Category: Teacher Advisory Council

God in Music Form: Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony

My mother received her undergraduate degree in Art History after her three children had graduated. As siblings with the label first generation college students, we like to think…

Coming Into My Feminist Consciousness

My Humanities Moment occurred during my Junior year in college, when I attended an evening session with Gerda Lerner, the author of The Creation of Feminist Consciousness and…

The Power of Myth

Ron Eisenman shares how a PBS television series encouraged him to pursue his passions and turn to the humanities to help him make sense of the world around…

Humans Give Meaning to the World

While discussing N. Scott Momaday’s novel A House Made of Dawn, Professor Bowden introduced a new concept – geosophy. It was an unexpected moment during an undergraduate geography…

Scottish Highlands

I’ve always loved to travel, and one of my favorite parts is getting to have a connection to the place that in our classrooms we refer to in…

The Farewell: Teaching and Talking about Ethnocentrism as an Asian-American

The guiding question for my Humanities Moment pertains to the most recent film that I cannot stop talking about with my peers, friends, family and strangers. As a…

“Fern Hill”: The Fleeting, Eternal Magnificence of Innocence

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…

Why I Read YA

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….

Nola

My Humanities Moment occurred in 2005, the year that hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. I lived in New Orleans pre-and-post Katrina and lost my house to the…

How MTV Helped End Apartheid

I first discovered what being a global citizen meant when I was just thirteen and a part of the MTV Generation. MTV debuted in 1981, but in rural…

How I Found Humanity in a Dark Cave

The most literal definition of the word humanities as always fascinated me. What could be cooler than getting to the very crux of what it means to be…

Historical Perspectives

I was born in Boston and raised in New England. I attended an elite, all-girls, private school in New England, which was established in 1854 with the mission…

Remembering the Music

When I was in elementary school I didn’t know anything about racial conflict or even recognize there were racial differences between the kids at my school. My classmates…

9/11 Shaped My Career

I was a brand new college freshman getting ready to attend my Political Science class that started at 8:45am on September 11, 2001. I heard the news on…

The Role of the Individual versus an Intellectual Aristocracy

Choosing a Humanities Moment was initially a challenging task. Over the last few years working with the organization PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization), I’ve spent a lot…

Eyes on the Mockingbird

I grew up in a very small town in rural Wisconsin. When I looked at my classmates it was like looking in a mirror. Because of that, I…

Well-Behaved Women

My moment focuses on the fact that African American women have been using their words as Political Resistance. The humanities contributed to this moment, because my ancestors and…

Baseball, Jackie Robinson, and Racial Identity Formation

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…

Such a Short Time to Stay Here

I am not a churchgoer or a believer, and thus, I have always been left with questions about the deeper meaning of life that could not be easily…