Tag: Identity
We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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June 13, 2025
Thanks to Estella Achinko, a 2025 HMU Fellow in Ideas, for today’s blog.
The question of what it means to “be” has fascinated philosophers for centuries. The essence of man—our nature, existence, and purpose—is layered with complexities. We are not merely physical beings navigating the world, but entities entwined with our surroundings, shaped by interactions, thoughts, and deeper realities. To truly understand ourselves, we must acknowledge both the tangible and the abstract—the seen and the unseen.
» Read more about: Man and the Pluralistic Essence of Being »
February 28, 2025
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
I presented in the War and Culture group for this year’s Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference. War and Culture is well outside my norm, but a comment during one of last year’s roundtable discussions stuck with me. Last year, the War and Culture group was abnormally small, which seemed odd given the number of ongoing worldwide conflicts.
July 8, 2022
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
Happiness is of such importance that the Declaration of Independence uses it as a foundational principle. Considering its importance in my own society, one would think that I thoroughly understand the term. However, it is as slippery today as it has always been. Sometimes I believe that my own personal happiness is necessary because it will assist me to support those around me.
February 11, 2022
Thanks to Gabriel E. Etienne, a 2021 Fellow in Ideas recipient, for today’s post.
The movie Moonlight is a coming-of-age story that details the complexity of the journey of boyhood to manhood of the character Little/Black/Chiron through the issues of authentic Blackness and hegemonic masculinity (Johnson 2003). This review uses the concepts of Quiet and Silence to view and understand the movie Moonlight.
» Read more about: Film Review: Quiet and Silence in Moonlight »
May 8, 2020
Thanks to Dylan O’Hara, a 2020 Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
In Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community, Monica Perales writes a new history of borderland life, chronicling the lives and memories of Chicano El Pasoans working at and living near The American Smelting and Mining Company (ASARCO). In compiling an urban history of El Paso around ASARCO, Perales reveals new insights about the struggles,
» Read more about: BOOK REVIEW: Smeltertown by Monica Perales »
March 6, 2020
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“There’s more truth in myth than in truth.” – Natalie Diaz
Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize speech clearly demonstrates her brilliance. She speaks in parables that are simultaneously straightforward, honest, and complicated. In this speech, Morrison delivers a story of some children who approach an old, blind woman and ask her what they have in their hands.
January 17, 2020
Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post.
“[G]ive me a life/ wherever there is opportunity/ to live, and better life than was my father’s.” – Oedipus the King by Sophocles (translated by David Grene)
Last week, I discussed a play from around 430 BC as well as a novel published in 2019. It would seem that works separated by over 2,000 years would hold no commonalities.
August 31, 2018
Thanks to George Hickman, a 2018 Harrison Middleton University Fellow in Ideas recipient, for today’s post.
For most of us, we experience the role of an audience member far more often than we experience the role of an artist. On our daily commutes, our mood is at the whim of the radio or our playlist on shuffle. We leave the movie theater buzzing with conversation about the actors,
» Read more about: The Audience as the Artist: LARP’s Place in Media »
August 17, 2018
Thanks to Sam Risak, a 2018 Harrison Middleton University Fellow in Ideas recipient, for today’s post.
Ramona Ausubel’s short story “Atria” illustrates the ineffectiveness of logic against constructed but powerful societal pressure. She imagines the struggle of teenage pregnancy through the eyes of Hazel. Regardless of the outside evidence Ausubel provides that the child is a healthy girl,
» Read more about: Forget Blue or Brown Eyes, My Baby Will Have Five-Hundred Eyes »
April 6, 2018
Thanks to Carter Vance, a 2018 Harrison Middleton University Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post.
When the European Union first gave legal force the notion of “right to be forgotten”, in a 2014 court ruling against Google, I was amongst those who were both confused at the practical impacts and fearful of what its long-term effects might be. Confused,
» Read more about: Right to Be Forgotten, or Right to Evolve? »