Congratulations to Dr. Gioia Woods, Professor of Humanities, on her AZ Humanities micro-grant to support the storytelling workshop Humanities in Action: Pandemic Stories!
The micro-grant, awarded during the fall semester, supported a storytelling workshop designed to train community members to record one another’s “pandemic stories.” Panel participants included an archivist, a Navajo elder and storyteller, a journalist, and an historian. Through the workshop, the audience learned how to collect stories from their fellow community members–health care professionals, teachers, students, elders, family and friends, co-workers, business owners, etc.–about life during quarantine and COVID-19. Pandemic Stories is part of a larger project called Humanities in Action: The Plague Project, an NAU College of Arts and Letters one-book common-reading experience. In Fall 2020, the Plague Project participants read Albert Camus’ 1947 novel THE PLAGUE and had the opportunity to participate in a number of events, including a virtual interactive book club party, a panel presentation with local health professionals, a collaborative reading and discussion between university students and area high schools, an interfaith panel discussion, and the Pandemic Stories workshop. Each event revolves around the themes introduced by the novel and their relevance to our times, foregrounding the way the humanities help us make meaning about our lives.
The Lumberjack, the student newspaper of NAU, featured the impact of the project and the corresponding course, HUM 382 Pandemic Stories, in the article “COVID-19 Curriculum Makes An Impact at NAU” in October 2020.
