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Center for the Arts and Humanities

 

Fall 2023 Topic: The Power of the Humanities

The study of humanities allows us to better understand the world we live in, its diverse peoples and cultures, the ways in which the past informs the present, and the human experience as individuals and in collectivities. 

How has a particular humanities course, humanities project, or humanities book inspired or challenged you? How has it influenced you to think differently? How has it provided understanding or solace? How has it promoted solidarity and ignited your imagination?

We invite you to write a short blog post (500-750 words) on this topic. We strongly encourage the use of visual images, hyperlinks, and/or short embedded audio or video along with text. 

Please share your blog post with Michelle Burnham and Amy Randall as a shared google doc along with your name, a photo, and a link to your SCU or professional webpage.

2020 was a year of struggle, grief, crisis--a year when the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice were joined by economic instability, environmental destruction, and political trauma.

 
How did the creative and intellectual productions of the arts and humanities sustain you, rescue you, challenge you, comfort you in 2020? How did they change you?
 
The CAH blog is now inviting proposals for short blog posts responding to the question “what work changed you in 2020?”
 
Our definition of “work” is wide-ranging. It could be a book--scholarship, non-fiction, fiction, poetry, theory, memoir, graphic. It could be music--a song or album or performance (live-streamed or recorded). It could be a performance of another kind: theatre or comedy or dance. It could be a painting, sculpture, video, exhibit, or a multi-media, digital, or other kind of work of art. It could also be a panel discussion or conversation, a workshop or training series, care work, volunteer activities, or a protest or meditative retreat.
 
The work that changed you does not have to have been created in 2020. We are interested in your experience with any work, from any time period, that changed you--your thinking, your community, your sense of the present or past or future, your being, your home, your vision--in some way.
 
Send us an email with a one- or two-sentence proposal, or completed blog posts of 750 words maximum. We encourage multimodal posts with visual images, audio or video, and hyperlinks integrated with text. See some examples from our previous blog call above and reach out to us at mburnham@scu.edu and arandall@scu.edu with any questions.
 
Michelle Burnham & Amy Randall

Responding to the Twin Pandemics of COVID-19 and Racial Injustice: Arts and Humanities in a Time of Crisis

The CAH blog has expanded to include responses to the racial injustice, police brutality, and white supremacy that are being challenged through uprisings and protests within our communities, across our nation, and around the world. Racism is itself a pandemic, one with a long history and a complicated inter-relationship to the medical pandemic of COVID-19.

In a time of extraordinary upheaval like the one we are in now, the arts and humanities help us to better understand our world and our connections to each other. How have the humanities helped you to contextualize current events, reevaluate human relations, or reimagine the future? How have the arts helped to sustain or connect you as we both take to the streets and shelter in place?

The Center for the Arts & Humanities invites faculty to contribute to our updated blog devoted to sharing short reflections, stories, poems, music, short films, sculptures, photographs, drawings, dances, and other forms of expression and inquiry that highlight the importance of the arts and humanities in this time of multiple crises.

Submit one-paragraph proposals or completed blog entries of 250-750 words to Michelle Burnham or Amy Randall. We encourage the inclusion of visual or audio components as well as hyperlinks.