Are 'RELIGIOUS FAITH' & 'HUMANITIES' separate or overlapping terms?

After reading McClay’s article, I do agree that the functional role of the Humanities is actually to save us from losing our humanity, but find it crucial and un-ignorable that religious beliefs have the exact same capacity and purpose.

It was important that McClay initially addressed the issue of the humanities as being viewed as ‘fluffy’ ‘pretty ideas’. This oversimplified view of frilly uselessness is quite widespread. As a science major, I had little grasp on the meaning of the ‘Humanities.’ I admittedly wondered; What meaningful and useful place in this world- besides in the university setting- could a History or English major possibly fall into, other than “devoted secondary-school teachers” (38)? I felt that McClay’s explanation did a great job of dispelling the idea that the humanities are ‘intellectual finger-painting’ (36).

McClay’s article ended up focusing a lot of urgency on our world moving “closer to the technologies of a posthuman future” (36). While reading this article, I identified with the concern over the distinction between human and animal in the progression of scientific knowledge. However, McClay seemed to think concern with that distinction is already old news and what the humanities will be most concerned with is science taking us to a place where we will eventually not even be truly human.

The article left me agreeing that the humanities is the area of knowledge that will need to rise up and assert its stand to protect human beings from the ravaging amoral expansion of scientific technology and knowledge. It left me with a newfound acceptance of the necessity of the humanities, for surely I don’t want science to steal away what makes us human.

But it also left me largely confused with what the role of religion is in all of this. Do religious beliefs fall into the term ‘humanities’? I find that in several instances of the article, sincere religious faith would perfectly do everything that McClay said was the purpose and role of the humanities.

McClay does address religion. He points out that foundations of the humanities took much shape during the times of the Early Church. He mentions the developing humanities having characteristics that were both secular and religious.

McClay mentions Matthew Arnold, who showed that the humanities were viewed as a “substitute for religion in the formation, education, and refinement of humanity’s sentiments and moral sensibilities” (40). I certainly agree that both religion and the humanities are concerned with “the general harmonious expansion of those gifts of thought and feeling which make the peculiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of human nature” (40).

Therefore, I do not understand the usefulness of the humanities to a person who faithfully and wholeheartedly finds the meaning of human life in non-secular, out-of-this-world places.

The Little Mermaid

I found myself wondering why Andersen had to always use color for descriptions. It’s not even as though he branched off to use more specific and fanciful color names, like magenta, cerulean, ivory, chartreuse, amber, or aquamarine. Yet somehow his descriptions paint just as powerful and fanciful images in the mind. In certain parts of the story, Andersen’s focus turns away from storytelling to painting a picture and capturing a majestic image. Using color so frequently may be part of the reason that this story has been so successful across nations and languages. Colors- especially those of the visible spectrum along with black and white- provide a means of describing that transcends culture and is universally useful.

“Just because the little mermaid couldn’t go up there, she longed for all this the most” (37). This shows that her longings were often rooted in wanting what she could not at that time have. The human world seemed “far bigger than hers” (44). This also shows her dissatisfaction with life in the sea and her longing for what was beyond her apparently constraining and uninteresting world under the sea. Her plot in the garden shows that the little mermaid longs for life higher than the sea and she seems to embody this longing in the symbol of the sun and the love and companionship of a handsome male.

Once the little mermaid’s grandmother told her about the immortal soul of humans, winning an immortal soul was something she longed for deeply. She was not satisfied with having the loveliest voice or living 300 years in the sea. She gave up her voice and agreed to live in excruciating pain in order to have the chance to win what she so desperately longed for. Her longing and love was too great to kill the prince, plus this alternative still would not bring immortal life.

She turned to foam, but she became one of the “daughters of the air” who can create an immortal soul for themselves by striving to do good deeds for three hundred years. The ending is actually not a sad one, but a hopeful one, because an immortal soul is really what the mermaid longed for, and now she has a chance to earn one. The end also seems to tag on a moral aspect to the story that would encourage a young reader to be a ‘good child’ not a ‘naughty and nasty child.’

