Category: Graduate Student Residents 2020Page 1 of 2

To See Myself

My humanities moment is a novel that changed my life and informed my path as an educator and researcher. But before I expound upon it, I need to…

To the Daughters of My Country: Humanitarian Connection across Time and Borders

In 1922, Julia Dimashqiya, founder and editor of the Beirut-based women’s magazine “The New Woman” (“Al- Mar’a Al-Jadida”), inaugurated her first issue by dedicating it to “the daughters…

Beowulf Brought Me to Medieval Studies

Looking back, I can pinpoint many moments that poignantly mark my path toward medieval studies, but reading Beowulf was the moment that rendered all the moments before it…

Humanities, My Life-Long Companion

After spending some time searching for my very own, singular, life-altering “humanities moment” that set me on my chosen path, I came to the conclusion that no such…

The “Infinitely Human”: Life Writings, Locks of Hair and Lived History

Like fellow humanists, I struggled to pick a single moment to describe and share with you. However, while delving into my corpus (life writings – mostly diaries, autobiographies…

Bedtime Stories

My humanities moment is actually a series of memories related to reading children’s books. The memory of numerous bedtime stories, library visits, and experiences of making my own…

Not the Gay Swan Lake

Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake is a masterpiece that changed the way I view classical ballet as a queer person. Bourne’s reimagining of the classic story, Swan Lake, replaces…

A Shared Poem

I discovered the poetry of William Blake on a bookshelf in San Francisco. Set beside the works of Charles Baudelaire, and other books I’ve long forgotten, Blake’s poems…

Identity and Its Development in our Everyday Lives

I am a second-generation Turkish American. However, how does this hyphenated identity impact the daily interactions I have in society? When taking an intercultural communication course, I was…

How Maps of Time Made me Rethink the Significance of Education

My Humanities Moment was when I first read David Christian’s Maps of Time during my 2nd year of grad school. It made me interested in some of the…

Neruda and the Shimmering Lives of Lifeless Things

Reflecting on growing up as a clumsy child with two rambunctious brothers, two phrases immediately come to mind, burnt into my memory like a brand from their ceaseless…

A Mountain of Faith

It was the middle of nowhere—nothing but sand, the occasional old car or rusted out piece of machinery, a strange lake known as the Salton Sea, and in…

Chicano Park

I had been in San Diego for less than a week and was still unsure of bus routes. Having successfully navigated the trolley-to-bus transfer from La Mesa to…

Night

I came across Night by Elie Wiesel while in middle school. I found it at my school library and the barbed wire and shadow of a boy on…

Reflections on the Banks of the Tiber

Like so many significant events throughout the history of the Western world, my humanities moment begins on the banks of the River Tiber in Rome. I had just…

The Power Public Knowledge has for the Humanities

I grew up an hour and a half northwest of San Antonio, Texas in a small, rural town called Medina. Medina is home to one school (K-12 campus),…

Linda Hogan’s Women Warriors

What first drew me to Native American literature and studies was a Native American fiction class in my Master’s program. Before this class, I hadn’t read any Native…

Shakespeare at Winedale and the Winedale Historical Center, near Round Top, Texas

Tucked away into Central Texas’ Hill Country is the repurposed ghost town of Winedale. Built by German immigrants in the nineteenth century, it nowadays features several creaky homes,…

This was your Grandfather’s…

Around New Year’s Eve 2017/18, I was in Brooklyn visiting my sister and brother in law. There was a pretty significant blizzard, and we were completely snowed in,…

My First Humanities Moment

When I was in fourth grade, I read the book Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech. This was the first time I read a book for fun, not…