This evening, thanks to a very generous invitation from Brian Crim, I had the great honor of delivering the Ida Wise East lecture at the University of Lynchburg. I had a catch in my throat several times as I looked out on an amazing audience of faculty, students, community members, and staff at an institution where the humanities has been gutted after several exhausting weeks where we’ve faced outrageous destruction of humanities infrastructure on a national level. But I told Brian that we were going to talk about why the humanities matters. So, using my own research, I talked about why we need to learn about and through difference and consider the stories and experiences and knowledge that have too often been ignored thanks to conceptual assumptions we hold about what is valued (ethics) and what constitutes knowledge (epistemology). And, among other things, I said this:
My book ultimately argues that, in not only willfully ignoring but also blatantly criminalizing the systems, values, and practices of African urban residents, colonial officials sought to construct and reinforce a way of understanding the world that privileged their own interests at the expense of others. That’s not a political argument – evidence shows them talking openly about this over and over again. And, in the process, the book suggests that in looking beyond these technocratic ways of seeing the world and thinking about the challenges of urban development from the perspective of African urban residents, we might be able to imagine more just and sustainable urban futures for African cities and for communities around the world.
In urging us to consider these questions, I am part of a conversation that encourages us to think from the margins. “From the margins” is not just about thinking of the Global south. We’re thinking from Africa. But it’s also thinking from places like Appalachia. Places that have not been seriously considered as part of the narrative of history. These people‘s experiences and expertise have too often been ignored or disregarded in favor of a sort of technocratic optimism, a very particular vision of what it means to be modern. Doing that requires that we make a highly intentional effort to identify and be willing to challenge or suspend our assumptions as we explore the available evidence.
Why does it matter that we study this? Because in learning about people who are different from us we not only challenge our assumptions about them but also about ourselves. That is often challenging but it doesn’t have to be threatening. It can be empowering and productive. The study of the history of Africa has helped me better understand the history of my own family and community in rural western Kentucky. In trying to understand how Africans experienced marginalization within economic and political systems that sought to use their land and labor for profit and how they continued to build rich and meaningful lives even in the face of those constraints, I gained a deeper understanding of the way that my community functioned and gained perspective on the grandparents and great grandparents and aunts and uncles and family friends who struggled as tenant farmers and moonshiners and coal miners, who couldn’t afford to go to school, who were disregarded as experts, who struggled to create opportunity for themselves and their families while still creating space for joy and creativity and community. And it helped me reflect on the question of who gets included and who gets excluded in the grand narratives of history and why. The answers to those questions are different than the ones debated in the news or on the campaign trail because those are political issues. The real questions are historical ones that are often highly contradictory and certainly complex and, as such, get at the heart of what it means to be human. That means they are often hard to answer; they defy simple explanations or answers and that doesn’t necessarily make for a convenient political soundbite or a reassuring story. It might sometimes make us uncomfortable or sad. But it does have the ability to transform the way that we think about each other and our futures. That is why the humanities matter. Because there are always multiple possible paths, multiple forms of knowledge, multiple systems of expertise, multiple future visions. Understanding how to decide between them requires us to do the hard and messy work of understanding and building community – work that we can really only do through the humanities and that really does require us to honestly grapple with the complexities of the past.
I’m so grateful to Brian for the invitation and for his generous ability to see the connection between all of my work. The work that I do in general education, in history pedagogy and methods, in place-based education and community-engaged research – that all matters because what we do matters and we need to figure out how to better communicate that to people within and outside of our campuses in ways that get them as excited and invested as the earnest student who came up to me afterwards and asked what they can do to change things or the community member/donor who asked what they can do to help push back against the attacks on the humanities.
