A Year in Review
UM Humanities Institute
|
|
This wasn’t the director’s corner that I planned to write to you. I thought I would be highlighting several successful events for March and April of this year: our inaugural talk in the environmental humanities, an interdisciplinary panel on refugee health, an Oscar-nominated documentary screening and panel, and two lectures by esteemed U.S. historians. It turns out that 2020 had other plans. In rapid succession, all but one of the events was cancelled.
It was all so disorienting: events locally and globally that we have come to enjoy disappeared, education shifted rapidly online at every level, preschools and day care centers closed, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and movie theaters closed, and many businesses closed. Broadway and major destinations closed. Travel froze. Millions lost their jobs. The most vulnerable among us became even more vulnerable. We could no longer see our families and friends. More and more people got sick.
I've spent most of my career studying twentieth-century European and global history, including wars, genocides, pandemics and epidemics, revolutions, and so much more. Yet all the historical perspective in the world cannot prepare a person for a moment like this. A friend of mine who is a twentieth-century continental philosopher said recently: now I understand the uncertainty that they all felt through the major cataclysms of the twentieth century.
And yet, I am inspired everyday by the words of people ranging from Holocaust survivors to Queen Elizabeth II in providing us with advice on how to get through this. So, while taking several weeks to adjust to our new lives, we at the Humanities Institute have noticed the role that so many fields in the humanities and beyond are playing as we navigate each day. Instructors at all levels are doing their best to provide their students with an outstanding online experience. Scientists are making hand sanitizer for first responders and medical personnel. Historians are trying to document the pandemic in real time. Film studios are releasing films directly to viewers, podcasters continue to podcast, music playlists come out daily, Yale’s happiness course is now freely accessible online, and the New York City Ballet is live streaming performances. Even Saturday Night Live has hosted “Live at Home” episodes. People are connecting via technologies such as Zoom that were unimaginable twenty years ago. A new term has entered our consciousness (or at least mine): “care-mongering.”
So, while we are not highlighting the events that never came to be, in this newsletter, we are celebrating what we accomplished in our first year at the HI. We are excited to look back at all that we did and all that you helped us to do. We are also delighted to announce grant and award winners and to congratulate our colleagues on their accomplishments. It feels good to spread some cheer.
History teaches us that events will get rescheduled and that life will, someday, return to normal, or at least whatever the new definition of normal is. For now, we hope that you stay safe, that you stay connected, and that you remember all that the humanities have to offer us. While some days are better than others, my new mantra, from the classic children’s book Thornton, is: “Today is okay. Tomorrow will be okay.”
Italian chemist, writer, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi reminds us to find the joy in everyday. Those days look different now, but I am trying to do just that. Be well and stay tuned as we continue to support the humanities at UM and beyond.
- Gillian Glaes, Director
|
|
|
A Year with the
UM Humanities Institute
This September, we sponsored our first event of the year: “Germany United: Borders, Military Perspectives, Transnational Considerations”. This visit with German military officers at UM hosted a discussion of military and defense policies and issues prevalent from Unification to today.
In October, we co-sponsored a number of events, including the panel discussions: "Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Death, Dying and Grief" and "30 Years after the Berlin Wall: Nations Again Divided?”, the latter of which was the first of three events commemorating the 30th anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall. We also hosted the inaugural meeting of our Environmental Humanities Initiative, bringing together a collective of faculty hoping to promote discussion and engagement with the environmental humanities at the University of Montana.
November was a busy one for us. We had the privilege to host University of Cincinnati historian Steve Porter-- author of Benevolent Empire: U.S. Power, Humanitarianism, and the World's Dispossessed. Dr. Porter spoke on the American response to political refugees throughout our history. His lecture was the first of our Making Humanities Public lectures, a series aimed at extending innovative and pertinent humanistic scholarship beyond the campus and into the lives of the engaged public.
We started off the new year with our first “Humanities Conversations” panel, featuring HI grant recipients: Clary Loisel of World Languages and Cultures, Anya Jabour of History, and Valerie Hedquist of Art History and Criticism. Each panelist presented on an aspect of gender, connecting the humanities across disciplinary lines.
We were thrilled to collaborate with the Department of Native America Studies on our last event of the school year: a screening of the films Dear Georgina and First Light, and a conversation with co-director and cinematographer Ben Pender-Cudlip.
While our plans for the remainder of the semester underwent some considerable changes, our commitment to and love of the humanities at UM, the extraordinary community of scholars, students, and aficionados, remains as constant as ever. This too shall pass, and as we begin again to gather together, to learn and grow, we will be there to join you.
|
|
|
Congratulations to Our
Grant and Award Recipients
Faculty Research Grants:
Kirsten Green Mink, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology
“Childhood in the Classic and Postclassic Maya of the Belize River Valley”
Laurie Walker, Associate Professor of Social Work
“Pioneers, Indians, and Outlaws”
Tobin Miller Shearer, Professor of History & African American Studies
“Devout Demonstrators: Sacred Actions in Social Protest Movements–Final Editing and Revision”
Erin Saldin, Assistant Professor of English
“The Caterwaul”
Ona Renner-Fahey, Associate Professor of World Languages and Cultures
“Rousing the Wood Sprite: Environmentalism in Modernist Russian Literature”
Christopher Preston, Professor of Philosophy
“Salmon, Whales, and Sea Otters in South-East Alaska"
Anya Jabour, Regent Professor of History
“Education and Equality: Marion Talbot and Women’s Education in Modern America”
Baldridge Book Subvention Grant:
Brady Harrison and Randi Tanglen
Teaching Western American Literature (University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming)
2020 Richard Drake Award For Student Writing:
Noah Belanger, Undergraduate/English
“The Eternity of Memory: Knausgaard, Augustine, and the Fictive Self Portrait of My Struggle”
André Kushnir, Graduate/Environmental Philosophy
“Overcoming Climate Crisis Apathy Through Virtual Ethics”
Additional congratulations:
To Ruth Vanita, Professor of Global Humanities & Religions and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Director of South & South-East Asian Studies on the publication of her book Memory of Light.
And to Rosalyn LaPier, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, on her fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies program on religion, journalism, and international affairs.
|
|
|
Tune In
with Christopher Preston, Professor of Philosophy
"My recommendation is a book called Darwin Comes to Town by Menno Schilthuizen. Schilthuizen illustrates evolutionary processes at work within the city. He discusses birds getting shorter wings to dodge traffic, lizards gaining stickier toes to climb cement, and mosquitoes becoming different subspecies in different London tube lines.
It provokes in two important ways for those in the environmental humanities. The first is in terms of how human design has impacted such a wide variety of species resident throughout urban surroundings. The second is in terms of how much the natural world continues to operate according to timeless biological principles despite the human spread. The latter is a good reminder – as if we need it today(!) – of how biology is the ultimate context in which human life is lived."
|
|
|
|
|
