9th Annual Humanities Days at Montgomery College
The Human in Humanities: Understanding Ourselves and Others
October 25 - 29, 2021|Virtual Events
Register for Thursday Oct 28 events Register for Friday Oct 29 events
For additional help with registration, please contact Troy Shaw (troy.shaw@montgomerycollege.edu).
Humanities Days
October 25-29, 2021
Humanities Days at Montgomery College is an interdisciplinary celebration of the humanities
and results from the strong and joyful partnership between Montgomery College’s two
humanities institutes: The Global Humanities Institute and the Paul Peck Humanities Institute at Montgomery College.
The humanities help us understand ourselves and others through language, history,
and culture. They have the capacity to foster social justice and equality and they
reveal how people throughout time have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual
sense of the world.
Presentations, Dialogues, Workshops, and Panels
This year’s Humanities Days theme focuses on The Human in Humanities: Understanding Ourselves and Others. We are offering 30 virtual events for better understanding. All programs are free and open to the community on a space-available basis. Do consider inviting friends and colleagues from across the globe to register and learn more about: art, music, literature, and poetry as transformative acts; environmental justice; equity and inclusion; global ethics; health and well-being; history; pandemic-informed pedagogy; stories of resilience and rebuilding; and global communication!
- The Way We Are: The Impact of Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation on Interpersonal Relationships During the Pandemic
- The Brain Game – Challenge Your Convention!
- Inclusion through Intentional Design
- The Indigo Field: Poems from the Salvadoran Diaspora
9:00-10:00 a.m.
Event Host: Dr. Anestine Theophile-LaFond, Professor, Communication Studies| anestine.theophile-lafond@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Dr. Benjamin Osmond Farrell
The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the human propensity for perception distortion creating a challenge for interpersonal relationships. Persons engage in faulty attribution to explain others behavior resulting in misunderstanding and distrust. This panel discussion will highlight the experience of community members and students who belong to virtual communities. They will share on how their relationships were impacted by these conspiracy theories. The discussion will include communication strategies to effectively overcome the negative impact of these conspiracy theories on human relationships.
Noon till 1:00 p.m.
Event Host: Dr. Paul D. Miller, Professional Development Director | paul.miller@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Stacy Ford
Is it a myth or a reality? Come explore interesting facts about the brain and how common brain myths have made it difficult for us to separate brain facts from fiction.
2:00-3:00 p.m.
Event Host: Stacy Ford, Accessible Technology Coordinator | stacy.ford@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Dr. Paul D. Miller, Professional Development Director | paul.miller@montgomerycollege.edu
During this session we will explore examples and scenarios to think about how our environments and interactions are designed, who can be excluded, talk about what worked or did not, and how to deliberately consider inclusion in the design process.
4:30-5:30 p.m.
Event Host: Carol Moore, Creative Project Manager, Global Humanities Institute | carol.moore@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Cinder Cooper Barnes
Recommended Media: https://henryamills.com/
Published Poems:
The Robert L. Giron Global Humanities Lecture Series presents poet Henry Mills. Mills was born in DC to a Salvadoran mother and a Jewish-American father. A 2005 graduate of Montgomery College, he has been featured at a variety of music and poetry festivals including Different Kind of Dude Fest, Positive Youth Fest, and Split this Rock. His work has appeared in Folio, Border Crossing, Hyrsteria, RiverSedge and in the Time You Let Me In anthology. In 2016 he received an MFA in poetry from New York University. Mills will be reading from his upcoming collection of poetry titled The Indigo Field. These poems explore the identity of the children of the displaced, and our complicated relationship to language.
- National Day on Writing
- Your Health and Wellness as Community Service
- Our Patterns: Artist Talk with Artist in Residence Natan Diacon-Furtado
- Ethics Essay Contest
- Traditional African Art: Understanding a Changing World
- Juke Joints and Jesus: The Subversiveness of African American Joy in Times of Struggle
- Domestic Violence Awareness through the Power of Spoken Word and Storytelling
- This is What America Looks Like: A Reading and Discussion of Identity Through Poetry
9:00-10:00 a.m.
Event Host: Chip Gladson, Professor, English College Coordinator, Writing in the Disciplines
| chip.gladson@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Shayla Atkins
Resources: #MCWritingtheDisciplines #WhyIWrite
Celebrate the National Day on Writing with the Montgomery College community! Participants will share reflections on how writing helped them to navigate their experiences of a most uncommon year.
10:00-11:00 a.m.
