Humanities and humanities are two sides of the same coin. That does not, however, mean they are one and the same thing. While the two are related to the concepts of human life, interaction, and creation, what they do for and with these concepts sets them apart.
At Sapere Aude, one of the first lectures Dr. Bory gave was about what the Humanities course is. As part of the discussion, human connection was brought up and from it, the ability to relate to and have empathy for other’s experiences as well. To access these experiences, however, they must be documented. The documentation of human life and human experience becomes important because of the role that it plays in our understanding of people and society. Humanities, spelled with a lowercase h, focuses on the act and method of documentation of human experiences. Humanities focuses on the analysis of the documentation to make sense of it.
In Unit 1, Dr. Sample spoke of the Mechanical Turk and how people were so fascinated with it and wanted to understand how it worked. Dr. Robb touched on how an AIs lack of human experience leads to its lack of knowledge. Ted Chiang’s novella, The Lifecycle of Software Objects highlights the fact that if machines were to reach a point where they could think and where they could have human experiences, what would come next? Here, humanities would be the documentation done by Ted Chiang and Humanities would be the analysis and studying of his work and the phenomenon that inspired it.
In Unit 2 the act of the body documenting human experience was introduced. When we were in the 900 Room, Dr. Bory had us move around the room and would give us specific instructions on how to move our bodies within the room. When we were in the Lily Gallery for the Boal workshop led by Dr. Green, we did similar activities to the previous workshop. Dr. Bory’s workshop was a documentation of what our bodies can do while Dr. Green’s workshop was how our bodies can be used to accomplish goals. In both workshops we were given time to reflect through either thought or writing of what we had just done. The reflections were the analytical or Humanities aspect of these plenaries while the workshops were the documentations and therefore the humanities aspect of them.
For Unit 3, the types of documentation that stood out to me were the visual and audible ones. The spirituals created and sung by African Americans reflected their experience in society as people who were treated less than by others. In one of Dr. Pyles lectures he discussed the different techniques used by those singing African American spirituals that set that genre of music apart from others. Here, Dr. Pyles’ lecture provides another example for the Humanities as he is analyzing spirituals. Meanwhile, the spirituals themselves are examples for the humanities as they are one form of documentation of human experience.
Another demonstration of Humanities and humanities in Unit 3 would be the video of Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin’s conversation. This was a documentation of what two people have gathered about society based on their personal experiences. The video represents humanities. Dr. Wills lecture on the background and history of James Baldwin allowed for a better understanding of the experiences African Americans had in America post slavery and how that shaped the different kinds of media produced. The understanding gained from Dr. Wills’ presentation provides yet another example of Humanities as a form of analysis.
The first lecture of the spring semester for Unit 1 was given by Dr. Wills, in which she focused on how assumptions of history shape our understandings of it. We were introduced to the concept of history being a recollection of past human experiences. Our focus on Dr. Hilary Green’s Maxwell Chambers’ connection to Davidson College provided an example of this understanding of history. The documents and artifacts examined for the report contained much information that contextualized and explained the human experience at the time. The report makes sense of the findings, posing the question of how Davidson College should deal with its past given that valuable human experiences are at risk of being overlooked. Dr. Hilary Green’s report represents the Humanities and humanities role in highlighting the relevancy of human experience.
For Unit 2, the play Indecent and the discussion of the Dolan reading in Dr. Green’s lecture offer another example of the importance of documenting and understanding human experiences. Indecent, in centering around the controversy of the play, God of Vengeance, has multiple instances in which its theatrical aspects create temporary utopias. A key takeaway about the role of performances and art in general in creating utopias from Dr. Green’s lecture was that they simultaneously create and preserve culture. Culture derives from human experiences. Indecent acts as a documentation of the Jewish experience in which the framework for utopias from the Dolan reading grasps inspiration from. Indecent encapsulates the little h humanities while uppercase Humanities is captured through the Dolan reading.
In Unit 3, Dr. Bory’s lecture about the ACT UP protests once again highlighted the importance of the body in documenting. The ACT Up protests were organized and based on human experience and reality that was being overlooked. These experiences were intertwined with the body which is why the phrase “silence=death” was used by ACT UP protesters. The die-ins organized by ACT UP used bodies as not only a method of demonstration but documentation that forced people to see how silence about the AIDS/HIV epidemic led to death. At the same time, the use of bodies of documentation serves as the examination of human experience to understand it. Uppercase Humanities and lowercase humanities worked together in the case of ACT UP to deliver the message of the movement.
Humanities seeks to understand why certain events are documented and what they contribute to the ongoing conversation surrounding human experience. It pulls from a variety of disciplines to analyze different forms of mediums that people use to document their life. Humanities with a lowercase h seeks to capture the human experience in the moment. It intends to display the thoughts, emotions, and ideas of humans as they experience life around them. In the context of humanities, documentation is not done for analysis but for connection. However, despite being two sides of the same coin, Humanities and humanities can view each other through the human desire to understand and connect.
-Notes-