Adding wings to the unbearable weight of words : Academy as Community

• Autor(a) principal: Alves, Teresa
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/27918
• topic: Community; Academy; Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 - Crítica e interpretação; Associativism; The Portuguese Association for Anglo-American Studies (APEAA)

By probing into the Latin word communitate this essay first considers possible deviations from the original meaning in order to link it to the specific field of English and American Studies and, afterwards, proposes to evaluate its accommodation to new modes of conscience throughout the changing times. Some key figures will be mentioned but the mainstay of the argument will be built around Ralph Waldo Emerson who, as an “American scholar”, has made some excellent inroads into the relationship of the self with his /her community, and on how much human creativity depends on this relationship. This will be illustrated by reference to a diversity of writers and other artists whose achievements are strongly imbued with the sense of the self at work within the community, this same sense being then explored in association with creativity and the notions of academy and associativism. I will, finally, switch from this more speculative instance of my essay to the history of APEAA. Ever since the thirty four plus something years of this Association’s foundation/existence, it has afforded a practical example of how the Humanities, as practiced in our field of studies, may achieve their goals with a little imagination and a good measure of willingness. The example of some of the founding figures of APEAA, the innovative paths they were able to launch and which we are nowadays pursuing, have certainly heralded the future capability to make the most of this Association’s potential and its role as a meeting place, which, at different levels (national and international) provide the opportunity for a fruitful dialogue among the variety of disciplines and methodological preferences of its members.