Being Human – Hopes and Fears of the Humanities

Posted on November 23, 2016 by Ray Laurence

Ever wondered about the value of your degree in the Humanities? Here are some answers from a panel at the University of Kent.

The Being Human Festival brought together a panel of staff and PhD students to discuss what are the Hopes and Fears running through the Humanities in 2016. Seldom do staff and PhD students sit down together and reflect on how their own research and teaching fitting into the broader context of the Humanities.

Kent’s Dean of Humanities – Simon Kirchin – opened the evening with a classic ‘Good evening everyone’ and was met with a suitable early panto-response from the audience. He went on to explain the Being Human Festival and to get all warmed up showed the short film: What is Humanities Research at the University of Kent? made for the University’s 50^th Anniversary celebrations in 2015.

Then, he moved onto the panellists to consider their hopes and fears – a year on from when this film was made.

Natalia Sobrevilla Perea (Modern Languages) kicked things off explaining that in 2016 we were living in an important historical moment that increased the significance of the Humanities. That significance lay in the ability of research in the Humanities to explain and to remain ‘open’ at a time when thinking was closing down discussion. The Humanities in short – creates a space in which to explore the possibilities of openness. Her fear was that in the new scenarios emerging in 2016, the Humanities may retreat from the position that they had established in their engagement with the public.

Ulf Schmidt (History) set out how in his career in Germany, he had not had to think about or make the case for his subject – it was a given that the Humanities were valuable. He saw the film as defensive and focussed too much, perhaps, on the measurement of value via the REF (Research Excellence Framework), metrics and so on. He saw this as a fear in the Humanities that what we do is not valued. This is exacerbated at a time when a large segment of our society does not care about the distinction of truth from falsehood. iHHYet, he saw hope in the realisation that we need to realise how much the Humanities contribute to society and to explain this feature to a wider public.

Aylish Wood (Film) followed up on the defensiveness of the Humanities with regard to science and strongly advocated a means of interdisciplinary endeavour developing around the explanation of the role of technology in society. This explanation, in any discipline often depends on drawing on the narratives developed in the Humanities and the critical analysis that sets the present in relationship to the past and an imagined future. The interdisciplinary conversation around technology can also produce a fear that the Humanities only has a value within this interdisciplinary context; whereas it often reveals the hidden interdependence of Being Human in the present with that of those came before us – as seen from perspectives drawn from Architecture or Archaeology or History.

April McMahon (English Language and Linguistics) explained having only arrived on 1^st September (as Deputy Vice-Chancellor), it was brilliant to listen to the panel. Being an optimist, she pointed out that the Humanities need ‘to defend without being defensive’ – thus demonstrate its value to society. She suggested that the Humanities are missing a trick: those who govern, allocate funding, and so on do not spend their evening visiting laboratories, but might be at a concert, reading a book, taking a dance class or otherwise engaging with that thing that makes us human – culture. Effectively, humanities research is routinely consumed by these decision-makers. Engagement with the consumption of the Humanities needs to go further than, for example, a simple creation of a family tree to an understanding of how family members lived and experienced ‘being human’. Her fear was that the Humanities had not been as successful as Science in the explanation of its importance. Indeed, there is an urgency to ensure that we train the next generation of researchers to undertake public and community engagement from the word go – at the very start of their PhDs.

Two of the panellists had recently submitted their PhD theses and concluded the panel discussion. Lies Lanckman (Film) explained that Kent as the UK’s European University had a responsibility to keep the conversation open at a time when, she for the first time felt less welcome in a country, where she had been resident for 10 years. Openness, she argued, was essential at a time when two opposing sides in politics may have nothing in common and the University of Kent should take on a role as a force for good. Jeff Veitch (Classical and Archaeological Studies) contemplated the need for the Humanities to influence other disciplines, rather than being the consumer of methodologies from the sciences or the social sciences, but felt the Humanities did not have a narrative to do so. His great fear is a 1 directional interdisciplinarity underpinned by a higher level of funding outside of the Humanities. To this end, he saw a need for interdisciplinarity to be embedded into the practices of teaching. Something that members of the audience saw in the development of Digital Humanities within the University.

These views prompted much discussion that lies at the very core of the Being Human Festival – how can students in say French or Archaeology or Ancient History feel that they may belong to the Humanities? Clearly, their academic identities do not encapsulate the concept of the Humanities and this may engendered by the sense of belonging to a Department or a School or a focus on the title of their degree that they study for. The Humanities needed to explain how a degree subject fitted into the bigger picture of the study of humanity. A first step is to realise that a BA is all about the study of what it is to be human.

