1816 has long been known as the year without summer. This talk includes scores of anecdotes about the dark year of failed crops, scarce food, and religious revival.
Michael Tougias narrates the rich history of the Connecticut River, discussing the days of loggers, Indian Wars, steamships, and canals.
We often are divided on the merits of the Constitution: can it redeem us or is it a convenient cloak for white supremacy? Meg Mott explains that the Constitution might be seen as an invitation to develop the habits of political engagement through deliberation and adjudication.
William Edelglass traces the intellectual history of the concept of race in the West, from its prehistory to today.
Tim Weed explores Cuba’s long struggle for sovereignty, from the Spanish-American war of 1898 to the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
Rob Mermin explores the metaphors of mime technique—what mime master Marcel Marceau called “the silent language of the soul.”
Rick Winston discusses the evolution of Alfred Hitchcock’s craft, exploring his favorite themes, his relationships with his collaborators, and his wry sense of humor.
Join Rick Winston in an exploration of how cinema has portrayed what goes into a theater production, from audition to rehearsal to performance.
The audience is a visitor in Walt Whitman’s room as he prepares for his seventieth birthday celebration and questions his success as a man and a poet. Through Whitman’s poetry and letters, actor Stephen Collins helps us experience the poet’s growth into a mature artist who is at peace about “himself, God and death.”
Mary Fillmore examines the choices faced and decisions made by the people who lived alongside the Jewish population as persecution in Nazi-occupied Europe intensified.
Lucy Terry Prince was born in Africa, where she was kidnapped by slave traders and transported to Rhode Island. While still enslaved in 1746, she wrote “Bars Fight,” the oldest known poem by an African American. Prince later regained her freedom and moved to Vermont with her husband. Shanta Lee illustrates Prince’s importance as a poet and orator, and as one unafraid to fight for her rights within the landscape of early Vermont, New England, and America.
Bill Mares, writer, and a beekeeper for 45 years, tells of the origins and evolution of beekeeping, with a particular emphasis on his research in Vermont.
Poet Sarah Audsley joined us at the Taconic Mountains Ramble State Park for Words in the Woods.
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 Historic New England’s “More than a Market” project that explored the experiences of new Americans through food markets.
Our free public events help bring the power of the humanities to communities across Vermont.
