What the Humanities mean to YOU.

For National Arts & Humanities Month, we asked some of our friends to tell us what the humanities mean to them. Here is a compilation of their eloquent statements:

The Humanities gives us a front-row seat and an all-access back-stage pass to the best life has to offer: history, music, art, philosophy, and literature. Working in a Presidential history museum, I agree with the idea that “the study of humanities leads you through the development of thought and catapults ones understanding of why things are the way they are,” no matter your political ideology.

Erin Trisler
President Benjamin Harrison Home

 

For me, the arts and the humanities are the array of ways we humans engage with the world, emphasizing our most positive human characteristics, the need to belong, to love and be loved and to communicate. They are also the ways to transform the abstract into tangible, the individual into the collective, possible to appreciate and share.  Society’s challenge is to find the ways to engage all humans in the arts and the humanities regardless of class, color, ethnicity, or any other diverse characteristic.  The arts and the humanities can be a source of liberation for all or can also become the source of power and oppression for the few. 

My hope is that arts and the humanities can become like water, a precious resource needed to grow and nurture our humanity, available to all and needed by all.

Carmen E. DeRusha
Economic and Community Development, Purdue Extension -  Marion County

 

Humanities give us the tools to relate to those around us and to express our thoughts and our humanness.  Without arts and humanities, the world yearns for a way to show the past and present to the future.

Amanda Wesselmann
Acting Director, General Lew Wallace Study & Museum

 

The humanities are integral to my personal and professional life–without history, literature, and performance, the most fulfilling human interactions in my daily life would be nonexistent.  At the museum, it’s the art and the history, the fabric of everyday life that connects our visitors to the past and allows me to have meaningful, engaging conversations with them.  And it’s through literature and the performing arts that I have met my closest friends, and continue to connect with them regardless of distance.

Aimee Rose Formo
Program Coordinator, Morris-Butler House and Heritage Tourism

 

What better way to explain this facet of our lives than to look at the root word, human.  The humanities are what tells the world what we are about.  It is the imprint that is left for generations to come.  How do we remember our past?  So often it is the music, the art, the culture of the era.  Without the humanities our world would certainly be a dull existence.  When we look at them as being powerful statements of society, we can truly appreciate the importance, the value of humanities.

Gretchen Leuenberger,
Curriculum and Instruction Facilitator, Wabash Valley Education Center

 

As a forum to express a diversity of gifts and talents, humanities act as a reflection of a visual or written synthesis of what is of paramount importance to mankind.  The humanities exist to host works of thought in mixed media, sometimes becoming an abstract instrument to mirror the cultural and interpret social values transcending and guiding man’s thought through the times.

For our culture, overtures from these refined arts deliver a calculated statement, an overtone and synthesis of the human condition gleaned from an ocean of man’s dreams and desires.  Works of art, heritage and unique expressions distill into integrated and overarching messages that synthesize and portray an oversoul of man’s philosophy that captures his creature.  The collections clustered in the humanities rise above the mundane to emphasize an often elusive conclusion — an order from the chaos about what the spirit of man truly values.  They take form as tangible objects or provide an innate contributing impression, transcending from elusive meaning.  That meaning generally defies words alone to be understood at many levels of life and existence.  Therefore, humanities, as a language, responds to the yearn for understanding — for man to comprehend mankind as well as himself.  To explore humanities gives greater measure to the welfare of the species and the future of the community as a whole, a composite bespeaking man’s cumulative personality.

Brenda Bush
Sheridan Historical Society

Got a Big Idea? Want $10,000 for it?

The Indiana Humanities Council, and a variety of other partners — including Spirit & Place Festival and Central Indiana Community Foundation — are looking for creative ideas to turn an Indianapolis location into a more inspiring place. The winner — who will present Pecha Kucha-style — will take home $10,000 to put toward that project. The deadline to submit your proposal is Oct. 18. Get more info about submission requirements.

Pecha Kucha — or PK for short — literally means “chit-chat” in Japanese and is a grassroots movement started by architects and designers to remedy long-winded lectures and frivolous presentations. In one corner, the presenters at Pecha Kucha have only 6 minutes and 40 seconds to convey their idea, with 20 slides at 20 seconds each, whether they like it or not. In the other corner, a well-stocked bar. Conversation among the audience, especially during timid presentations, is encouraged. Business presentation, meet rock show. Bullet points, meet fight club.

Check out PK presentations on YouTube.

Not that creative, but want to see all of the great ideas? The event will be Thurs., Nov. 12 at The Toby at the IMA. The event is free, but registration is required.

