As we close out this series of reports on the Humanities Core (HumCore) Workshops, it is worth returning to the two questions that have driven every session so far:
1. Can we conceptualize the Global Humanities at all?
2. How have our ideas created teaching structures in California, Karachi, and Singapore?
Though many of us are frequently concerned with what we’re currently teaching and why, and though we might have strong opinions about what ought to be taught in the coming years, fewer of us have a comprehensive understanding of how the past century of institutional approaches to curriculum design has contributed to our present circumstances.
How might one design or adapt a course to make it more responsibly global? How might we teach important texts, long disappeared into the morass of the “canon,” in such a way that highlights their inherent globality and renders them new?
When things fall apart, when societal deterioration accompanies imperial collapse, we become disillusioned, disenchanted, and this emerges in our literature, art, and philosophy. But how might this disillusionment extend to our pedagogy?
Here, the syllabus of Comparative Literature 305: Prospects for a Comparative Poetics.
Glosses and Conjectures on the Inaugural Poem
In Gawker's wry estimation, most of the U.S. simply didn't "get" Richard Blanco's inaugural poem "One Today." In the Washington Post's absurd trollgazing account, Blanco's poem merely signals the "death of poetry."
Amateur-to-Amateur Music Lessons
Imagine that you’ve recently become a big fan of salsa or Cuban son. You decide you want to learn more about how the music works—maybe even take a few conga lessons yourself.
pick up a real guitar: musica practica 2.0?
"Okay! As we continue our guitar journey, we need to talk about how you're going to be attacking the strings. And I'm going to recommend that you use a pick." David's tone is upbeat and encouraging, as always, and he seems to be looking right at me -- his ability to make eye contact with the camera is uncanny.