Monterey Bay: The Magazine of CSU Monterey Bay Spring/Summer 2014, Vol. VII, No. I | Page 26

Fac u lt y A dv i ser

Why the
Humanities
Matter

Thinking
Different

By Renée Curry

S p r i n g / S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 | csu m b . e d u / m a g a z i n e

By Patia Stephens

Renée Curry is a professor in the Division of Humanities and Communication
at CSU Monterey Bay.
Photo Chris Brown

26

Johanna Poethig keeps
the vision of VPA alive

our own limited universe, the complex emotions of differing beings,
and the moral and ethical questions
that drive the conscience and logic
of a time. The humanities honors
and preserves this material. Study
of the humanities teaches us to exercise the reflection, communication,
analysis and interpretation necessary to understand these words,
artifacts and cultural practices from
a multitude of perspectives.
The words of Martin Luther King
Jr. provide a lens into a life worth
living when he writes, “An individual has not started living until he can
rise above the narrow confines of his
individual concerns to the broader
concerns of humanity.” The humanities offer a diverse set of lenses for
looking at the world, lenses that enable us to develop empathy, compassion, and connection.
The humanities provide us
with ways to frame the current real
world, as well as ways to engage
with this world as valuable citizens.
Study of the humanities empowers
us to apply ourselves rigorously in
this world, to work at being present
and productive, and to contribute
to humanity by making meaning
where there sometimes seems to
be none. The humanities ultimately
provide refuge for us in our darkest
times and helps us understand what
it means to be merely, and significantly, human. MB

Photo Randy Tunnell

A former student of mine, whose
husband has been living with a
brain tumor for over a decade,
highly values the science and technology that keeps her husband alive,
but when asked how she copes dayto-day in this world, she talks about
catharsis and the crucial role of the
humanities:
“In 1842, Ralph Waldo Emerson
lost his 5-year old son,” my former
student said. “His poem about the
loss, ‘Threnody,’ provides me a waypoint for my own struggles. Across
time, Emerson reaches out and helps
me navigate through the desolation.
“Another work, the ‘Epic of
Gilgamesh,’ comforts me when I sit
in the intensive care unit listening
to my husband breathe and hoping
he will continue to breathe another
day. Gilgamesh’s solitary vigil with
Enkidu’s body shows me that over
4,000 years ago, someone felt what I
feel today.”
This experience of catharsis
— the purifying and purgation of
emotion, first described by Aristotle — is one of the most profound
gifts of the humanities. It is real and
transformative. Catharsis heightens
our understanding of the world; it
redirects and improves our ways
of thinking and understanding; it
enhances our ability to reflect upon
our lives and the lives of others.
People very much like us, and
yet not like us at all, have existed
on this planet and have generously
preserved and shared literatures,
histories, artifacts, languages, laws,
cultural practices, religions, and
philosophies. These convey firsthand the depths of worlds outside

As one of CSU Monterey Bay’s founding
faculty members, Professor Johanna Poethig has been with the Visual & Public Art
Department since its inception in 1995.
The VPA program was one of the first in the country that
emphasized not just the visual, but also the social aspects of
art education.
“The beauty of this program is that we do both,” Poethig
said. “Students come here, they gotta learn skills. They
have to learn how to be studio artists, and think about their
personal creativity and creative growth. But they do that
within a curriculum of thinking about how art takes place in
a social context.”
Born in New Jersey and raised in Manila, Philippines,
Poethig earned degrees from the University of California,
Santa Cruz, and Mills College. She’s been in California since
1976, forging an eclectic career out of a variety of interests
and mediums, from painting and sculpture to performance
art and video.
“I’m a lot of different things,” she said. “That’s just who I
am. ... Rather than choose, I do it all.”
Her installations include dozens of large-scale murals,
many of which transform urban blight into pockets of color
and meaning. In her Painting and Mural class, students are
working on a vivid, 300-foot-long mural in the rural farmworker community of Pajaro.
“This community has had nothing – no place for the kids to
play, no place for the community to get together,” Poethig said.
The new park is “really kind of amazing – it’s like an oasis.”
Public art education develops skills useful in any career,
like creativity and teamwork, Poethig said.
“The main thing about artists is that we’re not literal all
the time,” she said. “We’re creative, so we’re divergent thinkers. That’s a very important part of learning. If you just train
[students] in a linear fashion, they’ll never become as creative
as when you help them make connections that are surprising. It’s only by making those [