“The reading was so meaningful, we should do it every year.”
Kathy Johnson helped organize a reading of Frederick Douglass’s fiery 1852 Independence Day speech on the Worcester village green in 2017.
Love and Marriage in the 21st Century
Video: Dr. Polly Young-Eisendrath looks at the transformation of marriage over the past century from a traditional contract between families to one that celebrates idealization in the form of “true love,” and suggests why the latter may be harder to fulfill than many thought.
“You realized how much they had put into this whole project.”
Over the past three years, the Richmond Free Library has been at the center of several creative Vermont Reads projects that have strengthened bonds in the local community.
The Legacy of Rachel Carson
Video: “Silent Spring” not only launched the environmental movement but also laid out the fundamental problems with our relationship to nature. Dartmouth professor Nancy Jay Crumbine celebrates scientist and poet Rachel Carson’s clarity, courage, and brilliance.
“These are powerful ways of engaging with the Vermont community”
A grant from VHC helped the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association and the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum offer programs related to the “Alnobak: Wearing Our Heritage” exhibit in 2017.
Race, Nation, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved
Video: UVM professor Emily Bernard explores how Beloved argues that America must reckon with the consequences of our nation’s original sin—slavery.
The Indian World of George Washington
Video: Dartmouth College professor Colin Calloway discusses the first president’s relations with Indian peoples and considers how Native American nations and lands shaped the man who shaped the republic.
World War I and American Writers
Video: Dartmouth professor Barbara Will discusses the effect of the war on American writers, particularly John Dos Passos, T. S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Gertrude Stein, and explores how the war changed American literature and made it “modern.”
The Digital Humanities Revolution
How have humanists taken up new technologies? What has the digital world added to the study of history, literature, folklore, and art? Bryan Alexander surveys the rise of the digital humanities.
Soup to Nuts: An Eccentric History of Food
Rebecca Rupp reveals the rocky evolution of table manners, the not-so-welcome invention of the fork, the awful advent of portable soup, and the surprising benefits of family dinners.