Event Host: Denise Hill
Co-Host: Angela Lanier
From stories of people carrying disabled colleagues down flights of stairs during the 9-11 attacks to those of strangers protecting a neighborhood kid from aggressive dogs, this presentation examines how our personal fitness and well-being affects our ability to impact and offer support to our family, community, and the world. Here, we challenge the notion that fitness and wellness activities are solely to benefit the individual in their quest for great health or aesthetics and encourages the audience to also view them as part of their preparedness to serve other.
11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Event Host: Amanda Miller, Associate Professor | amanda.miller@montgomerycollege.edu
Trained as a cultural anthropologist and public interest designer, Natan Diacon-Furtado is drawn to projects that remain a part of his life long after bringing him into new experiences and communities. As a globally southern person of color, growing up between the modernist city of Brasília and the living traditions of East Tennessee, Natan was raised with an expansive sense of race, identity, culture and community, and the continuous self-translation work required to exist within and between these worlds. Emerging from this site of translation, his work engages in forms of visual code-switching to collaboratively make space through pattern. Uniting communities of all sizes in the creation and re-creation of shared cultures, this work taps into a globally southern heritage of pattern making as a language, art and craft.
The artist’s recent experiments and evolutions in this collaborative practice include
asynchronously creating a digital quilt of community patterns with 100+ students at
Ball State University (featured in the upcoming issue of the international design
magazine CLOG), and beta-testing a self-specific sculptural system with the support
of the Joan Mitchell Foundation.
Natan Diacon-Furtado’s three-week AiR project, Our Patterns, Montgomery College, unites students from six 2D Design Studio classes to create a virtual community
"quilt" of patterns, a project that fosters discovery and understanding of each student's
patterns of exploration, working, creativity, family tradition, and more.
Please follow @MCArt_Germantown @MCArt_Rockville and #MCArtRemote on Instagram for information on how to view Our Patterns, Montgomery College in October and beyond!
Sponsored by the Arts Institute
Photo credit (Natan in a gallery): Jose Cotto
11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Event Host: Daniel G. Jenkins, Professor | daniel.jenkins2@montgomerycollege.edu
Recommended Media: Case #9 "Giving in to the DarkSide
Students will share essays using a theory of normative ethics that answer the following question: under what circumstances, if any, should an organization pay to end a ransomware attack, and why? Applied ethics will be evaluated by faculty, and a winner will be announced during the events.
11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Event Host: Kenneth Jassie, Professor | ken.jassie@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Sara Ducey
Early encounters with Europeans were often recorded in African art. Look closely, top, lower-left mask photo at the top. Do you see faces? These represent Portuguese explorers with beards and hats (flanked by mudfish) who visited the Benin Kingdom along the west coast of Africa in the late 1400s. These explorers began to collect ivory which they referred to as “white gold.”
Please join us in exploring some traditional African art and how it evolved over time, in addition, to the complicated Western response to African art.
Other art works from the Benin Kingdom include intricately designed brass plaques (the so-called Benin Bronzes), many of which are on view in the British Museum in London (see above). Not only do we see them out of their original context; they came from the walls in and around the royal palace; but they were taken from Nigeria during the infamous British Punitive Expedition of 1897. We will discuss how to understand African Art on its own terms as well as efforts to restore stolen artifacts to their rightful owners.
12:30-1:45 p.m.
Event Host: Cinder Cooper Barnes, Professor of English and Director of the Global Humanities Institute | cinder.cooper@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Greg Wahl
This presentation will showcase an American Council of Learned Societies' project that took the presenter on a journey along the Gullah Geechee Corridor of South Carolina to investigate two seemingly contradictory incarnations of African American joy and how they evolved through slavery, reconstruction, the Jim Crow Era, the Civil Rights movement, and today.
2:30-3:30 p.m.
Event Host: Angela Dawson, Program Coordinator | angela.dawson@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Jennifer Baugh
This even will use spoken word, song, storytelling, or any performance art to bring awareness of the prevalence of domestic violence and its impact on our community. Various artists will be highlighted as they perform their art. This is an opportunity for reflection and learning as the session uses voice and talents to create awareness and work toward eliminating domestic violence are encouraged to attend and participate. This event creates a call to action. This workshop will not be recorded.
5:30-7:00 p.m.
Event Host: Jona Colson, Associate Professor of English | jona.colson@montgomerycollege.edu
Recommended Media: Washington Writers’ Publishing Housenew window
Six poets from the new anthology, This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from DC, Maryland, and Virginia, will share their work from the book, and how it relates to identity and the public and private self.