Take a smell walk into the past – anyone for Garum?

Posted on November 15, 2016 by Ray Laurence

Take a smell walk into the past – anyone for Garum?

Paula Lock will be leading a smell walk as part of the Being Human Festival of the Humanities. She has written this blog to introduce you to this topic. You can join Paula on Thursday 24 November – see this link. She is a PhD student at the University of Kent.

I’m doing a spot of time travel for the Being Human festival this year. Anyone who’s prepared to join me on a stroll around Canterbury will have the chance to be transported back to Roman times with the sights, sounds and smells of the past.

But time travel takes a bit more effort than just hopping into the nearest phone box. If my audience is going to get a whiff of ancient Roman life, then I first had to create those smells — an unexpected career diversion into scent creation beckoned.

In casting around for the smells that might best evoke a Roman way of life, there was an obvious place to start. And so it was with some trepidation that I began to delve into the arcane world of Roman ‘ketchup’ — the fish sauce known as garum. Described by one ancient author as a ‘costly extract of poisonous fish, that burns up the stomach with its salted putrefaction’ (Sen. Ep. 95.25), the thing to do — obviously — was to make some.

Garum was commonly made by allowing fish to ferment in the Mediterranean sun for several months. Fortunately, the Romans had alternative recipes that avoided protracted exposure of dead fish — disappointing for the local cats, but useful given the London climate in November.

Let’s get cooking!

The first step was to get some fish, and after a visit to the local fishmonger, I stood in my kitchen armed with a big bag of mackerel and sardines, along with a sea bass head and sundry innards. These all went into a large pot with loads of salt, oregano and water. I lit the gas and stood well back.

The first aroma that came from the bubbling mixture was the fragrant smell of oregano. Maybe, I thought, this wasn’t going to be as bad as I’d feared. However, the pleasant herby smell was rapidly overtaken, first by sardines and then finally by the full force of mackerel wafting through the house — a ‘perfume’ that lingered well into the following day.

I steeled myself, and stood over the steaming pot to take in the full force of the smell. Boiled fish, not too unpleasant, but there was a second, more acrid and powerful note — it’s difficult to explain, but the overall reaction was to say ‘Eurrgh’ and step swiftly back. Although I was prepared for some kind of unpleasant fishy scent, I was surprised to find that the smell made me feel quite queasy for the rest of the day.

As the sauce developed, it changed not only its smell, but also its appearance. At first, the boiling mass resembled a frothy cappuccino — albeit one with fish floating in it. After 20 minutes of cooking, the recipe says to break the fish up and the sound of the bubbling concoction was accompanied by the soft crack of fish bones as the spoon got to work. I was eventually left with a mixture that had turned to a sludgy brown colour — not particularly appetising.

The last stage of the production was to sieve the steaming mixture, which left me with a colander full of unidentifiable grey fishy mush and a VERY cloudy brown liquid. After much filtering this liquid turned a soft amber colour. I had my garum! Time for the moment of truth.

Having chilled the liquid down, I uncorked the bottle with some dread. But, the smell of the finished product was much subtler than the cooking smell, just a light earthy fishy aroma with a background hint of herbs. As for the taste, the first hit is of intense salt, then a general fishy flavour that is overtaken by the full force of boiled mackerel — but it is the salt that really lingers.

Although I don’t think I’ll be dousing my chips with garum anytime soon, this was a worthwhile experiment. I now have a much greater idea of both the taste and smell of the condiment that played such a big part in the everyday lives of the Romans. I also have a strong sense of why garum factories tended to be located on the outskirts of the city!

If you are in Canterbury on 24th November, come along to the Roman Museum at 2pm and join me for my sensory walk around the city — and experience garum first hand for yourself. I would love to know what you think.

For updates see Twitter @PaulaLock5

The full list of the Being Human events taking place in Canterbury can be found here.

The Humanities and the Public: A View from the University of Kent

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Ray Laurence

People have an insatiable curiosity and inventiveness to create and to analyse what it is to be human. The 2^nd National Festival of the Humanities (Being Human) brings the work of academics at the University of Kent out of the campus and within the reach of the public – in the very centre of Canterbury – at the Canterbury Roman Museum and the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge (from 18-24 November).

