Summary
What happens when we stop listening to people from other times and places?“Part of my role as a history teacher is to enable people to wait long enough to listen well.”
Who are we? Where do we come from? Why does it matter that we have answers to those questions? Sarah Williams makes the case for what history can do for us; underlines how central empathy and listening are to doing history; and offers some reflections on historical ignorance, arrogance, evidence, and confidence.
Sarah C. Williams is Research Professor in History at Regent College, Vancouver. She taught at Oxford and the University of Birmingham before that, and is well-known at Regent for teaching the best history classes people have ever taken. Dr Williams has written numerous articles and books on the relationship between religion and culture, as well as The Shaming of the Strong, a personal and theological reflection on the nature of personhood and the ethics of pre-natal testing.
