2021 - Reading As A Radical Act

We live in a time when we are suffering, culturally, from an ‘imagination deficit
disorder.’ Dr. Jones will explore why and how the radical act of reading cultivates a
lively sense of the past that enables creative opportunities for the future and stirs our
imagination in the present.

This overview provides non-technicians in Humanities (and Law) with an inspiring set
of starting points for individual exploration of recent revolutions in Natural Language
Processing (NLP), whereby advanced language models routinely facilitate automated
textual analysis and generation of essays, news articles, and narrative stories. In
so doing, these models encode the implicit rules and biases of their designers and
training datasets. The effects of this encoding have ethical implications when these
models are deployed on large scales as proxies for human decision-making as well as personal implications for readers and readership in general.

It is well understood that books help us create alternative universes, worlds far distant
or close enough that we can easily feel identified with their characters, landscapes,
language. For migrants, though, reading in the native language becomes an act of
resistance against losing memory of words, of worlds that once existed. Reading in
a foreign language, on the other hand, constantly reminds us or our otherness, our
in-between condition. Having the privilege to be able to read in different languages
helps me build a new home, neither there nor here, a home with no physical referents, just with the ethereal pillars of readings.

Authors often talk about “voice” in terms of characters, narrators, and individual
writing styles. In theatre, however, voice is the physical manifestation of sound. This
physical manifestation can frighten, comfort, disguise, reveal; it can infuse every word
on a page with life. Exploring the connection between voice on the page and voice on
the stage can yield stronger theatrical choices and, if utilized in the reading process,
can more fully engage even non-theatrical readers of every level.

In her novel Middlemarch, George Eliot (née Mary Ann Evans) observed in 1871, “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the
grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on
the other side of silence.” This passage employs dramatic metaphor to suggest the
concepts I will explore in this presentation. Using examples from literature and pop
culture, I will discuss how the process of writing and reading makes what’s invisible
visible. Paying attention to what is beyond the page—that is, grappling with mystery—
allows readers to practice grappling with life: with their own experiences, with
metaphysical questions, and with people, cultures, ideas, beliefs, and experiences that transcend their own.

Did you know that although we often speak of “sign language” as though there is
just one, in fact sign language varies from culture to culture? This presentation by
members of one of Belmont’s newest student organizations will offer a brief overview
of the history of sign language in different cultures and what sign language looks like
in America today. Club members will also discuss how you can get involved in their
organization and learn to sign and read a bit of ALS yourself.

Shakespeare made the South and the South made Shakespeare. This talk illuminates
how the South—and particularly Nashville—shaped Shakespeare through antebellum
depictions of race, civil rights struggles, jazz and country music, and more.

Imagine for a moment: you arrive to apply for a job or take a family member to the
Emergency Room, and when someone hands you a form to fill out, you have no way
to do so because you can’t read it. This isn’t a hypothetical situation for thousands of
adults, native and immigrant alike, who live right here in Middle Tennessee. In “Literacy
Matters,” representatives of the Nashville Adult Literacy Council will discuss the
realities many of our fellow Nashvillians face every day and discuss ways that you can
become involved in helping this organization help others.

How do you read the web well in the age of misinformation? Today’s students
have been taught from a young age to read and evaluate websites, most often by
employing a checklist of criteria with which to judge a source’s credibility. Studies
show that most people read the web by looking for outside markers of quality to
evaluate quickly what they find. We’ve all become information skeptics, perhaps
necessarily so in our post-truth, socially-networked world, but some argue that
the way we’ve been taught to read the web has led to a kind of cynicism about
information, where everything is biased and suspect. In a rapidly changing information
ecosystem, where misinformation abounds and algorithms proliferate, reading and
evaluating the web requires a more nuanced approach. In this session, a Belmont
librarian will introduce some strategies to help you read and contextualize the web in
order to use information in your academic and personal life.

Throughout American history, newspapers have provided the shared information
vital to a functioning democracy. But in a digital age, it’s more important than ever to
support local news organizations under assault from market forces, partisanship and
misinformation.

This presentation will address the importance of early literacy experiences in a child’s
development. We will explore what culturally competent educators do to help all
children identify as readers while also considering the types of reading experiences we
should be creating to ensure that all children read well and develop a love of reading.

