Dear Friends,
I hope this note finds you and yours well.
This 11th weekly roundup of #HumanitiesInTheAgeOfSocialDistancing highlights examples of how Rhode Islanders are documenting this moment while also mobilizing the humanities for civic education, community engagement, and the preservation of memory and experience. We will continue to share resources on social media—Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @rihumanities—and here, each Friday, where we’ll highlight our top picks from the week.
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We’re all in this together,
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Elizabeth Francis
Executive Director
and the Humanities Council Team
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In case you missed it – here are just a few of the ways Rhode Islanders are using the humanities to connect virtually.
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The Providence Clemente Veterans Initiative is a free humanities course for RI veterans, regardless of age, gender, or discharge status. Through history, philosophy, art, literature & creative writing, students look at war and homecoming from the ancient Greeks to the present. As in-person classes (pictured above at the RISD Museum) for the PCVI were converted to virtual gatherings, art history professor Suzanne Scanlan got creative to ensure students would still have the chance to examine the city’s memorials and “explore questions of war and duty through art, literature, philosophy, and history.” We congratulate all of this year’s PCVI students who celebrated their graduation, virtually, on May 28th. Learn more about this NEH-funded program via their
Facebook page
or on Twitter
@PVDscholarvets
.
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“How will people respect one another during our new normal? Will we say ‘excuse me’ as we pass by one another in the grocery store? Will children return to the worries of children instead of adults? I blame the quarantine for the change we never knew we needed.” –Jenna Cipriano, Rhode Island College Student
This project from Rhode Island College professor Karen Lee Boren began as a class assignment for her students to write a complete story in 300 words or fewer using I blame the quarantine as either the first or last line. The project has now grown into a website with a public call for stories that features reflections from RIC students and from others as far afield as Maine, Oklahoma, Ohio, and West Virginia.
Read more stories here
and submit your own
following the prompt on the site
.
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Reading & Listening – a sampling of pieces to keep you inspired and connected:
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This
piece
by Alisha Haridasani Gupta dives into the ways that women’s suffrage in the United States was entwined with the crisis of the 1918 flu pandemic and puts that history in context against the backdrop of today’s global crisis and the centennial celebrations that were planned throughout 2020. “These women were masters at protesting but they were never just protesters. They used all the tools of democracy and learned to use the system to change the system.” Gupta writes In Her Words, a twice-weekly newsletter on women, gender, and society, for
The New York Times
.
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XIX: Shall Not Be Denied
is a partnership initiative of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and the Rhode Island Department of State. Due to the pandemic, we will continue amplifying Rhode Island centennial events through March 2021 via our website
shallnotbedenied.org
and on Instagram
@xixshallnotbedenied
.
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This
interview
with historian and author Janice Hume is part of a segment by WNYC
Mourning in America
. Hume speaks about how these records can be used as a way to reveal cultural relationships with grief and what the ‘silences’ in these records can tell us about our own history. Dr. Janice Hume teaches media history, ethics & diversity, and media credibility at the University of Georgia. Her research concerns American journalism history, public memory, and media coverage of death.
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"Now and in the future, the humanities can help save lives, if we bring our work to the front lines, where it belongs." As newly minted graduates enter an uncertain employment market and college students question what the future holds for the fall, this
piece
from Kirsten Ostherr expertly makes the case for why the humanities are essential as we look to respond and rebuild. Kirsten Ostherr is the Gladys Louise Fox Professor of English, incoming chair of the English department, and director of medical humanities at Rice University—and a Brown University American Civilization PhD!
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Upcoming Virtual Opportunities & Educational Materials
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This new project from Stages of Freedom invites all Rhode Islanders to create and share their reflections on daily life as we all bear witness to this moment in history.
Submission information and project details can be found here
. This project was supported by a 2020 Covid-19 Relief Project Grant from the Humanities Council made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the federal CARES Act.
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This list will be added to as the Humanities Council is made aware of resources available to the sector as we weather this storm together. Check back often.
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