31 ways to experience the humanities

October is Arts & Humanities Month, which means 31 days of thinking, reading, talking and listening. Check out our guide to humanities experiences around Indiana for each day of the month.

Here are some of my favorites:

IDADA (Indianapolis Downtown Arts and Dealers Association) First Friday tour. There’s no better way to spend a Friday night in Indy than to wander from gallery to studio to performance space. Start at our place—the Meredith Nicholson Home (1500 N. Delaware St.)—for a discussion about how schools can serve as catalysts for urban renewal.

Wallow in your Hoosier-ness. Indiana authors, artists, musicians and poets will showcase their talents at An Evening in Brown County on Sunday, Oct. 11. I’m looking forward to Hoosier wine and beer, plus tapas made from locally grown food. Get more info here.

Travel back in time. Explore the religious and visual culture of 17^th-century Spain and Latin America–for free. Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World, opens Oct. 11 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It features 80 works of art, including the legendary Crown of the Andes, an actual crown set with 450 emeralds.

Start a book club. If you’re like me and haven’t joined or started a club yet, it’s time. The Indiana Humanities Council will even lend you the books, for free. Check out our lending library.

Take a road trip. Take advantage of the great weather and scenery that October offers and head north, south, east and west, knowing that wherever you go, you’ll find a great museum or Hoosier landmark.

Find Peace in the Resource Connection

Today is the International Day of Peace, so we took a look at the various resources in the Resource Connection that centered on learning about peace. Here’s what we found:

• An excerpt from George Rogers Clark’s memoir that details peacemaking with the Indians.
• An overview of the Fall Creek Massacre, which took place in Madison County, Indiana.
• President Woodrow Wilson’s 14-points speech for world peace.
• Eight U.S. soldiers, some who killed and some who said no, reveal their inner moral dilemmas in Soldiers of Conscience.
• A Road Map to Peace in the Middle East—Can it be followed?
• A lesson plan to investigate whether media play a role in wars and conflicts.

Plus, much, much more. Check out the more than 40 resources that investigate peacemaking (and lack thereof) from various perspectives at the Resource Connection.

Conner Prairie’s Spirit of the Prairie Award: Honoring America’s Innovators

By Ellen M. Rosenthal, President and CEO of Conner Prairie

As the President & CEO of Indiana’s only Smithsonian affiliate, Conner Prairie, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to honor some extraordinary American trailblazers at this year’s Spirit of the Prairie awards dinner, September 12.

The annual Spirit of the Prairie dinner is Conner Prairie’s opportunity to recognize those who have created a distinctly American story with their vision, passion, dedication and courage. The honorees exemplify the spirit of endeavor that created the rich and ever changing tapestry of the United States.

Through the years Conner Prairie has given the Spirit of the Prairie Award to remarkable Hoosiers, talented, accomplished people with foresight, brilliance and perseverance. I’ve always loved the awards dinner, but I’ve never been as excited as I am this year.

Hoosier Heritage honorees include international opera star and Indianapolis native Angela Brown; Emmy-nominated journalist Janet Langhart Cohen; preservationist, philanthropist and Indiana native Richard E. Ford; and U.S. Senator Richard G. Lugar.

This year Conner Prairie has created a new award reaching beyond Indiana’s borders to honor someone who has fanned widespread interest in American history. The inaugural History Innovator Award will go to Pleasant Rowland, founder of Pleasant Company now known as American Girls, to whom I have a personal connection. In 1985 I was hired as one of several consultants to advise on the development of the history based stories and dolls. Quite frankly, I never suspected that Americans would be as wildly enthusiastic about the products as they turned out to be. Pleasant introduced an entire generation of girls to stories of American life in the past 250 years. I’ve waited nearly a quarter of a century to thank Pleasant for pursuing a dream that has had positive impact on our country – and on my life. Because of Pleasant, I learned that it’s the story that matters in inspiring an interest in history. The details, the facts are essential – but only as background.

It takes countless hours of dedication, work and commitment by our staff, volunteers and board members to pull together such a momentous event. We hope that you will join us for this truly amazing celebration as we honor an astonishing group of people on September 12. The cocktail reception begins at 5:45 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m. For additional information and reservations, please visit connerprairie.org/spirit.aspx or call 317-776-6000 before September 4.

As we begin to think about awards for 2010, we would love to hear who you would choose as an American trailblazer.

A celebration of culture

By Dorothy Paunovich
“Serb Fest” is held at St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church in Merrillville, Ind., on the first weekend in August.

