Anne Dalke's blog
Walled Communities in Europe
 |
As some of you know, I was traveling in Northern Europe for a couple of weeks in late January and early February. I came upon a couple of walled communities which (of course!) made me think of you all. In Bruges, Belgium, I spent a peaceful morning in a begijnhof (or beguinage), dating from the 13th century, which once housed a Catholic order of single and widowed women, and today is home to Benedictine nuns:
 |
 |
 |
 |
And then, Normandy, I visited the astonishing abbey on Mont St Michel, an island fortress with a cloister strangely reminiscent of--yet different from--Bryn Mawr's:
How an East Coast geological feature drove the course of the Civil War.
This put me in mind of what Prof. Crawford told us about the
effect of the fault line on the building of cities:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/the-fall-lines-fault/
What Walls Do We Build/Need/Break Down?--Our Final Presentations!
Welcome everybody! We're happy that you’ve joined us here to see what we've learned in our 360° this semester. A 360° is a cluster of interdisciplinary courses that look at one main theme. Ours is called Women in Walled Communities.
In The Rhetorics of Silence, we examined the many functions and meanings of silence: as a political tool, an imaginative space, and a powerful form of communicative expression--as well as the result of lack of agency and or the denial of voice.
In Learning in Institutional Spaces, we explored how the institutions of schools and prisons promote or inhibit learning. It was in this course that we looked most critically at this institution, Bryn Mawr College, and its own history of power and oppression, which sparked a lot of interest in Perry House as an embodiment of some of that history.
Continuing the Conversation: Women in Walled Communities Exhibition
Use this space to post thoughts, questions or reactions from the workshop.
"Value the opportunity to think unguided by the world"
I was reading my Meeting's newsletter this morning. It began w/ this
(so relevant!) quote: Don’t feel restricted by the silence; it is there
to set you free from the pressures of life… Value the opportunity to
think unguided by the world. Learn what you feel you need to know,
let other information pass. No moment of silence is ever a waste of time.
(Rachel Needham, 1987, Quaker Faith and Practice, The Yearly Meeting
of the Religious Society of Friends [Quakers] in Britain, 1995, 2.17.)
