Some of Ernest Hemingway’s novels and short stories are considered among the greatest ever written. He’s also remembered as an international man of letters, a famous expatriate and macho outdoorsman spending all the right seasons in all the right places: Paris, Pamplona, Key West, Havana, Sun Valley, on safari in Africa. But Hemingway’s life was more complicated than the glamorous image that lives in the popular imagination.
On December 27, 1831, after Charles Darwin and Captain Robert Fitzroy shared a final lunch of mutton chops and champagne ashore, the Beagle got underway. Darwin’s firsthand account of the journey, The Voyage of the Beagle, is one of history’s greatest true adventure stories. The voyage was supposed to last two years, but it ended up stretching out to five.
Nineteenth-century Americans often saved or exchanged locks of hair, constructing jewelry or keepsake wreaths of their kinship networks. Delicate braids of hair also interlace to frame the famous silhouette of Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake. In more recent decades, hair has become a powerful political medium. Middlebury professor Ellery Foutch shares research about hair-based works in local collections and explores the meanings of hair in American culture, past and present.
Vermont author Kerstin Lange considers the 870-mile-long border—now a unique nature preserve called the Green Belt—that divided her native Germany during the Cold War. Over 1200 rare animal and plant species found refuge in the highly militarized border strip.
Join artist and educator Jen Berger for a presentation that places monuments within the broader field of public art, examining how objects in shared space shape memory, belonging, and power, and how monuments, often permanent and officially sanctioned, are mistaken for neutral history.
The U.S. has been at war, in one form or another, for all but about 18 of the past 250 years of the county’s existence. What does this mean if this is a constant in our lives? How do we invite the conservatives and progressives into the room to talk together?
National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson, author of Vermont Book Award Finalist Nicked, will talk about the historical St. Nicholas and the theft of his corpse, pulling from medieval accounts, the modern archaeological evidence from his tomb, and the forensic evidence of his body, which now lies beneath a floor in Apulia.
New York Times bestselling author M. T. Anderson, whose National Book Award-winning novel The Pox Party explored this history, will discuss some of the lost and overlooked stories of that revolution within the Revolution, and why they’re important to remember in this celebratory anniversary year.
Consuelo Northrop Bailey (1899-1976) was a national pioneer among women in public service. Born and raised in Fairfield, Vermont, a 1921 graduate of the University of Vermont, Bailey was one of the first women in America to serve as a state’s attorney, as speaker of a state house of representatives, and as lieutenant-governor. Historian Kevin Graffagnino details the life and career of this extraordinary Vermont role model for women in politics and the law.
Historian, naturalist, professor, and minister, Zadock Thompson (1796-1856) played a significant role in how nineteenth-century Vermonters viewed their state’s heritage and appreciated its natural resources. Kevin Graffagnino looks at Thompson’s life and career, with particular emphasis on how his work shaped several generations of Vermont attitudes toward our state’s eighteenth-century beginnings.
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.
