It will be a chance to meet amazing historical figures like Maya Angelou, Frida Kahlo, and Frederick Douglass while also supporting a great cause on Thursday, Oct. 27, at the University Club in downtown Madison as the Odyssey Project will host their 2nd annual “Night of the Living Humanities” fundraiser.
“The University Club offered to provide us with a space and donated appetizers for an event that we might want to hold and we chose to put it in late fall and with the proximity to Halloween and we thought: why not celebrate this transformation that we see at the Odyssey project?” UW-Madison Odyssey Project Director Emily Auerbach tells Madison365 about the origins of “Night of the Living Humanities.”
At this pre-Halloween benefit for the Odyssey Project, Odyssey students will be dressed up in costumes inspired by the writers, philosophers, artists, and political figures that students learn about in class. Guests have the option of dressing up themselves, too.
The Odyssey Project is a rigorous, six-credit humanities course where students discuss great works of literature, American history, philosophy, and art history while developing skills in critical thinking as well as academic, creative, and persuasive writing.
“One thing we do is we read great works of philosophy and literature and history and we try to make the subjects come alive and jump off the pages into our students’ lives so that they respond in a very personal and visceral way to the art of Frida Kahlo, or the story of Socrates death, or the poetry of Maya Angelou or Emily Dickinson,” Auerbach says. “It seemed like a great chance to illustrate how the humanities can really touch people in a personal way that changes them.”
Each year, the Odyssey Project offers a free two-semester humanities class for 30 people where they provide textbooks, childcare, and a weekly dinner. The students earn six credits in English from UW-Madison, as well as gain critical thinking skills and a sense of empowerment. Many go on to complete a college degree and find meaningful work in the community. The UW Odyssey Project is now in its 14th year. “We started in the fall of 2003 and we do now have over 400 alumni in the program,” Auerbach says. “Some of them have gone from being homeless to having master’s degrees.
“We have [former Odyssey] students who have bachelor’s and master’s and associate’s degrees now. But education is just one measure of success,” she adds. “We also have students who may not have gone on in school but have started a radio show in Spanish or are doing performance art in Chicago or have published poetry. I see that as success, too. It’s not just about degrees.”
Auerbach is very excited about the Odyssey Junior program, which is open to children and grandchildren of Odyssey students and alumni, and it has expanded this year to include 55 new students. It was started last year and it serves young people ages 2-18.
“We’ve always had free childcare when the adults are with us at class. I’ve noticed over the years that children start feeling the effects of their parents being in school … they seem to do better in school themselves,” Auerbach says. “We also noticed that we had older kids who were too young for childcare but kinda young to leave at home for three hours on a Wednesday. I thought it was the perfect opportunity to reach all of these children and grandchildren on a Wednesday night and have them be doing intensive work with literacy and art and going on field trips and getting excited about learning.”
The data shows, Auerbach adds, that if you really want to have an impact on poverty, it’s best to tackle two generations at once. “Rather than have a youth program or an adult program … we have a family-centered program where parents and children are celebrating learning together and going home talking about the dictionaries they were given or the words they looked up or sharing the stories they published in the newsletter that we do,” Auerbach says.
Some of the kids actually call Odyssey Junior “going to college.” “That’s what we try to get them thinking early on about themselves as future Badgers and people who go to college,” Auerbach says. “And I want the kids to see the other role models of Odyssey students who are now in college.”
The Odyssey Program has empowered more than 300 low-income adults to find their voices and get a jumpstart at earning college degrees they never thought possible. The “Night of the Living Humanities” will be a chance for the community to learn more about the program. “Mostly it’s a chance for donors to informally meet students,” Auerbach says. “They are invited to come to the event in costume as well.”
Odyssey students will be selling jewelry and other crafts. “One of our students from Hong Kong made little Chinese boxes. We have a student from Mexico who makes crowns of flowers. We have cookbooks and other things,” Auerbach says.
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“Last year, I was Emily Dickinson, but people seemed to think I was Princess Leia,” Auerbach laughs. “It was an epic fail. This year, I think I’m going to go as [English novelist] Jane Austen, but I haven’t decided yet. I am expecting there to be a lot of creative costumes, though. I know I have students coming as Frederick Douglass and Toni Morrison and Frida Kahlo.
“Night of the Living Humanities is a chance to think about characters, authors, musicians, philosophers, and try to imagine them alive now,” she adds. “It’s going to be a lot of fun.”
