Humanity at the Crossroads: Stories of Diversity in a Tribalized World
At a time when anxiety about diversity is driving cultural polarization all around the world, episode 6 of HumIn Focus, “Humanity at the Crossroads: Stories of Diversity in a Tribalized World,” tells the story of four instances in history where cultures tried to renegotiate established ethnic identities to forge something new. Whether in Chinatown in early twentieth Century San Francisco, Jerusalem during the Ottoman Empire, Iran’s Jewish community on the eve of the revolution or on the creolized Island of Mauritius, each case dramatizes the challenges of moving beyond tribalism through cooperation and building new communities grounded in mutual understanding.
“We wanted to capture both the promise and the tragedy of cultural hybridity in a world where a retreat to one’s home ‘tribe’ is the norm,” said John Christman, director of the Humanities Institute and co-executive producer of HumIn Focus. “Our interviews include historians, an expert in art history, and a scholar of French and Francophone studies who are able to tell these stories from rich and complex scholarly angles.”
Read the press release for this episode in the Penn State News.
Find this episode in the WPSU October 2022 guide.