- Using Personal Narrative in Education as a Cognitive and Social Justice Strategy
- Mindful Stress Relief
- Peace and Prosperity for People and the Planet: UN Sustainable Development Goals
- Burka, Bans, and Music: Conducting Fieldwork as a Woman in Afghanistan
- Measure of a "Man:" What Makes Someone or Something Human?
- One Art: Literature and Loss in a Time of Pandemic
- Sligo Journal Poetry Reading and Student Interpretation
- African-American Storytelling Traditions
9:00-10:00 a.m.
Event Host: Serena Gould, Adjunct Professor ELAP | serena.gould@montgomerycollege.edu
Personal narrative has developed into an important tool in educational practices for clarification, memory, language acquisition, mediation, problem solving and working through trauma as we emerge into a post-Covid learning environment. Serena Gould, adjunct professor ELAP, plans to demonstrate its implementation and practice in the classroom as a cognitive strategy for communicative interaction to build student confidence, widen their horizons and enable practices of social justice.
10:30-11:30 a.m.
Event Host: Stephanie Will, MC Mental Health Services Program Manager | stephanie.will@montgomerycollege.edu
This workshop will present the impact of stress on a person’s mental and physical health. Participants will engage in an experiential component to try a mindfulness activity to help relieve stress.
11:00 a.m. till Noon
Event Host: Patricia Ruppert, Professor Global Humanities, Women's Studies, Philosophy | patricia.ruppert@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Bala Nikku, Professor of International Social Work at Thompson Rivers University in
British Columbia, Canada
In 2015, EVERY member nation of the UN signed on to 17 goals for making the globe safer, greener, and more just by 2030. Come hear how Montgomery College students are joining the effort with students in Arizona and British Columbia to co-create a better world.
Noon till 1:30 p.m.
Event Host: Cheryl Tobler, Professor of Music, Montgomery Scholars Program | cheryl.tobler@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Joan Naake
Renowned ethnomusicologist Dr. Razia Sultanova of Cambridge University and Charles University, Prague, discusses her experiences conducting fieldwork on women musicians in northern Afghanistan. She will accompany her lecture with a live performance of the music, playing the Uzbek Dutar.
Noon till 1:30 p.m.
Event Host: Kelly Rudin, Professor of World History | kelly.rudin@montgomerycollege.edu
The event centers on the Star Trek Next: The Generation episode where the android, Data's status as an object or a human is evaluated. This episode examines not only what it means to be human, but how, when the word "human" is placed in a box, that "disposable entities" can be created, such as how chattel slavery was developed. This ideas of disposability and invisibility apply to many groups and many in these groups have resisted. We will watch the episode and then discuss these concepts.
1:00-2:00 p.m.
Event Host: Albert Kapikian, Nonfiction editor, Potomac Review | albert.kapikian@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Huong Nguyen
Recommended Media: Potomac Reviewnew window
Potomac Review interns will present readings, discussions, and writing activities around the theme of loss during a pandemic. The title of the presentation, "One Art: Literature and Loss in a Time of Pandemic", takes its inspiration from Elizabeth Bishop’s One Art (poetry), Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Love in the Time of Cholera (Fiction), and Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year (Creative Nonfiction). During a time of great suffering, literature can be a means of connection and expression of our shared grief, as well as a means by which we can process, cope, and persevere in the wake of tragic events. Particularly when we are in isolation, more separate than ever, we rely upon the artist to articulate our despair, connect us through a common catharsis, and provide the platform for transformation.
1:00-2:30 p.m.
Event Host: Greg Wahl, Professor of English TPSS and Contributing Editor, Sligo Journal | gregory.wahl@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Michael LeBlanc, Professor of English TPSS and Editor-in-Chief, Sligo Journal; David Lott, Professor of ELAP, TPSS and Poetry Editor, Sligo Journal
Recommended Media: Sligo Journalnew window
Poets published in Montgomery College’s journal of literature and the arts, The Sligo Journal, including MC faculty and/or student poets, will read and discuss their poems. MC ENGL 101 and 101+011 students who are studying the poems will ask questions of the poets and present their interpretations of the poems.
3:00-4:00 p.m.
Event Host: Leah Sneider, Professor of English | leah.sneider@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Angela Lanier
Learn about African-American storytelling traditions and discuss how stories help to maintain culture and identity and resist oppression.
- Mind Over Matter? What Can We Learn from Post-Traumatic Wisdom?
- Globalization: What is it? Why Does it Matter? Learn about Sweatshops, Pandemics, and more
- Political Ideologies: What Makes an Anarchist? What Makes a Feminist? What is an Anarcha-Feminist?
