Artist Ed Gendron shares and discusses images from his photo project about World War II reenactors in the United States. Gendron later produced Playing Soldier, a feature-length documentary on the same topic. “The re-enactors assert that ‘history is a personal thing,’ says Gendron. “And for them, it may be quite true.” (Registration required.) Read More »

In the name of “human betterment” a century ago, public institutions and private organizations in Vermont chose some of the state’s most marginalized persons for institutionalization, sterilization, and family separation. Harvard Medical School lecturer Charlene Galarneau explores the factors that led to Vermont’s distinct expression of eugenics, and its continuing legacies today. Read More »

Walt Whitman was a great poetic innovator, the poet who best sums up what it is to be an American, and his Song of Myself is the most majestic poem written in our nation. And yet, for all this, UVM professor emeritus Huck Gutman finds Whitman to be wonderfully approachable. Read More »

Middlebury College professor Kemi Fuentes-George traces the development of pan-African political theory in the early 20th century and discusses how Afro Caribbean “rebel music” helped these ideas challenge established assumptions about nonwhite people and global relations. (Registration required.) Read More »

In this celebration of paying attention to female birds, “Bird Diva” Bridget Butler examines new scientific studies on female birds and shares stories of the “Mothers of Ornithology.” Read More »