Blogs
100 Faces of War Experience: Portraits & Words
A selection of portraits from Matt Mitchell’s 100 Faces of War project is on display now through June 13 at the Springfield Armory Museum National Historic Site. Bob Meagher, who teaches comparative religion and other humanities courses at Hampshire College,...Voices from the Past
One rainy day this summer, I called a childhood friend to say, “Anne Frank would have been eighty years old today.” She burst into tears and we talked about our experience, now two decades ago, reading Anne’s diary in class. Since we have been...War Stories in Future Memory
In his recent essay, Bob Meagher demonstrates through literature something I have come to understand through my personal life over the past several years—the importance of the war story to an individual soldier’s healing process. But the war story holds...The Supertramp
About a year ago I saw the Into the Wild, Sean Penn’s filmic treatment of the eponymous book by Jon Krakauer about Chris McCandless, a boy my age who left his family and all earthly security at the age of 21 to pursue a dream of living alone in the Alaskan...Pulling Out of Iraq
Pulling our military out of Iraq has stimulated many thoughts and memories. I remember a candlelight vigil against the invasion of Iraq on the steps of Church of the Presidents in Quincy. This was only one of many such vigils in cities and towns throughout...My McElwee-McCandless Film
Thirteen years ago two things conspired that eventually led to my film on Chris McCandless: Into the Wild was published, and Sherman’s March was rebroadcast. Of course, I was already familiar with the McCandless story, having followed it closely in newspapers...Memorial Day in Plainfield: Up with a Twist
There’s a difference between dying and passing away, between burying and saying goodbye, between the harsh realities of life in the eighteenth century and the comparative ease, for most of us in the United States, of life in the twenty-first. We are quite far...On the Urge to Perform & Performative Visions of a New New World
Perform: to give form to. To carry out, enact, or fulfill. To give a rendition of; to follow a pattern of behavior; to play. To do in a formal manner according to prescribed ritual; to be in a state of performing. To use language that actualizes what is spoken. To do...Water Power to the People of Holyoke
The following essay was written by Charlie Lotspeich, Park Supervisor at Holyoke Heritage State Park, who will be presenting on this topic next Monday at the Mass History Conference on energy and social change, being held at Worcester's College of Holy Cross. * *...“Ruined for Life”: Conscience and Convenience in a Liberal Arts Education
The year following my graduation from a small, liberal arts college in New England in 1995, I served as a full time volunteer with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC) in Kansas City Missouri (making $300/month to be pooled and spent collectively with/by the five other...William Skinner & Holyoke's Water Power
The City of Holyoke is famous for fine paper manufacturing, but its planners hoped it would be a textile boomtown. As Charlie Lotspeich has pointed out in the previous post, Holyoke’s diversified industrial base flourished due to the technological innovation of...Why Am I Doing This?
One night in August, I was soaking wet from having just been in a pond, under the moonlight in rural Ashfield. I was walking around the side of a barn and I was listening to the applause from the audience who had come to see our performance of the Arabian Nights. They...I Came, I Saw, I Learned: The Impact of Travel and Study Abroad on Language Learning and Cultural Understanding
After spending some time in Beijing, I have quickly realized that China is not the same country as the one shown in the media and news publications in the United States,” said Tom Lill, then a second year college student who traveled to China in January 2009,...“I Am Your Child–So Read with Me!” Family Reading in an Era of Early Childhood Development Public Education Efforts
As a first-time parent, nothing quite prepared me for 1997’s onslaught of well-intentioned advice and instruction about The First 3 Years of Life. I vividly recall lying in my hospital bed, nursing my hours-old son Rory and seeing Rob Reiner, President Clinton,...Are We Failing our 21st Century Students? The Shape and Impact of Bilingual Education in Massachusetts
Because of my husband’s job our seven year old son has spent the past year in a two-way bilingual program in a school in France. He spends half of every day with a native French speaking teacher doing first grade school work in French and the other half of the...A Fact-Free World
Is it stupid to deny evolution? Is someone who questions at this moment that Barack Obama is an American a pigheaded idiot? Are those who think the President supports “death panels” nothing but extremely gullible victims of cynical health insurance...Emerson's Ghosts and the UMass Amherst Colloquium on Social Change
Not so long ago, I picked up a copy of Philip Gura's new book on Transcendentalism — that brief flowering of the New England mind — and it started me thinking again about that most American tension, how self and society articulate. As a nation, we have...Racial Profiling in a Post-Race Conscious Society?
