Inspired by the successful presentations by participants in the “Humanities Across Borders School,” delivered at ICAS 11 in the Panel Discussion “Reading Leiden,” Kenyon College Professor Wendy Singer (an ICAS delegate), decided to employ a similar methodology at Kenyon’s International Student Orientation.  What follows is a brief report on how we adapted a portion of the Humanities Across Borders School.

Kenyon College, an undergraduate liberal arts institution of about 1600 students” brings in about 63 international students per year, from all over the globe.  Most come from the global south and speak a variety of languages.  This year the Orientation Program took place between August 18 and August 23, 2019.  Organized by Marne Ausec, the Director of the Center for Global Engagement, orientation always incorporates informational sessions, as well as, activities to get students acclimatized to our community and introduced to our academic program.  Two particular aspects of the orientation resonate well with the “Humanities Across Borders Program,” namely field trips to local sites and a writing/presentation exercise that practices skills for the classroom. 

This year on Sunday night before “Orientation Week” properly began, I gave students an assignment “to engage in the week’s activities with thoughtfulness and reflection and write about it at the end.” Then on Friday we came together in seminars of 15/16 people, in which they brought an artifact of the week (about which they had written a one-page reflection) and presented the work to one another, moderated by four volunteer faculty members.

Like the presentations from the “Humanities Across Borders school,” students in these “seminars” insightfully described the week’s activities, such as a visit to a state park that included canoeing on a river, a visit to an artisan/craft space, where they learned to make a local craft, or sharing a photo from the week’s activities, depicting new relationships they had developed.  The presentations were powerful, informative, and often comparative of foods, arts, and environment back home. 

Because the students wrote a description in advance of the seminar, they also practiced both writing-in-English skills and the process of turning written work into an oral presentation.  The bonding within the group was evident as they applauded and supported one another.  Part of the conversation was about how they would then use these experiences throughout the year and take them back to their home countries.   This set the stage for seeing study abroad as an opportunity to analyze another—in this case American--culture. It also proved an ideal Humanities-based exercise, emphasizing analytical skills, visual interpretation, experiential learning, and public speaking.

As a delegate to ICAS 11, I personally appreciated what I learned from the “Humanities across Borders” panels and discussions.   The program raises important ethical questions about how international students experience study abroad in the “West”/”North” and can use those experiences at home. The North, then, is not a normative place of knowledge-production, but a source for analysis.  The assignment we practiced at Kenyon built on my experience in Leiden—learning from colleagues from Burkina Faso, Thailand, India, Brazil, and Japan—by employing a comparative, transnational approach. One of the powerful stories in my group came from a student who had visited the “Makery” a craft space in the nearby town of Mount Vernon, Ohio.  Having spent the afternoon learning a form of geometric design-production, the student said that she felt the warmth of the local craft community. When the crafts-woman/instructor asked if she would like a good-bye hug, the student felt literally embraced by the local environment. 

Processing the experience, analyzing it, and creating the mechanism to take back home a practical understanding of the local environment--all represent important values of this exercise—values of “Humanities Across Borders.”  This orientation program too similarly embodies the Humanities as a collection of methodologies; i.e., humanistic understanding of the lives of others through art/craft, writing, and public expression.  Furthermore, this experience shows that creating connections across cultures through community-engaged learning truly transcends boundaries.

Wendy Singer

Roy T Wortman Professor of History

Director of Asian and Middle East Studies