Dale Chihuly's "Wrapped in Tradition" at the WSU Museum of Art

This collection is historical in that the technique was important for trade in the Northwest. American blanket manufacturers brought change and new materials by adapting American Indian designs into trade blankets. These were eagerly bought by the American Indian market. The manufacturers were first inspired by American Indians, and the Natives that purchased them were inspired by the blankets to create new objects. The artwork created a cycle of inspiration and innovation.

Initially, I was trying to find generalized themes or elements that I could apply to the whole collection. However, the diversity and uniqueness of the collection made it difficult to try to find a way to briefly encompass the entirety of the exhibit.

The first thing I noticed about the blankets was intricate geometrical patterns. Several initially reminded my of the pattern multicolor blocks used in elementary school. There were lots of triangles, trapezoids, parallelograms in combination with diverse color schemes. Even though there were many individual shapes and colors, the patterns that were created had a characteristic of flowing continuity.

Several times the blankets brought to mind images of nature and the environment. I noticed patterns that looked like eyes peering out at me. I also saw blue used in ways that looked like bodies of water. Other patterns evoked images of lightning bolts, flowy waves, sharp grass blades, triangular trees, and manmade structures such as arrows, totem poles, huts, or pyramids. Series of crescents, semicircles, and circles brought to mind the phases of the moon.

I was very intrigued by the way the patterns and colors of the blankets were used functionally to do a variety of things. I saw browns and neutrals used to create layers. I saw a green, yellow, red and black pattern of waves and spikes create lots of motion and energy. Very sharp small serrated lines or similar zigzag patterns created an almost fuzzy, unfocused appearance. Some lines in patterns appeared to resonate, almost like there was sound involved in the pattern. One of my favorite pieces had thin stripes of very bright and neon colors that were interrupted by black stripes. This pattern of colors was very visually stimulating. I also enjoyed the blankets that were very simplistic, such as having one or a few large bold stripes on a brightly colored blanket as opposed to an intricate pattern throughout an entire blanket. What made these unique patterns and colors even more interesting is the combination of very different elements alternating in one blanket, such as brown forest-like tree shapes on top of multicolor stripes.

Connection between song and soul: Analysis of "The Old Guitarist"

The monochromatically blue color scheme of The Old Guitarist is quite dreary and solemn. The attention to detail in color and lines in the face and neck of the blind guitarist draws our eyes to look upon his grief-stricken state and see him as emotionally and physically worn down.

The forms we see in the image include a guitar held upright by an emaciated white-haired old man. His features are realistic in appearance but the conformation of his body is slightly distorted. He sits cross-legged, but his torso is slightly reclined and his white shoulder is exposed by his torn garment and protrudes far up as his head hangs in a near right angle to his spine. The shadowy depth of the guitarist’s hand on the neck of the guitar allows us to see the expressive movement of the bony musical fingers.

The painting comes from Picasso’s Blue Period, which began after a close friend committed suicide in Paris. This period was also influenced by the desolation, downtrodden misery and poverty he saw working on the outskirts of Paris. Young Picasso himself was also impoverished during 1902.

Picasso certainly expresses the deep sorrow of such conditions and of the tragedy of losing a close friend to suicide. The haggard guitarist sits in destitution, but the symbolic hope and escape of the comparably bright brown guitar shows an outlet of grief, a distraction from reality, a means for expressing the painful depths of one’s soul into the heartfelt strum of a guitar. The guitarist himself embodies hopelessness and despair; he can do nothing but to turn to the guitar.

Picasso caught my attention by evoking such a sense of sorrow and despair with The Old Guitarist. I certainly feel that sorrowful feelings and the image of a depressed state are of a universal nature. All people seek to find ways to make it through the hard times. I also feel that musical expression, of varying types, is a universally appreciated way to express feelings, to feed one’s soul, to vent. I relate very emotionally to the songs played at the memorial of a classmate who died in eighth grade, or to the songs I lived by during a confusing breakup, and although I use personal examples from adolescence to illustrate my point, I feel that the deep connection between song and soul is universally felt. Music seems to have the power and the sentiment to sustain, and this is what I see captured in The Old Guitarist.

