A P U B L I C AT I O N O F T H E R O B E RT N U S B A U M C E N T E R AT V I R G I N I A W E S L E YA N U N I V E R S I T Y
DIVERSITY
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DIALOGUE
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FAITH
LOOKING THROUGH NEW LENSES: SEEING WITH NEW EYES
In a frequently quoted commencement address, Bill Bullard said, Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. . . .The highest form of knowledge, according to George Eliot, is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose-larger-than-the-self kind of understanding.
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FALL 2021
FREEDOM
CATHARINE COOKSON LECTURE
Thursday, October 14 | 11 AM – NOON SUSAN S. GOODE FINE AND PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
How Shall We Remember? Changing Narratives around Early Virginia, Slavery, and the Confederacy CHRISTY COLEMAN
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ach of us is shaped by the lenses through which we experience life. Our views are influenced by where we live, our socioeconomic status, the color of our skin, our ethnicity, and our political, religious, and cultural beliefs. Since we’ve been at the Nusbaum Center, what’s been most meaningful are the moments when we’ve seen life more clearly by looking through new lenses. One person who has helped us with that is author/illustrator Christopher Noxon, who wrote Good Trouble: Lessons from the Civil Rights Playbook. On pages 16 and 17 of that book, he includes sketches made from mug shots of civil rights protestors whose pictures he saw at the National Civil Rights Museum. About the people in the mug shots, Noxon says, “They should be angry, fearful, bitter. Maybe they were? Their faces are pictures of calm, clarity, dignity, defiance, poise . . . There is so much to learn.” The images of those freedom fighters who had clarity, dignity, and poise create a lens that has stayed with us this year. How can we develop that approach to life, particularly during a time when so many people express themselves in terms of unbridled id? How do we appeal to our better angels? How do we find the sorts of lenses that helped those civil rights activists make sense of the world—especially in volatile and challenging times—and move forward? This semester we hope to provide some new lenses that will help us all see more clearly the ways in which others experience the world. We hope you’ll join us.
Craig and Kelly
History lessons taught a generation ago have been challenged recently by new or expanded narratives that include the voices of previously marginalized people. Join Christy Coleman as she discusses questions on the presentation of Jamestown and early Virginia history, on the display of Civil War symbols in public spaces, and on issues of historical memory. Christy Coleman grew up in Williamsburg and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Hampton University. She serves as the Executive Director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation. She also has served as president and CEO of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, where she was instrumental in furthering discussion on the Civil War, its legacies, and its relevance to our lives today.