Tag: Fiction and PoetryPage 1 of 2
The day that I recited an Angie Thomas poem at the St. Petersburg College’s auditorium was my humanities moment since this author is an inspiration for me. First,…
Davidson traces an arc through her life story which began when a fifth-grade teacher gave her a copy of the novel Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey. This gesture, combined…
Griswold recalls how a childhood encounter with a sentimental, “middlebrow” poem about a dog and a veteran (which makes her cry to this day) tapped into wells of…
Between the years of 2012-2014, the book The Fault in Our Stars written by John Green was one of the most popular books and films for teenagers. The…
I could go on and on regarding literature or art that has altered my perspective on life. I was tempted to write about watching beautiful sunsets that show…
Grace Momberger describes how the story of one woman’s ability to make poetry without sound altered the way she perceived the very meaning of communication. – Grace Momberger…
I was always an avid reader as a child. As a matter of fact, I read a majority of the Harry Potter books when I was in elementary…
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…
During the past several weeks I’ve been drafting some thoughts I’ve had for a number of years regarding the way we learn from nature and from other people’s…
For teenagers, the world they live in is often described as “normal” and everything else is “weird.” One of my goals as a history teacher is to help…
Until this summer institute, I had never heard of the Vietnamese folk poetry known as ca dao. To be honest, I had never even thought of Vietnamese people…
Mike Rizer used to avoid reading at any cost, even buying CliffsNotes when necessary. But in his sophomore year of college, Ernest Hemingway changed all that. Since then,…
Thomas J. Scherer describes two related encounters which speak to the power of hearing poetry performed aloud. The first is an explanatory talk and poetry reading by the…
Janet Napolitano, President of the University of California, reflects on her life growing up in New Mexico and how a low grade on a poetry analysis assignment in…
Juan Felipe Herrera, a performance artist, activist, and U.S. poet laureate in 2015, recalls how his third-grade teacher’s compliment on his singing voice led to his lifelong belief…
In this podcast excerpt with National Humanities Center Director Robert D. Newman, award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem discusses how he came to understand of the power of fiction in…
In the Hanoi Hilton, the place where the North Vietnamese imprisoned and often tortured American captives during the Vietnam War, the US prisoners used a tapping code to…
I started learning Latin in seventh grade because I decided it was the most difficult course I could take, and I had something to prove. I was an…
Luis Rodriguez, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles in 2014, explains how his love for books and libraries rescued him from a life of trouble. He notes that through…
I remember seeing the images on the television, in newspapers, and in magazines. It was such an epic event. The Berlin Wall was coming down, something I never…