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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….
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…
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,…
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….
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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 –…
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…
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…
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…
In 2009, when I was a freshman in college, I went to France and Germany at the end of a year-long seminar exploring the emergence of European nationalism…
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…
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…
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…