When the media focused attention on the Cambridge Massachusetts police department this summer it briefly put a spotlight on the practice known as “racial profiling.” Little of that discussion served to inform the broader public about its prevalence or its...Doc Films and Social Impact: Outreach, Outreach, Outreach
Documentary films are changing the world. From the global warming warnings of An Inconvenient Truth to Supersize Me’s cautions about our fast food culture and Spike Lee’s study of Hurricane Katrina’s human cost When the Levees Broke, audiences are...Conscience and Convenience in Liberal Arts Education
David Rothman’s book Conscience and Convenience provides a history of corrections in America and argues that the good intentions of reformers (conscience) are often thwarted by individuals and organizations (convenience)during the implementation and evaluation...Emerson's Ghosts and the UMass Amherst Colloquium on Social Change
Not so long ago, I picked up a copy of Philip Gura's new book on Transcendentalism — that brief flowering of the New England mind — and it started me thinking again about that most American tension, how self and society articulate. As a nation, we have...Political Change from the 1960s to Now: Connections Between Arts & Activist Movements
As a child of the 1970s, like many in my generation, I have grown up somewhat in the political shadow of the decade before me. For the more conservative members of my family, the 1950s were a great source of nostalgia (especially in the ‘80s); but for my...Writing Music
Another post for the Public Humanist! This time explaining why I am not a public humanist: Recently, I worked on a project to develop a website for a PBS series called Keeping Score, a production of the San Francisco Symphony that presents classical music in the...Musings on the Filmmaker-Subject Relationship
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a memorial service for Sokhorn Sem, the mother of one of the subjects of my film Monkey Dance. The service was held at the Khmer Buddhist Temple in Chelmsford, Massachusetts (Wat Triratanaram). Sokhorn’s battle with breast...Fear of Uniting: Labor Movements in Early Holyoke
This essay addresses working and economic conditions in Holyoke during the 1870s and 1880s as the city acquired industrial stature and some paper and textile workers attempted to organize. But it starts from the perspective of a paper maker who experienced the final...On Equal Terms: Young women vocational students face their futures
I thought I’d already heard it all, so I was surprised at how suddenly raw I felt, reading what one vocational-technical high school student had written on a yellow sticky note: “Your [sic] never going to make it.” I guessed that she was quoting the...How Images Become Valuable: The Tale of the Portrait of Rick Yarosh
This piece is a continuation, of sorts, of an earlier article describing the process of the 100 Faces of War Experience project. The particular thing I talk about here is the creation of the portrait of Rick Yarosh, an American soldier disfigured by burns, the...Faces of War Experience, Portraits of America?
It’s all about context. An amazing portrait is now on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., as one of 49 finalists for the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. The painting depicts Rick Yarosh from the waist up. Yarosh wears a gray Army...The Zero Budget Festival
1. Festival OverviewUNESCO declared 2009 “The Year of Grotowski” in honor of the 10th anniversary of the death of Jerzy Grotowski, whom many consider to have been the most important theater director of the 20th century. The legacy of Grotowski´s work...The Story and the Self
I loved books as a kid. But one of the strange things about loving books as I did is that I somehow managed to not read most of the grade school kid classics. I'm thinking of stuff like Wrinkle in Time, that Lion, Witch, Wardrobe thingy, Lord of the Rings, and all...The Life and Times of [Your Name Here]
I have not always been interested in biographies. As a curator and historian, I look at biographies as pieces of the puzzle: the more biographies I read on a certain topic, the more I understand about that topic. A biography can be a collection of stories: a story of...World Wide Views on Global Warming–Highlighting the Results
"Our earth is like a patient with a fever. We must collaborate to save her by sharing our wisdom so as to provide economical and technological remedies to avoid +2 degrees damage.” – Recommendation from WWViews deliberations in Japan Participants...People's Voice is Heard at COP-15
Larry Ragland, an unemployed health insurance executive from Methuen, MA., was mesmerized by the recent United Nations Climate Change talks in Copenhagen (COP-15), eager to see the nations work out a deal to address global warming. He confessed, “It was almost...Pocket diaries, little windows to the past
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that many of the readers of "The Public Humanist" delight, as I do, in the process of drawing our own conclusions about the past based on primary source artifacts. There's something enchanting about...A Visit to the Twentieth Doha International Book Fair
I am in the Middle East for some research, and specifically in Qatar, where I lived a few years ago. With some time this morning because of a cancelled appointment, I walked over to the country’s major annual book fair. Despite taking place in a massive space...Three Reasons for Democrats to Support a Troop Surge in Afganistan
In the fall of 2009 General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, requested 40,000 additional troops to help fight an increasingly aggressive Taliban insurgency. President Obama agreed in December to send 30,000 troops as part of an Afghan...Into Harm's Way
Several weeks have passed since President Obama delivered his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo; and, despite my strong admiration for him and my respect for his convictions, some of what he said still deeply troubles me. As Commander-in-Chief, his hopeful...Gaza, Why?
