Last Tuesday, Nov. 18, students and professors working in the humanities participated in a Humanities Salon. In the salon, several participants presented poetry, essays and research they had done for various classes and independent projects. The salon was well-attended by students of many academic disciplines and interests, and students and faculty were permitted to ask questions of students about their work in an informal question-and-answer session after each presentation.

Linnea Hurst ’15 was one of the members of the English Student Educational Policy Committee (SEPC) which organized the event. She said that the purpose of the salon was to promote the humanities and offer students a chance to share their work with others.

“The English SEPC wanted to advertise for the Humanities Symposium in the spring … We liked their idea and wanted to [do] a more informal and student-run version,” Hurst said. “Humanities majors tend to do their academic work alone and we really wanted to encourage and facilitate conversation … about academia in the work we’re engaging in.”

Hurst said that the salon aimed to bring together students from different disciplines within the humanities who rarely have a chance to interact.

“We hoped to get different majors, or disciplines, or academic work talked about, and to have people ask questions and make connections between the topics,” Hurst said. “We really saw an interdisciplinary conversation occurring, which is what we really wanted.”

The salon was open to many students to present their work.

“We knew that some students had gone to conferences and we contacted them … but we accepted everyone that submitted work,” Hurst said. “We were really pleased with the turnout. More people showed up than were expected.”