Comics are a powerful and often misunderstood storytelling language—one that is immersive, visually rich, and accessible across age groups and reading levels. From preschool classrooms to graduate seminars, comics have a unique ability to engage learners, including those who struggle with reading or communicate best through visual narratives.
This presentation is based on the research Michele Pagan has done into the Revolutionary War ancestors of the girls who made 19th century schoolgirl samplers. Needlework samplers are a visual record of the values that guided early female education in Vermont, including its focus on needlework as an essential skill for all girls and women. As artifacts of female education, they provide insight into family dynamics, local history, and community values.
1816 has long been known as the year without summer. Vermonters still call it “1800 and Froze to Death,” a year of frosts every month, dark skies, and mysterious lights that caused a widespread belief that a higher power was displeased. In this talk, historian Howard Coffin includes scores of anecdotes on the dark year of failed crops, scarce food, and religious revival.
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. Moving from participatory public artworks to the political histories and social impacts of monuments, including Confederate memorials and their removal after 2020, we look towards Vermont to ask what our monuments say about public history and whose stories are centered or missing.
1816 has long been known as the year without summer. Vermonters still call it “1800 and Froze to Death,” a year of frosts every month, dark skies, and mysterious lights that caused a widespread belief that a higher power was displeased. In this talk, historian Howard Coffin includes scores of anecdotes on the dark year of failed crops, scarce food, and religious revival.
You probably pass by your local cemetery every day—but did you know that the images carved into those stones contain secret messages? Vermont Book Award Winner and folklorist GennaRose Nethercott will teach you to crack the codes hidden in old New England gravestone art… plus discuss the elaborate, eccentric, and downright eerie burial practices Puritan New Englanders participated in while entombing their dead—from purple gloves to mirror magic.
The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion. The Fourteenth Amendment affords all persons equal protection under the law. What happens when those two rights collide, as happened in the in the Masterpiece Cake case? Must protections for religious liberties come at the expense of non-discrimination statutes?
You probably pass by your local cemetery every day—but did you know that the images carved into those stones contain secret messages? Vermont Book Award Winner and folklorist GennaRose Nethercott will teach you to crack the codes hidden in old New England gravestone art… plus discuss the elaborate, eccentric, and downright eerie burial practices Puritan New Englanders participated in while entombing their dead—from purple gloves to mirror magic.
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.
Comics are a powerful and often misunderstood storytelling language—one that is immersive, visually rich, and accessible across age groups and reading levels. From preschool classrooms to graduate seminars, comics have a unique ability to engage learners, including those who struggle with reading or communicate best through visual narratives.
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.
