Hello!  My name is Jennifer, and I would like to welcome you to HumantiesAttic!

I chose to call this site an attic because I plan for it to be a random assortment of various topics from the humanities.  I think of it as a giant space where I can collect various “boxes” filled with different types of humanities.  Just like a real attic, I expect I’ll end up with a fairly eclectic group of things, and I’ll be adding more all of the time.

As for the Humanities side of HumanitiesAttic, that part is a little simpler.  I’d been a graduate student for a loooooong time, earning an MA in History, an MA in Humanities, and finally a PhD in Humanities.  In my very long time in college, I accumulated a large number of interests—both academic and for fun—and I’d like to take the chance to write about them in a slightly less stressful and much more casual format than graduate school requires.

When I say Humanities, I’m not talking just about art (although I expect I will be talking about art a great deal), but the complete study of culture.  Accordingly, this blog will focus on all sorts of cultural artifacts and curiosities.  I’m a little obsessed with the topic of the cultural history of gardens (predominantly in England with digressions to Japan).  I also love fairy tales, myths and legends (focusing on nautical tales of sea monsters and the like), paintings and tapestries, architectural history, the medieval world, and A LOT of other topics as well.  I’m also an amateur watercolorist who dapples in pen and ink (I drew my avatar and logo), so I may share my artistic successes and frustrations as well; and I may talk about my very small adventures in the Humanities of my home state of Florida.

If you’re reading this, then welcome to HumanitiesAttic!  I hope that you’ll enjoy my collection of thoughts.  Pardon the dust 🙂