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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….

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…

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….

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…

Random Research Gems

I’m deep in research for an article, searching through the National Library of Wales’s digital archives of the South Wales Echo newspaper for coverage of a specific coal…

The Library

Growing up outside Atlanta, Georgia, my dad and I would spend hours at the local library, requesting and checking out the full limit of books allowed. We often…

Homegrown

My wanderlust took me to many places around the world where I experienced humanities moments at nearly every turn, but my hometown is where my relationship with the…

Humanities Moment(s)

During my hours of online teaching this year, I have repeatedly tried to bring myself back to my first encounters with the Humanities classroom. As an enthusiastic first-year…

Naughty Kitty

My humanities moment comes from a cartoon by American B. Kliban. My mother had a kitchen towel with the image on it, and it had been in my…

GROUP and Individual: Cultivating Spaces of Expression

In preparation for teaching online during the 2021 summer semester, I have been thinking about how much group discussions are transformed by digital platforms. In reflecting on the…

An Afternoon at the MoMA

In the summer of 2009, in the final year of my undergraduate studies, I spent a month in New York with my sister. The MoMA was always going…

I Write Therefore I am

I have been writing in notebooks ever since I was young. In elementary school I wrote stories about the adventures of characters I’d imagined after watching and reading…

What You Don’t Like Can Still Guide You

I don’t remember much about going to see 300 except that I left the theatre with an uneasy feeling. Something didn’t sit right about the way the characters…

The Power of Performance

One night during my first semester of undergrad, I flipped on PBS on my tiny dorm room TV to watch Richard II. Or, half-watch, I should say –…

Finding Shelter in the Past

I discovered Petra late in life, and yet, my initial impression of it holds a perennial place in my memory. Growing up I was always fascinated by the…

Renting with Romans

During a summer seminar at the University of Illinois, I got the opportunity to attend an optional session on papyrology, the study of reading ancient materials written on…

The Raisin’s Sojourn

When I was small I loved to lay on the floor with my cheek pressed against the course green carpet. To observe how the tiny green fibers meshed…

New and Strange: Thinking About Transformation Through Shakespeare

When I think “humanities moment,” this song from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest pops into my head. It’s almost too fitting: “Full Fathom Five” is such a momentary diversion…

Why Representation Matters

The sixth grade stands out for me as one of those important milestones in life. As an adult, I have numerous precise moments of recollection where a memory…

Reading and its Superpowers

I cannot remember who first introduced me to the work of Roald Dahl, but it is his books that sparked a lifelong love of reading for me. I…