“Bridging surviving with scholarship is an art in and of itself.”

A central premise of The Art of Surviving is that survivors can be scholars of their own experience. As with any scholar, when the survivor synthesizes experience into a text or work of art, they are using the tools of reflection, analysis, and presentation. With this more expansive definition of scholarship, so much can be learned about the social, cultural, and historical underpinnings and impact of sexual violence from the survivor/artist/poets themselves. So much can be learned about the role and efficacy of artistic and literary expression in individual and community healing. Expression, beauty and aesthetics speak to multiple dimensions of human experience….a work of art may be as textual and intellectual in its conception, creation and message as an anthropological ethnography or a work of literature. A central goal of The Art of Surviving is to explore how the humanities can contribute to our understanding of sexual violence and expression. Collaborators in and contributors to The Art of Surviving have agreed that the main activity of the humanities is the contextualization of the human experience. To this end, In March and April, 2007, a series of presentations and a seminar set out to initiate an exploration of the exhibit through the lens of the humanities. What resulted was a report and an ongoing series of workshops sponsored by MettaKnowledge for Peace, LLC.