This year, an exhibit (funded in part by the Indiana Humanities Council) called “Immigrants, Serbs of Steel” told the story of hard-working immigrants who labored in the dangerous steel mills from the early 1900s to the present day. The Serbian immigrants helped build Northwest Indiana’s steel mills, industries, and towns. The exhibit can still be viewed every Sunday after church.

On Sun., Aug. 2, co-authors Stephen McShane and Gary Wilks (Steel Giants) shared  their research about the early immigrants’ contributions to northwest Indiana’s steel industries. Nick Tarailo (Bronko’s Restaurant) spoke of the stories his grandfather  shared about the early days in Gary. You can learn more by watching a video about the project, here.

Included in the exhibit was a burgundy embroidered vest that is more than 200 years old, and was buried in the ground during two wars (WWI and the Turkish war). It belonged to the great-grandmother of one of our parishioners who is 70-years-old. She said that they had to hide their identities and things of value during those times.

Every Serbian family has a fascinating story related to the events that brought them to this great country. Serb Fest is a celebration of those stories, and a homecoming for the heart. Everyone is welcome at Serb Fest–it is attended by so many non-Serbs because they love the food and music.

It has become somewhat of a homecoming for college students, relatives, and for those who are even just slightly Serbian. They can count on things that are familiar: their favorite foods and music. There’s nothing like watching several hundred young people in their teens and early 20s singing and dancing to music that came from a foreign land several generations ago. They still want to dance and sing because it really means something special to them. They all bring friends from school and their neighbors. I remember my non-Serb friends in high school being envious because we had spent the weekends at church dances, basketball tournaments, or traveled to perform with our folklore dance groups or choir. We had so much fun and had so much to talk about. If you went to a Serbian church, it didn’t mean you were in church all of the time, but AT church, where you were surrounded by all this great culture.

What are your “ethnic” memories growing up in Indiana? How do you celebrate that culture today?

The Three Great Myths in Indiana History

Here are the “Three Great Myths in Indiana history” as reported by those who wander the state talking to Hoosiers, looking for and hearing all kinds of stories for the radio show Hoosier History Live!   Some are accurate and some are not so accurate. 

1. ”My house was on the Underground Railroad.”

2. “John Dillinger robbed this building and escaped out the back window.”

3. “The meaning of the Indiana State Seal is that–  a woodsman has to get up pretty darn early in the morning to catch a buffalo in Indiana!”

This week’s show addressese one of those myth vs. reality topics: the Underground Railroad.

Oral histories, diaries, notations in family Bibles, and letters. All of those have been crucial in figuring out which historic homes, inns, taverns, and other buildings may have been stops on the Underground Railroad – and which ones probably were not, according to Indiana Freedom Trails, Inc. But exaggerations and misconceptions abound. To hear some folks tell it, almost all 19th century homes with cellars, attics or other hiding places were used in the crusade to help African-Americans escape from slave owners in the South. How do we separate myth from fact? How can you verify folklore about an old building? And did you know that one of the nation’s best-known abolitionists and women’s rights activists Sojourner Truth had connections to Indiana?

To share insights on these and other aspects of the Underground Railroad, historic researcher and genealogist Dona Stokes-Lucas of Indianapolis will join Nelson in studio. Dona, who is on the board of directors of Indiana Freedom Trails, Inc., is helping organize a national Underground Railroad Conference 2009 set for Sept. 16-19 at the Hilton Indianapolis North, 8181 N. Shadeland Ave. Indiana Freedom Trails is a diverse group that seeks to identify, verify and preserve Hoosier sites that were part of the Underground Railroad network. If you ever have wondered about – or heard folklore concerning – a historic site and its possible link to the Underground Railroad, this compelling show will be for you.

Tune in at 11:30 a.m. Sat. on WICR 88.7 fm or listen online anywhere during the live broadcast by clicking here at  WICR.

What-are-you-reading-Wednesday: Dreams from My Father

To read on vacation this summer, I chose Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, the autobiography Barack Obama wrote just after he finished law school. Published when Obama was 34 years old, the book seems like only “Part 1″ of a life story, yet it was already extraordinary at that point.

I have puzzled over the fact that Barack Obama both is, and isn’t, an African American, as we normally understand the term. As everyone knows by now, he was not born into a Black family, as Michelle Obama was on the south side of Chicago. Rather, he was born into, and raised by, a white family but fathered by a native of Kenya, a foreign student and a sojourner in America.

On the other hand, to the world at large, the youthful Obama was viewed as “African American” even though he didn’t know how to be a member of that ethnic/cultural group and had to learn, as teenagers do, from other teenagers. To top it off, he grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia, places where being white or black are merely two among many options.

