Calendar of Events
Humanities for Everyone
January 2020
The Science of Happiness
Amherst College professor Catherine Sanderson describes cutting-edge research from the field of positive psychology on the factors that do (and do not) predict happiness, and shares practical ways to increase one's own psychological well-being. Read More »
February 2020
Love and Rockets and Alternative Comics
The 1980s comics movement offered an alternative to earlier mainstream superhero comics with groundbreaking works like Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez’s series Love and Rockets. Middlebury professor Enrique Garcia discusses the importance of this series and how its use of irony, parody, and nostalgia play with readers’ notions of race, ethnicity, and gender. Read More »
March 2020
The Poetics of Protest in Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam!”
In 1964, Nina Simone performed the protest song "Mississippi Goddam!" at Carnegie Hall in front of mostly white audiences. When the live recording was released, many radio stations destroyed the albums. Middlebury professor Matthew Evan Taylor discusses how Simone's protest is found not only in her words, but also in the musical structure. Read More »
April 2020
Charity and Sylvia: A Same-Sex Couple in Early Vermont
Drawing from the Sheldon Museum collections, archivist Eva Garcelon-Hart presents the story of two extraordinary women, Charity Bryant and Sylvia Drake, who were accepted in early 19th-century rural Vermont as a married couple. Read More »
May 2020
Edward Gorey’s Morbid Nonsense
Critics never knew quite what to make of Edward Gorey (1925-2000), the author and illustrator whose picture books full of murder, mayhem, and discreet depravity influenced Tim Burton, Lemony Snicket, and Guillermo Del Toro. In this illustrated lecture, cultural critic Mark Dery reveals the surprisingly serious themes woven through Gorey’s whimsically sinister body of work. Read More »