Every fall since 1974, Vermont Humanities has explored a humanities topic in depth at our annual fall conference. Browse videos below recorded at recent conferences, including our 2022 “Where We Land” Fall Festival.
In this First Wednesdays event recorded on November 2, 2022 at the Rutland Free Library, UVM lecturer Chris Vaccaro explores J.R.R. Tolkien’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and his occupation with female divinities such as Varda, Yavanna, Melian, Luthien, and Galadriel in his work. Vaccaro compares these divinities with goddesses within Greco-Roman, Celtic, and Norse mythologies and considers Tolkien’s influences.
Andrew Ingall, creator of the project “Warlé, Yesterday, and Today,” presents a slide talk and storytelling exercise inspired by the lives and legacy of Warren Kronemeyer and Leon Ingall, a Vermont couple who were entrepreneurs and civic leaders in Townshend, VT during the 1980 and 1990s. Leon was a refugee twice: first fleeing the Bolsheviks in 1918 and then again from the Nazis in the late 1930s.
Hosted by the Center for Cartoon Studies, this lively presentation about the making of Freedom and Unity, A Graphic Guide to Vermont Democracy features the cartoonists and scholars that helped create a comic book about the past, present, and potential of democracy and civics in Vermont.
In his award-winning Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America, journalist Eyal Press examines the morally troubling jobs that society tacitly condones, and the hidden class of workers who do them. Press, a contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times, discusses his reporting for the book, which won the 2022 Hillman Prize for book journalism and appeared on numerous “best books of 2021” lists.
Hosted by the Center for Cartoon Studies, this lively presentation about the making of Freedom and Unity, A Graphic Guide to Vermont Democracy features the cartoonists and scholars that helped create a comic book about the past, present, and potential of democracy and civics in Vermont.
Eleanor Jones Harvey, the author of “Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature and Culture,” illuminates Humboldt’s lasting impression on American visual arts, sciences, literature, and politics.
In the United States, all power is derived from the people. While this sounds noble in theory, can we expect the American public to have the wits and self-control to meet the demands of climate change? Constitutional scholar Meg Mott explores the paradox of self-governance when the natural foundations of life itself are changing.
This Fall Conference “supercut” video selects the best clips from our Democracy 20/20 Fall Conference and presents them all in a 13-minute video. Our first-ever virtual Fall Conference was just one of the ways that we pivoted to meet the challenges that 2020 brought to us and our state.
Knit Democracy Together is a modern take on historical knitting circles like those that supported the abolitionist and suffragist movements. At a time when people are losing confidence in government, this project creates a positive model of democracy.
Beginning with a greeting and historic overview of democracy in N’dakinna (Abenaki for Homeland), this panel of Abenaki voices considers the threads of place, home, belonging, and representation in a time of great social change.
In his award-winning Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America, journalist Eyal Press examines the morally troubling jobs that society tacitly condones, and the hidden class of workers who do them. Press, a contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times, discusses his reporting for the book, which won the 2022 Hillman Prize for book journalism and appeared on numerous “best books of 2021” lists.
Video: With Mark A. Stoler. Marshall was the architect of both the Allied World War II victory and key U.S. Cold War policies, most notably the European Recovery Program, known as “the Marshall Plan,” for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Author and longtime Vermont journalist Yvonne Daley interviews David Moats, her former colleague from the Rutland Herald, about Moats’ series of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorials on the divisive issues arising from civil unions for same-sex couples.
Lake Champlain is home to hundreds of well-preserved shipwrecks that help tell the story of our region. But climate change is altering the lake’s underwater cultural heritage. Susan Evans McClure and Christopher Sabick from the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum consider the impact of historical objects changing before our eyes.
Video: The voices of the Progressive Era, including Jane Addams, W. E. B. Du Bois, Theodore Roosevelt, and Zitkála-Šá, didn’t come from nowhere. Heather Cox Richardson explains how they articulated a vision for America that had its roots in the runaway capitalism of the Gilded Age.
Video: The failures of Reconstruction, increasing levels of lynching and racial violence, and the economic stagnation of sharecropping encouraged many black southerners to seek steady factory work in northern cities like New York and Chicago.
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.
