The Stories We Tell

For thousands of years, human beings have kept their culture alive through storytelling. It’s how we connect with each other and understand the world around us. Stories are a record of life, keeping a memory alive long after their origin is gone. In the most basic sense, stories are our gateway to the past, allowing

Finding the Human in History: Thoughts a of a Sophomore Public Historian

Often when we look at history, we ignore opinions in favor for what we see as an objective fact. After all, the point of recording history has long been to construct a correct version of what happened in the past. In doing so however, we run in to a lot of problems. How can we

Judging at History Day as a Fellow

Not many middle and high schoolers have the opportunity to complete their own historical research and to present their work competitively, but several students from South Central Pennsylvania have the chance at National History Day. Messiah College hosted the event on March 3 with the theme of “Conflict and Compromise.” The students came with the

Finding Self-Expression Through Writing

When I was in the ninth grade, I wrote my first poem. Before then, I was not much of a writer. I had already completed a few (moderately terrible) short stories, and a couple Mother’s Day acrostics here and there, but this poem was different. It was my first piece that did not start with,

Empathy in Place: Marilyn Nelson’s Poetic Tradition in Harrisburg

Poet Marilyn Nelson came to Messiah’s campus on Tuesday, April 3.  Also on Tuesday, twelve middle schoolers came to Messiah’s campus and read their poetry to a poet.  On this day, thirteen poets gifted their audience with their empathy as they brought to life historical figures from the full spectrum of American history and geography. 

True Water, True Fire: A Reflection on Dr. King’s Vision of Truth

“Bull Connor next would say, “Turn the fire hoses on.” And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn’t know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn’t relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that

Home as Hospitality

The theme for this year’s Humanities Symposium is “Home,” and here at the Center for Public Humanities, we have been critically thinking about what home means, both for communities and individuals. Throughout that week (February 19-26), numerous people shared about this topic from many perspectives, and now Humanities Fellow Elisabeth Ivey will share her own reflection

The Paradox of Home

The theme for this year’s Humanities Symposium is “Home,” and here at the Center for Public Humanities, we have been critically thinking about what home means, both for communities and individuals. Throughout this week (February 19-26), numerous people shared about this topic from many perspectives, and now Humanities Fellow Brian Peters will share his own reflection

Bearing Witness through Poetry

January was a month of retrospection. Taking a course entitled, “Rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement,” I encountered the past everyday as I heard for the first time about the numerous people who stood resilient and nonviolent in their demand for freedom. Before that class, the Civil Rights Movement had been a vague time period

I Am From Somewhere In Between

This past Wednesday The Center for Public Humanities visited Harrisburg’s Marshall Elementary School to host an “I Am From” poetry workshop for 6th graders. The student poems were diverse, each of their young authors growing from different places in the world, and each expressing where they’re from with an honest, happy sense of clarity. After