Director's Letter of the Month:
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May 2024 Nourish. I’ve been thinking of this word ever since one of our speakers, Maia Kobabe (Spivak pronouns), told the audience during eir visit on Thursday, April 18 that e felt nourished by the CHA staff. I believe Maia meant this in terms of food/hydration (we always worry about our guests who come from sea level and have Gatorade and water on hand for visiting speakers) and emotionally—we wanted Maia and our other non-binary faculty artist Gaby Calvocoressi (they/she) to feel as welcomed, valued, and comfortable as possible in all the spaces we brought them both into. Nourish is what we aim for at the Center for Humanities & the Arts in terms of art, scholarship, community, and conversation. Nourish is what I feel when I consume arts and humanities. I feel honored and privileged to have been part of intensely intellectual conversations during our monthly faculty fellow meetings and to revel in the works produced by faculty artists and schoalrs at our faculty celebration. Nourish is what I feel every time I listen to rehearsals at Macky Auditorium—particularly when I get to sit on the 2nd floor on a wooden bench and close my eyes and listen to an orchestra, a singer, or a band play with passion and conviction. This is the last CHA newsletter of the 2023-24 academic year. Our theme of Liberty, Freedom, Democracy: the Fight for Ideas yielded vibrant conversations, both on and off campus. Those conversations weren’t always easy—and there is much that remains uncertain on and off campus, within and without Colorado, and around the world. But I hope that people felt nourished by the communities we tried to create and the opportunities to support humanities and arts research. Most of all I hope that as the semester winds down, you find a work of art or piece of humanities research that nourishes your soul. In honor of my dearly departed friend, Randall Kenan (who was a brilliant writer) let me share a flash mob that both of us enjoyed very much—watching this video never ceases to nourish my soul and make me feel just a little bit of joy. Sincerely, P.S. - I wrote the above letter before I left to go to a conference in Seattle and present a workshop & talk at Notre Dame. I’ve been watching YouTube videos early this morning of police on multiple college campuses in Indiana, North Carolina, Texas, California, and New York, brutalize students and faculty for protesting the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Reading these stories is the opposite of nourishing—it depletes my spirit. Our job as faculty is to nourish and nuture our students’ intellectual curiosities and passions, whether we agree with all aspects of what and how they go about these pursuits. Our job as a campus community is not to call police on one another – there are other forms of conflict resolution, such as transformative justice programs or simply having college leaders talk with students. I have read stories from my faculty colleagues at universities nation-wide and their reporting on-the-ground with students in encampments is so vastly different from what is being covered by mainstream media. These encampments are a multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-gender space craving peace in Gaza and Israel. There are so many things I want to say and don’t have the energy to express my thoughts so let me leave you with the words of UCLA history professor Dr. Robin Kelly, for what he says is “brazen cruelty toward students and faculty |