This month marks one year since Israeli land, sea, and air forces attacked the Gaza Strip, killing 1,434 men, women, and children and injuring upwards of 5000 according to the United Nations. The Gaza Strip became the Gaza Strip as a result of the creation of Israel...Adoption, Race, Culture: A Recent History
It’s funny how a photograph can stick in your mind. Maybe the stillness of the image gives it time to sink in, like dye, and become part of you. One image that sticks in my mind is of a White woman, perhaps a little older than I am now, with graying hair,...On Becoming an Orphan
You are sitting on a moving train, reading. Gradually, you become aware that the train is moving more slowly and stopping more frequently. Annoyed, you reach up to pull down the window curtain to block the view: it crumbles in your hand. You look at the seat in front...Choosing Heartbreak over Heartshrink: Reading History with Children
"Would I have to ride at the back of the bus?” my beautiful brown-skinned son asked me as we read Faith Ringgold’s If a Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks. Rory was six at the time and my heart broke as I contemplated how to answer this question....TV is dead. Long live TV.
To explain my perspective on the fate or future of television, I need to begin with a story. Several years ago now, I was on a blind date. He was a doctor, by my recollection; handsome, well-educated, funny, a catch by most standards. Things were going well. There was...I Broke Up With My Television
According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year). In a 65-year life, that person will have spent 9 years glued to the tube. I broke up with my television...Creating Community through Film
What does “WIIFM” have to do with fostering interfaith and multicultural understanding? This is a question I asked myself when a public relations consultant volunteered to advise the Steering Committee of the Sharon Pluralism Network (SPN)....Growing Up American 1: In China–Gone With the Wind
I was six when I first saw Gone with the Wind at a private screening in 1942. World War II started in China in 1937, with the Japanese invasion – two years before the blitzkrieg, and four years before Pearl Harbor. By 1939, with hundreds of thousands Chinese...The First Amendment Wars: Calming Down about the Citizens United Decision
Part I – Where Citizens United fits in our First Amendment Jurisprudence The uproar, mainly from the liberal side of the aisle (although some conservatives don’t like it either), over the Supreme Court’s recent First Amendment decision in Citizens...Understanding the Majority and Dissent in Citizens United
Part II of “The First Amendment Wars: Calming Down about the Citizens United Decision” In a thought-provoking analysis of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, Professor Stanley Fish suggests that the...Body of Evidence: The Body as Narrative Device in the True Crime Genre
Act One, Scene One: A small town in the American Heartland Sirens scream down a quiet street. Five squad cars, lights ablaze, race to a most unlikely location: the quaint home of Mary Jane X. Officers arrive at a shocking scene: an unknown assailant has brutally...The Body as an Archive of Experience
This week I’m driving up to Montréal to film the most bloody scene I’ve ever shot. My documentary film subject, Lalita Bharvani, is having open-heart surgery, and the hospital has surprisingly granted me permission to film in the operating room. I...Artistic Tastes & Political States: A Meditation on Art & Ideology
Question: What is the relationship between aesthetic tastes and political ideology? I. How do we form our aesthetic tastes, our likes and dislikes? By familiarity, or the frequency with which we’ve been exposed to something, which influences the level of comfort...Religious Roots of Liberal Ideas
Religion is obviously important to the political ideas of the Christian right. But political liberals might be surprised how many of their ideals have deep religious roots. John Adams is a good example of this connection that historians have long recognized. Adams was...John Adams: Journey to Religious Tolerance
As stated in the previous blog, John Adams’s political ideals were firmly grounded in religion. This essay explores his journey from Puritan intolerance to universal tolerance and then argues that Adams’s religion has lessons for us today. Early in his...And What about the Irrational? More Musings on Taste and Ideology
How do we relate to culture? Have we lost our connection to it? Perhaps you can help weave these threads somehow. Thread 1: Taste and Ideology via Carlos Uriona Seven years ago, I overheard my friend and colleague Carlos Uriona, Double Edge’s Master Actor and...The Value of the Humanities (Again): A Round-Up of Recent Essays
For a little over a year now I’ve been following opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines about the value of the humanities education. I’ve even gotten Public Humanist writers to post about it. To be honest, I’m still sorting out what I think about...Real Estate Intervention, Capitalist Ultimatum
We flirted with buying a house this summer. We didn’t, but that’s another story. The process of looking and thinking and scheming got me interested in the meaning and value of real estate for the first time, really, though all of us already know too much...Literature in the VA
I have been a facilitator for Literature & Medicine discussions at the Togus Veterans Administration Hospital in Augusta, Maine for the past two years and have borne witness to some remarkable discussions. In my day job, I am a philosophy professor at the...Conscience in War
As the savage harvest of World War I was underway in Europe, Sigmund Freud offered this less than prescient comment in an essay entitled “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death”: When the frenzied conflict of this war shall have been decided, every one of...Motor Vehicle Pollution, Social Justice and Public Health
Motor Vehicle Pollution, Social Justice and Public Health David Sittenfeld, Jon Levy, Sam Lipson, Joanne Nicklas, and Wig Zamore A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that that chronic exposure to motor vehicle pollution can trigger health problems such as...A Movement Grows: The Human Right to Housing in America
Photo courtesy of Los Angeles Community Action Network A right to housing? Sounds unAmerican! Sounds like socialism! Well, actually, the right to housing is an American idea that’s been around for quite some time and that has found support in high places. Almost...E-Edition
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