Senior Humanities Experiences

Senior Humanities have been out on the town and crocheting. Yes, crocheting! Read on to find out why….

Stage 1 Humanities got up close and personal with primary sources at the Barr Smith Library. Travelling to the city and University of Adelaide together they took historical inquiry out of the classroom and to the authentic community setting of one of our oldest libraries to analyse historical texts and engage with the academic community.

Meanwhile Stage 1 Philosophy explored Existentialism through creative works. Songs, poems and paintings were produced as students explored the central question from an Existentialist lens: What is the meaning of life? One student crocheted a symbolic representation of these ideas as the ‘steak plate’. She wrote:

This piece titled “Steak Plate” is multi-textiles crocheted work that was created in response to the absurdity and mundanity of life. Albert Camus explored this idea most notably in‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ in which he takes inspiration from the Greek myth of Sisyphus who is eternally condemned to push a boulder up a mountain, only once he reaches the top for it to roll back down to the bottom. Camus interpreted this eternal repetition as a symbol of human life: mundane, repetitive, and subjectively pointless (A. Augustyn, 2024). My piece draws on this, as the struggle to pick what to have for dinner is a mundane, repetitive, and subjectively pointless task. Every day the same conversation can be had, each week the same food will be cooked. It is an endless cycle, which also often features typical meat and veg. I chose to make the plate a spiral to symbolise the endless loop, but it is also a in reference to the nauseating effect life stripped of concrete meaning (N, Marinos, 2023). Ultimately, Camus argued that “One must imagine Sisyphus happy” as he suggested we can in fact beauty, happiness and meaning in our struggle to live a meaningful life.

Myfanwy Maywald
Learning Area Leader, Humanities