From “Birth of a Nation” to “Gone With the Wind,” harmful stereotypes of Black life were the rule in Hollywood. After World War II, there was some progress in showing a more realistic picture on the screen, due to the efforts of younger, more progressive Hollywood screenwriters – many of whom wound up on the Hollywood Blacklist.
Classical music has been used to enhance many of our favorite films. Join Rick Winston as he explores how music makes these films, and experience clips from these films and others.
Much of current American culture seems divorced from the realities of ordinary (and especially, rural) life. The images of “country life” for so many Americans alternates between Oh, isn’t this charming and rustic! and Oh, how rural and backward! Sometimes it is patronizing and infuriating. Other times it just seems disappointing and sad, join Scudder Parker for an exploration of these topics.
Scudder Parker grew up in the NEK before returning after college as a Protestant minister for over 20 years in McIndoe Falls, East St. Johnsbury and Lower Waterford. Interest in social justice and good public policy led him to run for Vermont State Senator in Caledonia County, serving from (1981–1988). For eight years he was both a pastor and a politician. Now retired, he is an avid writer, poet, and storyteller of rural Vermont.
In Vermont’s Constitution, citizens are urged to develop the civic virtues of justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality. This presentation considers the role Vermont’s five civic virtues in our current moment.
Deliberation is the practice that holds our democracy together, but does it always lead to better decisions? When citizens only talk to like-minded citizens, the thinking gets stuck and the decisions tend to be more extreme.
On the 75th anniversary of The Catcher in the Rye, Craven chronicles the life of J.D. Salinger from a young cadet at Valley Forge Military Academy to an interrogator during World War II, including via unpublished writings provided by his estate, to illuminate the fiercely anti-war sentiments of his most famous novel.
While George Washington aimed to curb his own influence and image lest the citizenry come to view him as a monarch, he frequently indulged romantic ideas around his manliness. Craven shows how the figure allegedly cut – as the “political savior of our nation” who bravely “conducted the Americans’ thro seas of blood” – helped form America’s foundational warrior archetype, and its closely related, ever-evolving masculine mold.
Part of the traditional allure of military service was that it promised romantic interest. This was typified at West Point’s Cadet Hostess Office, composed of military wives who taught etiquette to cadets and fielded love letters from girls at Vassar College and other nearby schools. But as the feminist and Vietnam anti-war movements coalesced, the uniform lost its luster.
Jasper Craven is a Northeast Kingdom native and former VTDigger staff writer who covers men and the military for outlets including Harper’s, POLITICO Magazine, NY Mag, Wired, GQ, and The New York Times. His first foray on this beat came in 2018 via a seven-part investigative series for VTDigger into sexual misconduct and an ultra-masculine “Top Gun” culture within the Vermont National Guard. That work prompted reforms, firings, and the resignation of the Adjutant General.
Our seasonal “Words in the Woods” program allows Vermonters and visitors to enjoy our state’s natural beauty while listening to and reading literature in the outdoors.
Humanities Camps are filled with reading and writing projects, field trips, and outdoor activities.
We won a 2020 Schwartz Prize for best public humanities programming in the U.S. for Vermont Reads 2019: “March: Book One.”
We supported the Chandler Center for the Arts’ Global Connections Youth Outreach program, which highlights artists from around the world.
Our free public events help bring the power of the humanities to communities across Vermont.
