-lover’s home slowly returning to a masculine starkness as the singer removes all her items of clothing before her departure. It is once contemptuous and empathetic, self-aggrandizing and vulnerable. The gentle, ambling melody is almost identical to an earlier song, “In California,” with a whiff of added melancholy and fewer variations this time round. The ending however, is a dark and thunderous banging on a cluster of musical instruments all at once. <br /><br />In the height of my newfound obsession with this album, I listened to it all the time--with headphones on, through my portable speakers, on my laptop speakers, and even directly through my phone. When “Does Not Suffice” drew to a close, my phone surprised me by the sheer contained violence that exploded from its inadequate sound system. As the instruments pounded away, it felt as though there was a ghost trapped in my device. I remember that visceral quality straining past technological barriers as a reminder of much energy there is in Joanna Newsom’s music, and particularly in the album that I had underestimated.
Title
A name given to the resource
Have One on Joanna Newsom
Creator
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Joanna Newsom
Identifier
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have-one-on-joanna-newsom
Aesthetics
Art
Graduate Students
Music Appreciation
Newsom, Joanna
Poetry
Self-Realization
-
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Title
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Radios
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Title
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We All Float On
Description
An account of the resource
When I was a senior in high school, one of my friend's passed away from a tragic accident. My friend and I decided to attend the funeral together for comfort and support. I picked her up early that morning to shed our tears over him, and after spending some time with the family, we made our way back home. We decided to turn on some music to lighten the mood, when a Modest Mouse song came on the radio- "We All Float On." The two of us started bawling, but by the end of the song we felt we had healed, if only a little bit. We felt weightless. Life is short, and we're all just bumping around in it. Its crazy how sometimes the universe gives you exactly what you need.
Date
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2014
Contributor
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Katie Clark, 21, Student
Identifier
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we-all-float-on
Source
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"We All Float On" by Modest Mouse
Accidents
Consolation
Death
Friendship
Grief
Modest Mouse
Music
Radio Music
Song Lyrics
Students
We All Float On
-
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Hacker's Hill in Casco, Maine
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The contributor of the Humanities Moment
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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.
Text
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I am a member of the NHC's Teacher Advisory Council for 2018-19
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Carl Rosin, 51, teacher
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I can trace it to several instances, including my original interaction with the poem, but the photo I use was taken in July 2012.
Source
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"Fern Hill," a poem by Dylan Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
<p>I could do several Humanities Hours out of Humanities Moments – there are so many passages and ideas that have animated my imagination. I first find myself drawn to the heart-wrenching climax of Cervantes’s novel <em>Don Quixote</em>, but to describe that would be to reveal the ending, which I would feel queasy doing.</p>
<p>So I’m going with Dylan Thomas’s poem “Fern Hill” instead. Its lyricism conjures the innocence of youth that cannot imagine its own end. That’s kind of what innocence is: a brilliantly perfect inability to envision its own conclusion.</p>
<p>Thomas’s second stanza begins,</p>
<p>And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns<br /> About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,<br /> In the sun that is young once only,<br /> Time let me play and be<br /> Golden in the mercy of his means</p>
<p>We are “young once only” and we play and are golden. We all see this in the delight of children and also in the mesmerizing natural panoramas that remind me of a summer evening on a hilltop in Maine. It’s summer vacation all the time. It evokes the feeling that I think that character from <em>Friday Night Lights</em> has in mind when he says, “My heart is full.”</p>
<p>In a way, the ending of “Fern Hill” brings me to what I love so much about <em>Don Quixote</em> and the scene I mentioned a minute ago. Here I am, a middle-aged guy spending every day with teenagers, hoping to share and discuss with them truths about the human condition and our relationships and tragedy and beauty while they, children who are “green and golden” in their “heedless ways,” in their Eden of hope and vigor, start to gain insight about how Time holds them. They are looking toward college and work and beyond, and often they worry and fear, and although for many the curiosity of youth is sputtering, its flame is not out.</p>
<p>Thomas:</p>
<p>Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that Time would take me<br /> Up to the swallow-thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,<br /> In the moon that is always rising,<br /> Nor that riding to sleep<br /> I should hear him fly with the high fields<br /> And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.<br /> Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,<br /> Time held me green and dying<br /> Though I sang in my chains like the sea.</p>
<p>Whenever I read “Fern Hill,” and whenever I think of <em>Don Quixote</em>, I do so from the Experience side of the divide between innocence and experience. I peer longingly over at innocence, and I wish for it…and I feel it as if it were still here. It is the wonder of the poem, and of art, that in its presence we can be <em>both</em> green and dying.</p>
Title
A name given to the resource
“Fern Hill”: the fleeting, eternal magnificence of Innocence
Identifier
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fern-hill
Books & Reading
Casco, Maine
de Cervantes, Miguel
Don Quixote
Experience
Fern Hill
Innocence
Literature
Poetry
Teachers & Teaching
Thomas, Dylan
Wonder
-
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Chimborazo Volcano, Ecuador
