Week 9: Solzhenitzyn, Spanish Art, and Some Sightseeing

The ninth week of the Fellowship is our last full week and I decided to make the most of it with some sightseeing.

On Monday, we had our ninth weekly seminar with Dr. David Deveal from the University of St. Thomas. With Dr. Deveal, we discussed Solzhenitzyn's Havard Address and his novella, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It was the first seminar that we had together on a work of fiction, and it was fascinating to hear people's insight and to explore the various themes within the text.

On Tuesday, we had the privilege to be hosted by some friends of First Liberty for a lovely luncheon at their home in Dallas. Following the meal, we enjoyed a tour of the Meadows Museum, a Spanish art museum on the Southern Methodist University campus. Always a fan of art museums, I thoroughly enjoyed the tour and was excited to see some pieces by an artist I studied in college, Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez.

Some photos from the Meadows Museum.

For the next few days, I continued to polish my paper and to prepare a presentation-ready version of it with a deck of slides. Since the research project was essentially done, I decided to spend a couple of days visiting some local museums in order to fully relish my time in Dallas.

On Thursday, I took a bus down to the West End Historic District and visited the Sixth Floor Museum and the Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, as well as some shops and a café nearby. 

The Sixth Floor Museum stands right above the site of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy's assassination and is actually the place from which the shooter, Oswald Lee Harvey, aimed. It was fascinated to explore the exhibit, which documented the event itself as well as the historic-cultural events of the moment.

Some photos of the Sixth Floor Museum.

This is the roadway where JFK was shot.

Only a few blocks away, the Holocaust and Human Rights Museum presents an immersive experience into the events of the Holocaust and then moves to memorialize ten other genocides in recent history and to describe the movements that led towards things such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the second half of the twentieth century. Before touring the museum, I had the opportunity to sit in on a documentary the museum presented featuring the testimony of many Holocaust survivors who now live in Dallas. It was moving, and tragic.

Photos from my time at the Holocaust and Human Rights Museum.

On Friday, I made another trip to SMU's campus and visited the George W. Bush Presidential Museum. Bush was the president at the time of my birth, so it was particularly fascinating for me to engage in understanding his presidency and the events that happened during those eight years when I was a young child.

Some photos from the George W. Bush Presidential Museum.

There is one more stop on my tourist list, but most of what remains of my time in Dallas is related to the Fellowship. I will share more about those things in my final post next week.