My Humanities Moment came earlier this year as I watched the news reporting on North Korea’s recent test launch of a ballistic missile coming on the heels of Iran shooting down a drone and possibly attacking oil fields and facilities in Saudi Arabia. Having spent twenty years in the military and ten more working for … Continued
My humanities moment occurred while visiting the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center in Connecticut. This was my second to visit to this amazing museum and research center. I had stumbled upon it about 10 years ago when studying at Brown University in Rhode Island. A National Park tour guide at another site had seen … Continued
This plaque, and several others, are sprinkled throughout Eatonville, Florida to guide a walking tour of America’s first legally established self-governing all-African American municipality. Eatonville was established in 1887. The town gained popularity from its depiction in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road … Continued
Historian Ed Ayers discusses how Richmond, Virginia’s 2015 sesquicentennial celebration drew upon the past to re-imagine the future. He emphasizes the ways in which the event’s planners sought to honor the diversity of perspectives and lived experiences in the former capital of the Confederacy.
I hope I am not the only person who struggled to narrow their moment to a single episode. I am grateful for the prompt, though; in a summer full of dissertation writing and classroom prep, this prompt provided me an opportunity to appreciate how many times daily I interact with a humanities scholar or a … Continued
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 abstract. It makes the history more tangible, real, and often provides perspective that we don’t get from secondary sources. While travelling in Scotland last summer, I … Continued
I think I’ve always been an oral historian, but I didn’t always know to call myself one. When I was a young kid, I used to spend countless evening hours bombarding my father—always at the end of his long workdays—with questions about his life in India. He was the only person in my family who … Continued
The year 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote in the United States. I don’t think I truly grasped the reality that (white) American women have only had the right to vote for a century until I met a woman living in the year 1876. I’ll explain. I met Louisa … Continued
Graduate student Justina Licata explains how a junior high school teacher’s passion and influence led her to embrace the study of history as a lifelong vocation. Transcript Hello, my name is Justina Licata, and I am a Ph.D. student studying history at UNC-G. And my humanities moment relates to how I became a history major … Continued
In this audio recording, graduate student Jingyi Li describes how a late twentieth-century academic study of the book in Japan upended her expectations by rejecting the Eurocentric and Orientalist bias of many comparable scholarly works. Her experience with this text inspired her to move beyond her own linguistic insecurities and to continue with her research … Continued