“To be honest, I’m glad my family didn’t go to America. We ended slavery 30 years earlier. What were YOU guys thinking?” Our Bajan tour guide of St. Nicholas Abbey told us this as we walked through the sugarcane plantation house. She chuckled, and we along with her, albeit awkwardly. She was right, too; the … Continued
Fresh out of graduate school, Jon Parrish Peede embraced the chance to travel, arriving in Eastern Europe during the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. A last-minute decision to see the opera Don Giovanni in Vienna—and a startling conversation with a local ticket-taker—opened his eyes to the double-edged legacy of American military intervention. During that same trip, a … Continued
In this account, William Leuchtenburg shares the story of a seemingly routine exchange with literary scholars in the late 1970s which spurred him to new insights about the ways iconic figures from the past influence those who succeed them, whether they be poets, or composers, or U.S. presidents. Eventually, he would share these insights in … Continued
Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye is the 28th Chief Justice of the State of California. She recalls her experiences as a student in a humanities class in college, her upbringing in a Filipino community of hardworking women eager to pass on their traditions, and her realization that the humanities teach us to celebrate and respect the stories … Continued
Actor, author, director, and activist George Takei recalls his family’s resilience and ability to find joy, beauty, and love in simple treasures while imprisoned in Japanese internment camps in the 1940s. He notes that the humanities remind us that we are better than war and destruction and together are capable of bettering society. To celebrate … Continued
In elementary school, Kathryn Hill itched to move beyond the first shelf of the library books. When she finally reached the second shelf, a new world awaited her: biographies of historical figures. The lives of women such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Tubman, and Dorothea Dix led her to understand that history was all about … Continued
When I was 8 years old, I found hidden in a drawer a little, brown book. It was a well-worn copy of, “How to Get U.S. Citizenship,” which my mother had used to prepare for her U.S. citizenship exam. When I asked her about it, she explained that it was one of the items packed … Continued
Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism compelled Alexander Knirim, then a young historian, to re-think the role of imagination in history. Knirim recounts how his original misunderstanding, that we can reconstruct historic truth, was challenged by Anderson’s book and evolved into an appreciation of Anderson’s exegesis.
An early encounter with muckraking American novelist Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle exposed Kristen Shedd to issues surrounding human rights and animal rights in the early 20th century. For Shedd, the 1906 novel exposed the intersections of fiction, policy, history, and social justice. Sinclair’s story prompted her to seek answers to questions: How did this novel … Continued
Stephen Kidd explains how his involvement with several projects during his time at the Smithsonian illuminated the powerful role of the humanities in cultivating cross-cultural community. One project, which focused on food cultures, celebrated culinary legacies as the owner of a New York Jewish delicatessen passed down the business to an immigrant from the Dominican … Continued