- Office of Equity and Inclusion’s 2021 Fall Dialogue “Critical Race Theory: Reframing the Narrative
- The Impact of Social Media on Society
9:30-10:30 a.m.
Event Host: Elizabeth Benton, Interim Dean of English and Reading | elizabeth.benton@montgomerycollege.edu
Recommended Media: https://www.bdperry.com/new window
During this session, participants will be introduced to a recently published text What Happened to You? by Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey. Participants will hear stories from the text and be provided the chance to share their experiences. The session information and discussions will inform reflections on our lived experiences and strategies for walking alongside our students and colleagues.
11:00 a.m.-12:15 p.m.
Event Host: Deb Taylor, Professor | deborah.taylor@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Greg Wahl, Professor
Student-led presentation from GHUM 101 students. The students will present - using a mix of methods including game show, discussion, and/or PowerPoints - knowledge/information from our texts.
12:30-2:00 p.m.
Event Host: Deb Taylor, Professor | deborah.taylor@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Karl Smith
This will be a student-led presentation. Professor Karl Smith's Political Ideologies class will present with Professor Deborah Taylor's Introduction to Women's Studies class on oppression, domination, and rebellion.
1:30-5:00 p.m.
Register for zoom participation and limited in-person seating at the Takoma Park/Silver Spring Campus:
Contact: Jeanette Rojas, Equity and Inclusion Program Manager | jeanette.rojas@montgomerycollege.edu
Recommended Media: Critical Race Theory Forum - Reframing the Narrative (PDF, )
Re-frame the narrative! Join us for a deep dive into Critical Race Theory (CRT). Find out what CRT is, and what it is not. Help us foster stronger relationships between MC, our partners at The Universities at Shady Grove and Montgomery County. Learn about available services and supports; consider innovative ways that CRT can being integrated into your courses, programs, and community. Come open to learning and take away an action list!
This special afternoon is co-hosted by MC’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, the Office of County Executive-Montgomery County, and The Universities at Shady Grove (USG).
6:30-7:30 p.m.
Event Host: Gloria Barron, Instructional Designer and Part-time Computer Science Faculty | gloria.barron@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Dr. Paul D. Miller, Professional Development Director | paul.miller@montgomerycollege.edu
It is undeniable that social media plays an important role in impacting our culture, our economy and our overall view of the world. In today's ever-connected world, the use of social media in our personal and professional lives has become blurred. Attend this workshop and learn about the growing advantages and concerns that social media offers as we return to a new normal from a lengthy isolation period from the pandemic.
- First Time in a Long Time: Poetry and Reflection
- Digital Story Work: Developing Human Connection and Resonance
- Healing Circle: Exploring Our Grief and Paths to Healing
- Code Red for a Green Future: The History and Politics of Climate Action and Conservation
- Beading Workshop with Multidisciplinary Indigenous Visual Artist Mona Cliff
10:00-11:00 a.m.
Presenter: Marianne Szlyk, Professor | marianne.szlyk@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Ethan Goffman
As we return to campus after time away, participants will be asked to reflect on the first time they returned to a place they had once frequented. They will also read "mentor" poems and be guided through exercises that will enable them to provide sensory detail about their experience.
Recommended/Media:
- Laura Tohe, "Returningnew window"
- Oscar Gonzales, "We All Return to the Place Where We Were Bornnew window"
- Mary Oliver, "The Place I Want to Get Back Tonew window"
10:00-11:30 a.m.
Event Host: Jamie Gillan, Digital Storytelling Internship co-coordinator, Associate Professor
of English | jamie.gillan@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Megan Howard
This event will showcase how digital story work enables the storytellers to connect deeply and create resonance with audiences after first connecting their own identities. First, stories will be shared, followed by a "how-to" workshop with digital storytelling internship and leaders.
12:30-2:00 p.m.
Event Host: Jennifer Baugh | jennifer.baugh@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host: Andrew Scheppler
Speaker/Facilitator: Mina Devadas
As the COVID-19 global pandemic rages on, reckoning with our own mortality has become inescapable. The scale of loss is unprecedented in our lifetimes. The types of losses fall along a sprawling spectrum: loss of people we love, loss of connection with family and community, loss of feeling safe, loss of income and stability.
One of the hardest aspects of loss and grieving in the pandemic age is having to process our experiences and feeling in solitude, via Zoom, and/or distanced from others.
Led by Mina Devadas, an end of life doula and hospice volunteer, this 90-minute workshop is intended to provide a safe space for participants to connect with community to explore loss, grief, and healing through journaling exercises and breakout groups.