The festival makes the work of staff and PhD students from the Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies accessible to the public. Going to an event, will quite literally cause you to think about things differently or to share your ideas about things as varied as the smells of the past through to the technologies behind 3D printing. The focus of the events is upon artefacts from the Roman past, often found in Canterbury – a Roman town – in excavations by Canterbury Archaeological Trust. To understand and articulate our thoughts about the past, a poet – Dan Simpson – will hold workshops to find a voice for our thoughts that are stimulated by looking into the past.

There are also two walks led by PhD students from the University of Kent. 18 months ago, Julia Peters left Canterbury to walk the Via Francigena to Rome in just less than 80 days. She will be sharing her experiences by walking with the public on the first section of the route to Dover. Paula Lock will be exploring the smells of the past in a walk through Canterbury. Walking is a human action that is fundamental to the human experience.

There will also be a panel discussion of the Hopes and Fears of the Humanities that will be led by Dr Simon Kirchin – the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities following the showing of the film: What is Humanities Research at the University of Kent? Brexit, the distrust of experts, and a priority given to STEM subjects may cause those in the Humanities to fear for the future. Amongst the panellists will be Professor April McMahon, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) at Kent, and herself a researcher in Linguistics. She stresses the enduring value of the humanities in challenging times:

‘I can understand why there might be fear for the future, but I am determined that we should stress the benefits people derive from humanities research. Our lives are enhanced by our experiences in reading literature, finding out about the histories of people and places, going to the theatre, and discussing our pasts and futures, characters and beliefs. But it’s not just about those engaging experiences – we gain so much more if we make the effort not simply to consume, but to understand. Humanities research helps us to do exactly that, adding a richness to our experiences, whether we are in a context of hopes or fears’.

There is a place for the Humanities in the work-life balance of the 21^st century and the new dynamics of ageing, in which our life expectancy is increasing. We need to keep a focus on explaining what it is to be Human and what it is to exist within a culture, as well as within a balance sheet. Both are a set of values that are needed for our existence. The Humanities, in short, has a key role in understanding or making sense of what it is to be human and to explain the creativity of humanity. This need not be some abstract notion that is inaccessible to the public. Instead, through a focus on our shared cultural assets found in Canterbury’s Museums, we can bring about new forms of contact and collaboration between Universities and the public. Through the festival, the thoughts and discoveries of academics at Kent are communicated to the public, but this is done in anticipation of a response – for example the creation of new poetry to articulate in words the relevance of objects and actions from the past for the present.

For Professor Ray Laurence, the organiser of the Being Human 2016 events in Canterbury, the realisation of the importance of explaining human actions struck him, when he was a student and visited Pompeii:

‘The visit focussed on the art found in houses throughout the city, but that did not spark my curiosity. Instead, it was the sense of place that I felt standing in the streets of the city and a desire to find a way to analyse an ancient city’s built environment. ‘

‘Years later with two books published on Pompeii, I am still amazed by the human creativity that we can find in the houses and streets of Pompeii. These people from the past really did imagine the improbable and sought to make it possible, which can be seen so clearly in the houses of Pompeii. They were quite simply creating a new architecture that culminated in the magnificent beauty of structures such as the Pantheon in Rome that cannot fail to move the visitor today. That to me, is what it is to be human and why I believe that what I do as an academic has an intrinsic value that is only realised when it is shared with others, whether students or academics, schoolchildren and teachers, or the wider public .’

pantheon

Book to join the debate on Tuesday 22 November: https://alumni.kent.ac.uk/events/registration-hopesandfears-humanities

For full programme of Being Human 2016 in Canterbury: http://beinghumanfestival.org/?s=university+of+kent

Blogs associated with Being Human 2016 in Canterbury: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/clas/

Blog about ancient Rome: https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/lucius-romans/

All Roads lead to Poems – All Odes lead to Rome

Posted on October 21, 2016 by Ray Laurence

November brings Being Human 2016 (The National Festival of the Humanities) to Canterbury with a series of events organised by staff and students of the Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies. We’ve added a page to this blog with full details of the events. Further details on the Public Engagement with Research page from the University of Kent.

Classical and Archaeological Studies

News from the Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies at Kent

Category Archives: Being Human 2016

Being Human – Hopes and Fears of the Humanities

Take a smell walk into the past – anyone for Garum?

Take a smell walk into the past – anyone for Garum?

The Humanities and the Public: A View from the University of Kent

All Roads lead to Poems – All Odes lead to Rome