Each fall since 1974, Vermont Humanities has explored a humanities topic in depth at its Fall Conference.
Before 2020, for over about a day and a half, conference goers explored a humanities topic through a variety of lectures with experts in their field. Scholars and attendees discussed topics with one another and shared in camaraderie.
Since 2020, our Fall Festival has taken place across the state with a series of about a dozen events during October, National Humanities month.
Conference Topics
- 2024: 50 Forward
- 2023: Deep Cuts: The Humanities and Music
- 2022: Where We Land: Storytelling That Propels Us
- 2021: This Mazed World: The Humanities and Climate Change
- 2020: Democracy 20/20
- 2019: Searching for Home: Journeys, Quests and Migrations
- 2018: The Ebb and Flow of Optimism through American History
- 2017: The Double-Edged Sword of Technology
- 2016: Looking at Leadership Through the Humanities
- 2015: Why Do Stories Matter?
- 2014: A Fire Never Extinguished: How America’s Civil War Continues to Shape Civic and Cultural Life in America
- 2013: Music and the Human Experience
- 2012: Sacred Spaces, Sacred Places: Religious Architecture and Sites
- 2011: The Power of the Humanities: Why They Matter
- 2010: Comedy and Satire: It’s No Joke from Jonathan Swift to Jon Stewart, Ridiculing Vice and Folly
- 2009: Food For Thought
- 2008: Robert Frost in Vermont and New Hampshire
- 2007: The Northern Civil War Home Front
- 2006: Setting as Character: Vermont’s Landscape, Stories, and Sense of Place
- 2005: Creativity and Madness: Romantic Notion and Reality
- 2004: Movies, Books, and the 70s: Hollywood’s Golden Age
- 2003: Voting Rights and Wrongs: The Starts and Stops Along the Road to Universal Suffrage
- 2002: Shakespeare: Star-Crossed and Moonstruck Lovers
- 2001: The Book of Job
- 2000: The Eagle on the Throne: Eleanor of Aquitaine
- 1999: Deep Diversity: The Role of the Humanities in Building Community
- 1998: Harlem in the Jazz Age
- 1997: Lincoln: The Man and the Myth
- 1996: The Legends of King Arthur
- 1995: Poetry: American Voices
- 1994: Wonder, Fact, and the Human Condition
- 1993: Justice, Honor, Family and Friends
- 1992: Encountering Japan
- 1991: Odyssey Tales
- 1990: Different Dreams of Freedom: Cultural tensions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
- 1989: Reading Nature: A Conference on American Nature Writers
- 1988: History, Myth, and the Invincible Armada
- 1987: Can Virtue Be Taught?
- 1986: The Life and Poetry of Emily Dickinson
- 1985: J.S. Bach and the Culture of His Times
- 1984: The Constitution and the American Political Order
- 1983: The Visible Idea: Art, Architecture, and Society
- 1982: The Governor’s Conference on the Future of Vermont’s Heritage
- 1982: Religion and Science
- 1981: Education and Freedom
- 1980: Interpreting Our Legacies: A Program Development Conference for Museums, Historical Societies, and Historical Organizations
- 1979: Understanding the Far East
- 1978: In Search of the Promised Land: America in the 1970s
- 1977: Excellence and Equality in American Culture
- 1976: Evaluation and Program Conference: Some Uses of the Humanities in a Technological Society
- 1975: Evaluation Conference: Public Programs in the Humanities through Museums and Historical Societies
- 1974: Evaluation Conference: Reflections on the Humanities and the Public Interest
