Sarah Churchwell: on translation

Sarah Churchwell is the Chair in Public Understanding of the Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and Director of the Being Human Festival.

By Seth Robinson

For a long time, public discourse on ‘the humanities’ have placed them in opposition to the STEM disciplines. It’s a discussion that has focused on the career outcomes of those subjects, and questioned the practicality of studying the humanities. But for Sarah Churchwell, Director of the Being Human Festival, these questions have always had an easy answer.

‘I think the answer is in the name. Why wouldn't you study humanity? Why wouldn't you study all the things that make us human, and all the ways in which we have created the human world? That's how I understand the humanities, as the study of the human world. That's not distinct from the natural world, because the human world completely interacts with the natural world and the built environment. So, the humanities, to me, is kind of the study of everything.’

And while the humanities might be viewed as ‘the study of everything’, Sarah notes that this easily translates into more specific, practical outcomes as well.

‘If we start to think about the individual disciplines and subjects that are studied within the humanities, we can consider what each of them teaches us, specifically. Literature teaches us to understand multiple points of view. It teaches us to understand social conflict and complex narratives, and the way that language and psychology work. History teaches us the consequences of conflict and long social change, and how politics works in different environments or different moments. Philosophy teaches us to challenge our assumptions, and it teaches us to think in different ways about ethics,’ says Sarah. ‘As soon as you stop and ask yourself, what would it mean if we didn't study these disciplines? If we didn’t think about these things, it's not just that the world would be impoverished, it's that we couldn't function as a society. We all live within the humanities every day.’

This understanding and study of the humanities has taken on a new significance with the emergence of AI technologies that are already disrupting a range of industries, including in the STEM sector.

‘In Britain where I live, the government has—for a long time—been investing in science and technology and saying to young people: “that's all you need to study. That's all you need to know.” But AI is disrupting technology. So, by the time these students get their degree, AI may have already transformed the sector, and the skills they’ve learnt are no longer relevant. This idea that you can have a limited set of skills and that will make you employable, it's not feasible within the technological realm right now. The fact is that the machine is going to be very good at doing the things machines do. And what a lot of people are saying—and I find this a really convincing and actually kind of inspiring case—is that once we start working alongside the machines, instead of being threatened by them, or worrying about the ways that they might undermine the way that we've always done things, is to understand that the thing that the machine can't do is be human. They can't be as good at creative thinking as us. So, what happens if we lean into our creativity and we lean into our flexibility and we lean into the things that differentiate us from machines and then say, “What can we do if we work together?” That's what the humanities teaches us. It doesn't just teach us how to do that. It teaches us how to think like that, to say, “Let's think out of the box, and think in different ways, and think in complimentary ways.” They teach us to be agile, be flexible, and think about a complex problem from complex perspectives and find solutions.’

That's how I understand the humanities, as the study of the human world. That's not distinct from the natural world, because the human world completely interacts with the natural world and the built environment. So, the humanities, to me, is kind of the study of everything." Sarah Churchwell

But while the humanities offer the potential to teach this kind of adaptative thinking, and to work in cooperation with the scientific disciplines, Sarah’s the first to acknowledge that the humanities have something of a brand problem. It’s in overcoming this, and communicating their value, that her work takes centre stage.

‘I run a festival in the UK called the Being Human Festival. What we do is work with academics to get them out into the community. We deal in microgrants, so we seek out creative, bright, and energetic people who are passionate about their subject, and then they take that money and they go work with communities to design something together. The festival runs a gamut of activities, but a lot of them have legacies and a lot of them have unexpected long-term impacts. So, they might've thought they were going to be a one-off event, but 10 years later they've built something, conversations have started and community interventions have occurred, they’ve spawned transformations and new initiatives. It’s incredible to see what happens when you encourage people to step out of their comfort zone just a little bit and to say, “don't do a panel talk”. Instead, they go out to the local art gallery, the shopping centre, or the pub. Where better to learn about the gendered history of drinking spaces in England?’ She says. ‘We want to get beyond this idea that education has to be serious, or solemn, or that you have to sit in an audience while somebody opines at you. We call it the ‘sage on the stage’. We’re very much trying to get away from that model, and to celebrate curiosity and knowledge across all of the communities in our society. People like to talk, and they like to share ideas. It's all very natural. So as soon as you just put them in the space with a shared idea for them to talk about, you just watch what happens.’

Sarah likens this work to the act of translation, taking ideas that are so often hidden behind sandstone walls or obscured with academic language, and making them accessible to everyone.

‘It's not actually that hard to get a conversation started, but one of the resistances that academics have is that they have been trained into a language that is not accessible to people without advanced degrees. And one of the things that we work with our academics on is kind of remembering how to speak like a normal person again. I say that with my tongue and my cheek. It's not that I don't value the specialised language of academia. It serves an important purpose. It's about having an advanced conversation, but not every conversation has to be an advanced conversation. Introductory conversations are important, and accessible conversations are important. And that doesn't mean ‘dumbing-down’, which is what people who get defensive about this like to say is happening. I like to talk to academics about thinking bilingually. Nobody thinks you're dumbing down if you translate an idea from English into French. Now, certainly in some languages we may say there aren’t equivalent words. Japanese has words for things that English doesn't. So, you may feel that you are not being as nuanced as you want to be or as precise as you want to be because it's not the ten-syllable German word that totally nails what you're trying to say, but you can get the concept across. You can communicate the idea. And that to me is the goal, that we are engaged in a kind of simultaneous translation. And when you're good at this kind of work, I think you're bilingual, you're fluent, you can just move back and forth between them and you're code switching. And code switching is an incredibly important part of the way that we communicate across different communities. And to understand it simply as code switching, then I think people get much less defensive about it.’

I think the answer is in the name. Why wouldn't you study humanity? Why wouldn't you study all the things that make us human, and all the ways in which we have created the human world? Sarah Churchwell

For Sarah, it’s a about creating a culture of communication, and an environment that facilitates that.

‘I said when I came into the job of directing this festival that what we were trying to affect was a culture change. And culture changes don't happen overnight. But I think you have to approach it with a long view. The culture change that I had in mind was moving away from a reflexive, unthinking reliance on classroom methods, and to see that there may be superior alternatives. To see that just because it's the way that we did things once, doesn't mean that it's the way that we have to do things forever. Culture change is about embracing transformation, about seeing that as a positive, about seeing it as adaptation and evolution rather than as destruction or loss.’

It's here, through this philosophy, and the approach taken in the Being Human Festival, that we not only see the value of the humanities being communicated, but that we see them being put into practice, as we adapt, connect, and have the hard conversations.