Skidmore College - Scope Magazine Fall 2018

SKIDMORE COLLEGE H U M A N I S T I C I N Q U I R Y 7 Christopher Massa VARIATIONS ARE THE THEME From myths and shape-shifting to new technologies, a campus forum delved deeply and widely into themes of change. More than 100 faculty, staff, students and community members gathered in March for Skidmore’s inaugural cross-disciplinary Humanistic Inquiry Symposium, co-founded by professors Michael Arnush (classics) and Barbara Black (English) and hosted at the Tang Museum. For this year’s “Metamorphosis” theme, keynote speaker Martin Puchner, a comparative-lit scholar and Wien Professor of Drama at Harvard, presented “Storytelling from the Tablet to the Internet,” based on his book The Written World, describing the transformational history of literature and the written word starting with the invention of writing. The symposium began with faculty presentations spanning humani- ties, sciences and arts, including Joel Brown and Brett Grigsby perform- ing classic folk songs, April Bernard reading poetry, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison exhibiting photographs, Will Bond acting an Ovid Meta- morphoses piece, and Debra Fernandez with student Emily Gunter ’19 presenting an original dance. Other presentations and discussions ad- dressed the future of humans and nonhumans, evolution and mutation, new media and technologies, hybridization, migrations and changing populations, growth and aging, stories of shape-shifting and other topics. Faculty researchers, from classics to neuroscience to anthropology, also shared their work. From a social-work perspective, for instance, Crystal Moore explored absences due to death, addiction, mental illness and abduction, positing the formula “pain times resistance equals suffering. The more we push away from the pain, the more we are likely to suffer.” Puchner was impressed by the forum’s “combination of art-making and scholarship” and by “the enthusiasm of the participants, the eager- ness with which they encounter each other’s work.” As the event coin- cided with the national March for Our Lives protesting gun violence in schools, Puchner also cited it as a timely example of metamorphosis: a generation of brave students navigating an ever-changing world. Martin Puchner shares his humanistic inquiry into the history of storytelling. Christopher Massa