In the final decades of the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer chose a pilgrimage to
Canterbury as the frame for his Canterbury Tales, an unfinished collection of stories
which entertained readers with its bawdy humor and thought-provoking social
commentary, and inspired millions of pilgrims to see the holy relics and shrine of St.
Thomas à Becket at Canterbury. Chaucer’s work also actively reminds us that readers and pilgrims are constantly recreating a text through direct experience of “the way,” the pathway of generations of pilgrims before them or the way laid out by an author and followed by each reader individually. By means of an informal dialog accompanied by images, this presentation will explore the deep connection between the acts of reading, pilgrimage, and human experience, focusing attention on the experience of the Pilgrim’s Way in text and trek from Chaucer’s world to our own.

Radical acts impel change, and the act of reading, perhaps more than any other
enterprise, has profoundly shifted our human experience...” So opens the first
sentence of our description of this year’s symposium. In preparation for this panel,
we asked faculty of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences to identify books
“the reading of which changed us” (with us meaning society broadly, our disciplines
or even us as individuals). Five faculty from three different departments will discuss
their personal book selections. In addition, a list of other books will be shared at the
end of the session from faculty who couldn’t participate personally. We will also solicit
nominations of other books from the audience of the session.

Arizona poet Laureate Alberto Ríos will join us via Zoom for a reading of some of his
poetry, including “Don’t Go Into the Library” and pieces from his latest collection
Not Go Away is My Name, followed by informal conversation about how living in an
bilingual, bi-cultural environment has shaped how he reads and writes the world.

The Great Depression devastated the nation, but especially hard-hit was Eastern
Kentucky – a region already steeped in poverty and so isolated as to have few roads
and no electricity. The WPA Packhorse Library helped to change the lives of many by
bringing them access to the world through books and ideas.

Mary Frances Berry, the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at
the University of Pennsylvania and former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights, has dedicated her life and work to the fight for freedom, equality, and justice.
During this panel, FYS faculty Daniel Schafer, Noel Boyle, and Michelle Shaw will
examine the way in which readings from the FYS Anthology intersect with Dr. Berry’s
message of resistance and resilience, offering new ways for us to think about the ever-
evolving relationship between power and knowledge.

Current German language picture books and books for early readers develop a variety
of strategies for increasing awareness about diversity and inclusion. We will explore
how this new genre connects to cultural traditions and how the future may be shaped
by developing empathy through different forms of reading together. We will explore
the power of reading as a social activity across diverse age groups and communities
and enjoy discovering the joys of reading to and with others.

If you think back to your favorite books from your childhood, which titles come to
mind? Why did those particular books resonate so deeply with you? For many young
readers, being able to see themselves reflected in the main characters strikes a deep
chord. Reading books with representations of students’ own cultures can contribute
to self-worth within children, while allowing them to connect with themselves and
their culture on a deeper level. I launched the Black Book Project to address the lack of
cultural representation in children’s literature.

In the famous essay “Why Read the Classics,” Italo Calvino defines “classics” as “the books that come down to us bearing...traces of readings previous to our [own]” but also acknowledges that each of us will have our own collection of works which form the “background noise” of our lives. I would argue that these are our own classics, many of which may be classics only for us, because each of us is the point where a unique selection of works intersect: each of us is a nexus. In this presentation, I will examine three different types of nexus we experience through reading, connecting not just those works to and through us but also ourselves with other readers. I will also reflect on the distinct nature of the connectivity experienced in reading as opposed to oral communication, due to the physicality we associate with written language, even in virtual environments.

While we tend to associate “common reading” with educational settings, in fact,
almost from the beginning of the book, people have gathered together to discuss
things they’ve decided to read together. In this panel, members of two very different
reading groups, The English Alumni Reading Group and the Philosophy Reading
Group, will discuss some of the pleasures, intellectual and social, they have discovered
through acts of reading (and reflecting) together.

Join us for a reading of prose and poetry written by winners of the 2021 Sandra
Hutchins Writing Competition. These awards are named in honor of retired Belmont
faculty member, Dr. Sandra Hutchins, longtime creative writing professor and advisor
to the Belmont Literary Journal.

Join members of this year’s Symposium Committee for the final session as we
reflect together with audience members on what we have learned from the various
presentations. What new questions have been brought forward? What moments
have resonated and opened (or re-opened) ways of thinking about the fundamental
importance of reading in all its many forms.