Is it any wonder that this unique individual has thought more deeply than most about issues of race and identity?

Although the book takes the reader on an odyssey through these early years, to southern California where Obama attended Occidental College, and eventually to Kenya where, after his father’s death, he met numerous members of his extended family, the chapters that caught my attention were those that related his experiences in Chicago as a “community organizer.”

I’m sure many of us wondered exactly what he did as a community organizer when we heard that expression so often during the 2008 presidential campaign. This book tells the whole tale. To boil it down, he set up and ran meetings. He tried to collaborate with local organizations, and sometimes he invited speakers and hoped that enough people would show up. He met with school principals and neighborhood leaders, discovering the hard truths about this tough urban environment.

Dreams from My Father is beautifully written, wide-ranging yet introspective, and storytelling at its most engrossing. The life that unfolds in its pages is all about learning, being born with questions about one’s identity, and starting down the long road to finding answers. In the most literal sense, it is about knowing that your existence can only be understood by seeing the world from a global perspective.

What-are-you-reading-Wednesday: A stack of newspapers and magazines

By Kristen Fuhs Wells, communications director for the Indiana Humanities Council.

Printed publications seem to be facing the same fate as the humanities–everyone thinks they’re dying.

But I look at my coffee table, and I see the most subscriptions I’ve had my whole life. I see a stack of travel magazines that I’m hoarding so I can look up information on my next destination (that will surely augment my Internet searches); I see TIME Magazine, which I look forward to every week and promptly read cover-to-cover (in addition to scanning the weekly e-blast, and reviewing the Week in Pictures); I see National Geographic (which takes me slightly longer to read–but upon seeing it in my mailbox, I flip through to see all of the amazing snapshots); I see local pubs: Indianapolis Monthly, Nuvo, and of course, The Indianapolis Star, which I still get delivered (and read) every morning, before then refreshing my home page several times a day to get the latest news.

I could get most of this online, if I wanted. But, most of the time I don’t want to get it from a TV or computer screen. I want to sit in silence, with the content in my hands, so that I can read an article, think about its significance, and talk to my husband about it. Read. Think. Talk. Kind of like the humanities.

So, why are print publications dying? I’m not a 60-year-old woman who advertisers no longer want to reach–I’m a 20-something, married, home-owning woman with money to burn (well sort of!). But, then again, maybe it’s me. Am I a dying breed?

Does a justice’s sex, race or ethnicity contribute to the quality of the justice’s decisions?

Written by David Orentlicher, MD, JD. Orentlicher is the Samuel R. Rosen Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Hall Center for Law and Health at Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis and an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at Indiana University School of Medicine.

Much has been made of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” comments.  Critics have claimed they reflected unfair bias and that her decisions as a Supreme Court Justice will be swayed by inappropriate personal prejudices.  Others have observed that the comments must be understood in their context and that doing so demonstrates that the judge was simply saying that one’s experiences affects how one understands the law.  In any event, Judge Sotomayor has stated that she chose her words poorly and miscommunicated her main point.

Is there some truth to Judge Sotomayor’s statement that she “would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life?”  Does a justice who has lived a life rich with experience make better decisions than a justice who has not done so?  Does a justice’s sex, race or ethnicity contribute to the quality of the justice’s decisions?

A few observations come to mind.  Judge Sotomayor may have confused the benefits of diversity in a group with judgments about individual members of a group.  Surely a justice’s views will be shaped by the justice’s experiences, and those in turn will be shaped by the justice’s sex, race or ethnicity.  When groups are making judgments, they do better when their members bring together a diversity of perspectives; a Supreme Court with justices of different sexes, races and ethnicities will probably make wiser judgments than a Supreme Court where all of the justices have the same sex, race and ethnicity.  But that is very different from saying that any one justice’s sex, race or ethnicity leads that justice to make wiser judgments than other justices.

Still, is there something to the claim that a life rich with experiences leads to better judgments on an individual basis?  Parents commonly think that they are providing a better upbringing for their children when they expose them to a variety of experiences and a diverse group of classmates.  In other words, was Judge Sotomayor correct to suggest that a life rich with experiences makes someone wiser?

In some ways, this takes us to the famous contrast of the fox and hedgehog (the fox knows a little about many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing very well).  Is it better to see through a pluralistic view or a well-developed single view?  Which is better, breadth or depth?  Who is wiser, the generalist or the specialist?  It’s difficult to say that one is better than the other, so are we back to the point that diversity matters for the wisdom of the group?