Note: This event is not a grief support or therapy group but intended to encourage individual exploration and community dialogue about death, loss, grief, and healing.
1:00-2:30 p.m.
Event Host: Joseph Stumpf, History and Political Science Department | joseph.stumpf@montgomerycollege.edu
Co-Host:
Sunil Dasgupta, Ph.D., Political Science Program Director for UMBC at Shady Grove
Andrew Nolan, Ph.D., History Program Director for UMBC at Shady Grove
Climate change has taken on new prominence in politics around the world, raising some crucial questions, including: How did we get here? And what can we do next? Join representatives of the UMBC History and Political Science programs at the Universities at Shady Grove as they explore some of the events and people driving the rise of ecological thinking, conservation policy, and climate activism in the modern United States. Presenters: Sunil Dasgupta, Ph.D., Political Science Program Director for UMBC at Shady Grove Andrew Nolan, Ph.D., History Program Director for UMBC at Shady Grove.
6:00-8:00 p.m.
Event Host: Dr. Naliyah Kaya, Associate Professor of Sociology (Artist, Beader, Poet) | Naliyah.Kaya@montgomerycollege.edu
Recommended Media: Mona Cliffnew window
*Student Life, who sponsored the beading kits, also made a shortened link if it's
helpful: https://bit.ly/MCBEADS
Multidisciplinary Indigenous visual artist Mona Cliff will facilitate a beading workshop over Zoom while also teaching about Indigenous practices and cultural elements of beading. This event will lead us into Native American Heritage Month in November while reminding us that we should not just focus on Native American / Indigenous history, culture, and experiences one month out of the year.
Register by October 17 to receive a free bead supply kit by US Mail! For those of you who miss the deadline, you may purchase your own materials, which are listed on the zoom registration form.
The humanities help us understand ourselves and others through language, history,
and culture. They have the capacity to foster social justice and equality and they
reveal how people throughout time have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual
sense of the world. This, our 9th Annual Humanities Days at Montgomery College, focuses
on The Human in Humanities: Understanding Ourselves and Others. Please join us for presentations, dialogues, workshops and panels. Consider questions
like, “What makes us human?” Discover how art, music, literature and poetry can be
transformative acts! Delve into history, environmental justice, equity and inclusion,
global ethics and communication. Learn about pandemic-informed pedagogy, hear stories
of resilience and rebuilding, and add to your toolkit for health and well-being. We
are here, with and, for you. As humans.
--2021 Humanities Days Committee
Cinder Cooper Barnes, Global Humanities Institute director and Professor of English, Takoma Park/Silver
Spring
Jennifer Baugh, Creative Project Manager, Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
Sara Bachman Ducey, Collegewide Chair for Integrative Studies and Paul Peck Humanities Institute director
Shelley Jones, Professor of Spanish, World Languages, Takoma Park/Silver Spring
Kyoko Enomoto, Web Services
Angela Lanier, Instructional Designer, ELITE
Om Rusten, Administrative Aide II, Campus Commons, Rockville
Andrew Scheppler, Technology Research & Development Coordinator
Troy Shaw, Executive Associate, Campus Commons, Rockville
Here are the facts about this week’s Humanities Days virtual presentations, dialogues, workshops, and panels and privacy as it relates to Zoom and your participation:
- Please note that all Humanities Days events will be recorded (with the exception of the workshop titled Domestic Violence Awareness through the Power of Spoken Word and Storytelling). By participating in this event, you automatically consent to such recording. If you do not consent to being recorded, you may join, but do not connect your microphone or enter text into the attendee chat. Please discuss any concerns with the host.
- All the material appearing in this conference is the property of the original author(s) and is protected by copyright under U.S. copyright laws. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, display, perform, modify, create derivative works, transmit, or in any way exploit any such content, nor may you distribute any part of this content without the approval of the original author(s). Violators of this policy may face disciplinary action and/or legal action.
- We obtain data when you use Zoom in order to deliver our college services and provide a better experience to you. The categories of data we obtain when you use Zoom include data you provide to us as well as data that our system collects from you. We do not sell your personal data.
- During use of Zoom. When you use Zoom, some data will be disclosed to other participants
and to meeting or webinar hosts. For instance, when you attend a meeting, your name
might appear in the attendee list. If you turn on your video camera, your image will
be shown. If you send a chat or share content, that can be viewed by others in the
chat or the meeting.
For more information on Zoom privacy: https://zoom.us/privacynew window.