Eirik's Saga

This saga reads very differently from the other class materials. We don’t learn of the personality or the actual lives of these people; we are just trailed along this brutal string of events that Eirik has laid throughout the Nordic. However, some similarities to previous class readings do exist. Einar’s speech to Orm about seeking Gudrid’s hand in marriage was very reminiscent of Mr. Collin’s proposal to Lizzy in Pride and Prejudice.

I felt that the literary style of the saga was not always uniform. I enjoy the style of Chapter 11 “The Skrælings attack” much more than Chapter 2 “Eirik explores Greenland.”

Many events happen in Chapter 2 but they are not at all descriptive. The narration is a quick, brief account of what events take place and in what order. The three sentences in the second paragraph of Chapter 2 capture the actions of towns warring with one another, people retaliating against one another for actions that started with Eirik’s slaves starting a landslide. The account does not go into detail about the killings, how they were done, the suffering of the victims, or the strategy of those killing. It just says they killed.

Upon reading through Chapter 2, I thought that such lack of detail and description was probably practical and necessary for an orally sustained story. I assumed that the writing was like this such that it could be passed through oral tradition for long periods of time. However, reading on, I found that this explanation was probably not accurate since detailed descriptions were devoted to other happenings. Chapter 11 captures this in its detailed account of the attack of Karlsefni’s men by the Skrælings, down to the color of the sphere that flew at them, the waving of the sticks in the boats, the vivid imagery of pregnant Freydis’ savage scare, and lovely thought of the land looking like a “huge cake of dung.”

Detailed description is also given in the account of Throbjorg the prophetess. This account shows a moral dilemma which is probably a somewhat universal concept. Gudrid doesn’t want anything to do with sorcery because she is a Christian. Thorkel pressures her and she is forced to sing the Warlock-songs anyway. The experience of having to choose either to stand up against something one believes is morally wrong or conforming to what the public is doing is a common plight, typical of Christianity, but most likely applicable to the threat of compromise to any religious belief or even moral stance.

CHOOSE AN IMAGE: The Old Guitarist (Pablo Picaso, 1903)

Analyzing "Still I Rise"

Maya Angelou is a contemporary female black American writer. Much of her poetic expression is tied to this identity. Her poem “Still I Rise” was written in 1978. This poem creates a jazz-like rhythm, with its rhyme scheme, repetition of “I Rise”, words like ‘soulful’ and slang such as ‘‘Cause.’ The smooth, yet hard-hitting rhythm contributes to the air of confidence and invincibility that the words of the poem so clearly display.

Angelou’s imagery helps solidify her assertions. In the first stanza, one can imagine dirt being drove into the ground by a powerful boot, but Angelou shows that she is not packed down by this action, she is amongst the particles of dust that float up and away to freedom from this force. She also uses the “certainty of tides”, moons and suns, to convey the reliability and assuredness of her rising above the odds and the oppression.

Angelou metaphorically walks and laughs and dances as though she’s pumping oil in her living room, digging gold mines in her back yard, and dancing with diamonds between her legs. These images suggest confidence in who she is as a woman. A feministic approach to analysis may be taken in that she is challenging the gender roles that would normally expect her to be demure, gentle, timid, and not publicly express sexuality.

On a level of contingency, it is apparent that Angelou’s poem is referencing oppression towards African Americans in the United States, especially focused on both women and slavery. “Out of the huts of history’s shame”, “Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and hope of the slave.” The adversity is illustrated to us so that we know what grave depths she is rising out of. Surely meaning and emotion can be found in this poem within the context of the oppression of colored people in America.

The poem may fit appropriately into the context of black American history, but many elements give this poem relation to universal experiences that contribute to its widespread popularity. The concept of rising up against adversity in any situation- no matter the hardships, no matter the pain or struggle- is something that transcends time. Throughout history we have seen oppressed peoples carry on with strength throughout difficult times. Humans endure hardships to varying degrees, but all can relate to a time of uncertainty, fear, and struggling. The poem is inspiring and powerful in that it shows confidence in the worst of times. Angelou inspires this unabashed confidence and overcoming spirit into her audience.