Category: Graduate Student Residents 2021Page 1 of 4

The Solace of Libraries

For as long as I can remember I have found peace in libraries. Just the idea of them makes me smile. My earliest memory of being in a…

Le Magic School Bus

No, it wasn’t the real Magic School Bus from the books and TV. But one of my most poignant humanities moments did happen on a bus. And I…

Rebecca: The Novel & its Various Adaptations

– Alexis Lygoumenos (PhD student, actress under the stage name Alexis Nichols)

Internal and External Connections through Listening: Finding Comfort in Pauline Oliveros’s “The Earth Worm Sings”

In the final days of 2020 I, like many others, was feeling disconnected. Disconnected from my friends, my passions, and even myself. As a part of my research…

Asian American Dreams

While a double major in Biology and Studio Art at Colgate University, a predominantly-white university in Upstate New York, my coursework provided challenging STEM curricula and liberal arts…

Bite Me!- A Florida Humanities Moment

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…

Richard Wright’s Native Son

I first encountered Richard Wright’s Native Son from an admittedly privileged point of view. I included it as part of the comprehensive exams required for my PhD in…

Day of the Living Dead

As someone with a profound interest in and curiosity about death culture, I was very excited when visiting family last summer I had the opportunity to visit several…

Do Migratory Birds Also Have to Leave Their Friends Behind?

This is an image drawn by an unschooled refugee child living in a camp in the outskirts of Chtoura, Lebanon. She is from Syria but has lived in…

Finding Meaning Under the Stars

I have always loved space. This love is why I earned an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering. Fittingly, stargazing with friends was one of my favorite, albeit infrequent,…

Bright Sun Before Nightfall

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…

This is the Ocean

I rented Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals from the library, at a time in my life when I was searching inwards and exploring my beliefs. I would listen…

It Really is Gonna be Alright…

In the Fall of 2016, I started putting together application materials to begin my Masters program. I had so much anxiety going into the process and a lot…

Fictional Diaries and Archives

My humanities moment happened when I read a book for school written in the form of a diary. Even though it was fiction, it showed me how diaries…

Give Me My Wings

It’s time now My time now Give me my, Give me my, Wings Having grown up in a particularly religious family, one that didn’t encourage listening to rock…

Latinoamerica

Latinoamerica is a song from Calle 13. When I first heard this song I realized how important music is for identity in the construction of culture itself. Back…

Quotidian moments

A note I wrote from April 16, 2020 From my dining room table: My two children, ages four and six, have now been at home for 35 days….

Pleased to Meet You, Lady Elizabeth

There she was. Powerful and maternal, she claimed her place at the head of her family, teaching from an open book while her husbands slept elsewhere. We finally…

La Fiesta de La Tirana: Integrating Spirituality, Corporality, and Tradition

In the middle of the Atacama desert there’s a small village called La Tirana, with a regular population of around 1,200 inhabitants. The village has a few streets,…

Ramble On

Sometimes I wish I could say that a great novel or an experience with an especially gifted teacher or professor lit a spark for the humanities in me….