Re:Humanities, Day 1: Marisa Parham Keynote + Poster Session

Today, Re:Humanities 2016: Bleeding Edge to Cutting Edge started. I am part of the Re:Hum Working Group, comprised of students from Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore Colleges, and we have assembled a fantastic series of presentations by undergraduates engaging with contemporary currents in digital humanities and scholars who both apply digital methodologies in traditional humanities research while posing critical questions about those technologies.

Ce6IpOhUsAA82tj

Continue reading

East Meets West – West Meets East: North Indian Classical Music Concert

This past weekend was Haverford’s Weekend of Musical Celebration honoring the Class of 1965, funded by the Kessinger Family Foundation. This year’s theme was East Meets West – West Meets East, a blend of Asian and Western style music. There was a concert on Saturday night and a concert on Sunday afternoon, but I only attended the Saturday night concert featuring North Indian Classical Music by Kala Ramnath (violin), Ken Zuckerman (sarod), and Abhijit Banerjee (tabla).unnamed

Continue reading

The Wall in Our Heads Exhibit

Not too long ago, I visited the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at Haverford for their The Past is a Foreign Country exhibit. I was back today for their latest exhibit The Wall in Our Heads. The exhibition, curated by Haverford Postdoctoral Writing Fellow Paul Farber, features artworks by American artists reflecting on social political boundaries during the Cold War in Berlin and throughout American history leading up to today’s issues. 2015 also marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany.unnamed

Continue reading

Re:Humanities 2016 Call For Papers!

It’s also that time of year again… the Re:Humanities 2016 Call for Papers! I am part of the working group, comprised of students from the Tri-Colleges (Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Swarthmore), who puts together an annual 2-day digital humanities conference of undergraduate presentations and keynotes by prominent digital humanities researchers. We are now in the process of sending out the CFP (Call for Papers) and waiting for submissions. ReHum-14-BlackConference: March 31-April 1, 2016 at Bryn Mawr College
Submission Deadline: January 1, 2016 (Midnight GMT)
rehumanities@gmail.com
#rehum16

Continue reading

Asian / American Reading Group, Week 1: Perspectives of the Outsider

I recently joined a student-led Asian / American Reading Group at Haverford sponsored by the Hurford Center. Although there are occasional topic classes, the Tri-Co does not have a formal Asian American Studies Department. This leaves it up to the students to form their own seminars like this one. Affinity groups like the Bryn Mawr Asian American Students Association (A/ASA) have also had to step up to educate and promote cultural, social, and political awareness of Asian and Asian American perspectives.

PC: Taryn Marshall | Facebook

PC: Taryn Marshall | Facebook

What does it mean to be Asian American? How do we distinguish between these various identities? Where do we draw the line between fiction and reality?

Continue reading

On Freelance Writing: A Discussion with Rachel Monroe

On Monday, writer Rachel Monroe came to Haverford to talk to students about being a freelance writer, volunteer firefighter, and occasional radio host based in Marfa, TX. She writes about things like crime, books, border issues, and utopian experiments for the New York Times, New York, Oxford American, Texas Monthly, Guardian, The Believer, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, and host of other places.

10390484_1037047986315370_219942605921384016_n

Continue reading

A Talk with Pete Stern, Holocaust Survivor

On Wednesday, my Topics in 20th Century European History: National Proj, Socialist Dream class, along with the Topics In German Cultural Studies: Remembered Violence class, had the opportunity to talk to Holocaust survivor Pete Stern. My history class had just wrapped up World War I, and we are currently learning about the interwar period and the rise of Nazism.

Screen Shot 2015-10-28 at 4.49.00 PM

I designed this GERMB223 poster

Mr. Stern was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1936. His brother Samuel, born in 1939, was named Samuel because of the Nuremberg Laws, which required all Jewish children to be named after the Bible’s 1st Testament. His father was a well known auto mechanic, a detail which would greatly affect the family’s story. When his father’s auto mechanic place went out of business, he shifted to teaching auto mechanics to the Jewish school.

Continue reading