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.
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.
From “Birth of a Nation” to “Gone With the Wind,” harmful stereotypes of Black life were the rule in Hollywood. After World War II, there was some progress in showing a more realistic picture on the screen, due to the efforts of younger, more progressive Hollywood screenwriters – many of whom wound up on the Hollywood Blacklist.
Classical music has been used to enhance many of our favorite films. Join Rick Winston as he explores how music makes these films, and experience clips from these films and others.
Much of current American culture seems divorced from the realities of ordinary (and especially, rural) life. The images of “country life” for so many Americans alternates between Oh, isn’t this charming and rustic! and Oh, how rural and backward! Sometimes it is patronizing and infuriating. Other times it just seems disappointing and sad. Join Scudder Parker for an exploration of these topics.
In Vermont’s Constitution, citizens are urged to develop the civic virtues of justice, moderation, temperance, industry and frugality. This presentation considers the role Vermont’s five civic virtues hold in our current moment.
Deliberation is the practice that holds our democracy together, but does it always lead to better decisions? When citizens only talk to like-minded citizens, the thinking gets stuck and the decisions tend to be more extreme. Presenter Meg Mott gives participants a chance to find new ways to think about a contentious issue using two fundamental principles of the Constitution: separation of powers and free speech.
On the 75th anniversary of The Catcher in the Rye, Jay Craven chronicles the life of J.D. Salinger from a young cadet at Valley Forge Military Academy to an interrogator during World War II, including via unpublished writings provided by his estate, to illuminate the fiercely anti-war sentiments of his most famous novel.
While George Washington aimed to curb his own influence and image lest the citizenry come to view him as a monarch, he frequently indulged romantic ideas around his manliness. Jay Craven shows how the figure he allegedly cut – as the “political savior of our nation” who bravely “conducted the Americans’ thro seas of blood” – helped form America’s foundational warrior archetype, and its closely related, ever-evolving masculine mold.
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.