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Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chimborazo_Volcano_-_Ecuador.jpg
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My English 12 teacher
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Emma Barlow, 18, Student
Date
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December 27, 2017
Source
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A volcano called Chimborazo and a song titled “On Earth As It Is In Heaven”
Description
An account of the resource
There is a term in the humanities known as “the Sublime” (Rabb). The Sublime specifically refers to a concept in art established during the Romantic era when landscape paintings thrived. The Sublime alludes to the beauty in the untamed and dangerous aspects of nature; it is the “awe and reverence for the wild…[it] can also be uplifting, but in a deeply spiritual way” (Rabb). My humanities moment occurred the first time I truly felt the Sublime. <br /><br />Even though my humanities moment was not associated with a painting or physical piece of art, it transpired in nature - allowing the sense of the Sublime. It took place in December of 2017 in Ecuador. I currently live in Ecuador with part of my family and around the Holidays, we decided to visit a city about two hours away called Riobamba. To get from Quito (where we live) to Riobamba, however, you have to drive past Chimborazo. Chimborazo is an active volcano sitting at about 20,000 feet and, because of the equatorial bulge, it is the furthest point from the center of the earth. This volcano is huge and magnificent and because of the altitude, it is rarely clear enough to see it as clouds usually perch at its peak. That day, as we drove closer to the base of Chimborazo, we reluctantly resigned to the fact that the opportunity was most likely gone and the clingy clouds would block our view that day. However, as we continued to drive, we turned a corner and found ourselves right below the colossal Chimborazo. At that exact moment, the clouds quickly parted and the sun shone down right onto its exposed crest. Instantly, everyone in the car went silent and my breath was physically taken away. The Sublime was so real in that moment. This towering, formidable, awe-inspiring mountain made my heart sink and tears come to my eyes. It was the first time I remember something not man-made and so coincidental evoke such a feeling and a reaction; something non-human or not created by a human could make me feel human. We all sat there staring at the majesty and grandeur and wallowing in the Sublime. <br /><br />As I look back on it now, I realize that there was a second element that elevated my humanities moment. As we turned the corner a song was playing; a type of song that had never made me feel anything before, but in that moment it did and it exalted the experience of the volcano even further. The song is called “On Earth As It Is In Heaven” composed by Ennio Morricone from the movie <em>The Mission</em>. This score has always been considered ‘celestial music’ in my family however, it never really spoke to me. In fact, classical music in general has never really spoken to me, until that day at Chimborazo. As the clouds parted and the sun shone and that song climaxed, the feelings were indescribable. I chose this experience as my humanities moment because multiple things impacted me in ways I had never experienced. First, nature had never before given me that feeling of the Sublime. I had never become so reverenced and awe-inspired by untamed and wild nature before, to the point of tears and speechlessness. Also, no piece of classical music had ever before made me feel something or evoke an emotional response until that day. I could always take or leave classical music and I never had a passion for it until then. Because of this experience, I have learned to appreciate more the natural and beautiful things in life. I have learned to allow myself to be moved by nature and art and to enjoy the world around me. Because of that music and the Sublime, I will never forget that day at Chimborazo. <br /><br />Works Cited<br /> <br />Morricone, Ennio. “On Earth As It Is In Heaven” The Mission Soundtrack, Virgin Records Ltd, 2004, 1. itunes, itunes.apple.com/us/album/on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven/714408074?i=714408593, accessed January 10, 2019. <br /><br />Rabb, Lauren. “19th Century Landscape - The Pastoral, the Picturesque and the Sublime.” The University of Arizona Museum of Art and Archive of Visual Arts, 9 Oct. 2009, artmuseum.arizona.edu/events/event/19th- century-landscape-the-pastoral-the-picturesque-and-the-sublime.
Title
A name given to the resource
Chimborazo and the Sublime
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
chimborazo-sublime
Books & Reading
Chimborazo Volcano
Chimborazo, Ecuador
Emotional Experience
Environmental Humanities
Morricone, Ennio
Music
Nature
On Earth as It Is in Heaven
Students
The Sublime
-
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be834ce12db902be276de68632d51bb1
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Title
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Kuba Sound Designs
Description
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Kuba Sound Designs
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Nettrice Gaskins
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Nettrice Gaskins
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kuba-sound-designs
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email
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Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nettrice Gaskins, artist, researcher, educator
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
James Brown's "Cold Sweat"
Description
An account of the resource
Late scholar James A. Snead wrote that repetition in Black American creative expression is most prevalent in performance such as rhythm in music, dance and language. He used James Brown's "Cold Sweat" to demonstrate this, revealing the algorithmic design of the song. <br /><br />This helped me connect the cultural arts to technology, specifically through computation and machine learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence. It also influenced my work as a scholar and as an artist. I noticed that software generated patterns from "Cold Sweat" look like African and African American textiles, linking funk and even hip-hop to Kuba cloth and quilts.
Title
A name given to the resource
Algorithms in Funk Music
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
algorithms-funk-music
African American History
African American Musicians
African American Studies
Art History