Vermont Humanities

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Woman speaking with hand over heart beside statue

Using the humanities, we connect with people across Vermont to create just, vibrant, and resilient communities and to inspire a lifelong love of learning.

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Attend

Come enjoy 400+ humanities
events held across Vermont.

upcoming events

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Watch

Miss an event or discussion? Watch a recording on your
own time.

recorded events

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Listen

Dive into our two humanities podcasts to engage and learn about new perspectives.

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Book

Bring a speaker or event to your library, community, or school.

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Featured Events

Image of young man reading a newspaper
Live Event

Sorting the News From the Chaff

How can we tell good sources from the bad ones, discern fact from assumption, and distinguish “fake news” from the real thing? And how can we effectively communicate with others when discussing or debating public issues in the news? Veteran journalist and educator Mark Timney will explore these questions and share strategies for evaluating news sources in the rapidly changing digital information age.

Image of sharpshooters taking aim
Live Event

Vermont’s Remarkable Sharpshooters

Vermont sent far more sharpshooters to the Union armies than any other state, on a per capita basis. Sharpshooters from this state played a little-known but major role at Gettysburg. Historian Howard Coffin will discuss his recent research into this little-recognized group and consider the reasons why Vermont may have been so well-represented in this elite group of marksmen.

Image of beekeeper with hive
Live Event

Bees Besieged: A History of Beekeeping

Bill Mares, writer, and a beekeeper for 45 years, will tell of the origins and evolution of beekeeping, sometimes referred to as “farming for intellectuals,” with a particular emphasis on his new book, with Ross Conrad, and others, “The Land of Milk and Honey, a History of Beekeeping in Vermont.”

Image of young man reading a newspaper
Live Event

Sorting the News from the Chaff

Paradoxically, the Internet has made it both easier and harder to find “truth.” Almost everything we could ever want to know is available online, but how can we tell the good sources from the bad ones, discern fact from assumption, and distinguish “fake news” from the real thing? And how can we effectively communicate with others when discussing or debating public issues in the news? Veteran journalist and educator Mark Timney will explore these questions and share strategies for evaluating news sources in the rapidly changing digital information age.

Live Event

Toby MacNutt: Words in the Woods

Toby MacNutt is an author, artist, and teacher based in Addison County. Their work engages themes of embodiment, space and relationship from a queer and disabled perspective. Toby’s debut poetry and short story collection If Not Skin was published by Aqueduct Press in 2018; more recently their work has appeared in or is forthcoming from magazines such as Liminality, Strange Horizons, and Vulture Bones, and as a self-published chapbook, “what cannot be held”. Find out more at www.tobymacnutt.com. 

Image of a mountain scene
Live Event

The Hills of Home: Mountains and Identity in Vermont History

Vermonters have strong ideas about the importance of their mountain topography. Where did our pride in Vermont’s landscape come from, and why is it that we see our shared identity as rooted in the land? This lecture by historian Jill Mudgett is timely and relevant in its relationship to current interdisciplinary scholarship, and offers us tools to understand the origins and meaning of our own strongly-held attachments to the Vermont landscape.

Poet Linda Quinlan with white hair and a green sweater, smiling
Live Event

Linda Quinlan: Words in the Woods

Linda Quinlan’s book of poetry “Chelsea Creek” was published by Brickhouse Press.  She won the “Wicked Women’s” poetry award and was Poet of the Year in Wisconsin.  She published in many journals some of which include Sinister Wisdom, New Orleans Review and Black Mountain Press. She cohosts a T V Show All Things LGBTQ and lives in Montpelier with her partner.” 

Image of a mountain scene
Live Event

The Hills of Home: Mountains and Identity in Vermont History

Vermonters have strong ideas about the importance of their mountain topography. Where did our pride in Vermont’s landscape come from, and why is it that we see our shared identity as rooted in the land? This lecture by historian Jill Mudgett is timely and relevant in its relationship to current interdisciplinary scholarship, and offers us tools to understand the origins and meaning of our own strongly-held attachments to the Vermont landscape.

Suffragist standing on stump at Vermont State Fair
Live Event

From the Parlor to the Polling Place: Stories and Songs from the Suffragists

Singer and historian Linda Radtke, in period garb and a “Votes for Women” sash, celebrates the centennial of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave the right to vote to white women.

Live Event

Monica Ferrell: Words in the Woods

Monica Ferrell is the author of a novel and two books of poetry, most recently the collection You Darling Thing, which was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and the Believer Book Award. She has taught fiction and poetry for the MFA programs at Columbia University and Bennington College, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Purchase College (SUNY). 

Image of old postcard of maple syrup gathering
Live Event

The Many Meanings of Maple

This presentation examines the many meanings of maple sugaring. Maple is enormously important to Vermont’s economy, ecology, and heritage. Champlain College professor Michael Lange will discuss sugaring ethnographically, based on over five years of research among sugarmakers all over the state, to learn from them what sugaring really means to Vermont.

Bill Mares and friend with beer
Live Event

From Homebrew to the House of Fermentology

Bill Mares began making his own beer 45 years ago, when home brewing was illegal and there were no microbreweries in America. In this presentation, he offers a short history of beer itself and discusses Vermont’s small but significant contribution to the American beer revolution.

See All Upcoming Events

We recently gave a $5000 project grant to the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction to print and distribute a comic to schools and literacy organizations throughout Vermont.

How We Read, A Graphic Guide To Literacy will help kids experience the joy of reading and overcome the stigma of struggling to read.

Learn more about our Project Grants

Image courtesy Center for Cartoon Studies

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Our Programs

Vermont Humanities has developed a broad range of programs that serves Vermonters of all ages and backgrounds. In 2021, 31,365 people took part in 562 activities hosted by us or by our community partners.

Learn More about Our Programs

The Anne Commire Fund for Women in the Humanities supports projects that focus on women writers. Anne (at far left) is shown with the cast of her play “Melody Sisters” in 1984.

The fund was created through a legacy gift of $125,000 from Anne’s estate, one of the largest individual gifts ever made to Vermont Humanities.

Learn more about this gift

Support Our Work

By giving to Vermont Humanities, you support education for people of all ages through early literacy programs, Humanities Camps for middle-school children, and programs held in libraries, community centers, schools, and correctional facilities.

Learn More about Supporting Us

Vermont Humanities*** January 13, 2015