Browse recordings of our First Wednesdays public humanities lectures from our current and previous seasons. Please note that it can sometimes take several weeks for a recorded talk to be made available for viewing after the event.
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In this fascinating talk, the author of our Vermont Reads 2021 choice, “We Contain Multitudes,” examines the writing and reading of letters as a literary device and also as a forum for self-expression and self-creation.
In 1885, a group of Lithuanian immigrants settled in Burlington’s Old North End, where they transplanted their religious traditions and culture. Archivists Aaron Goldberg and Jeff Potash describe the “Lost Mural,” a rare survivor of the lost genre of European painted synagogues, and tell the story of conserving the mural in Burlington.
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.
Andrew Aydin, co-author of The March Trilogy with civil rights icon John Lewis, describes the creation of the next book in the series, RUN! Aydin also relates becoming an author, how he became involved in politics, and his experiences working with Congressman Lewis.
19th century Americans often saved or exchanged locks of hair, constructing jewelry or keepsake wreaths of their kinship networks. In more recent decades, hair has become a powerful political medium. Middlebury professor Ellery Foutch shares the research about hair-based works in local collections and explores the meanings of hair in American culture, past and present.
UVM professor Ilyse Morgenstein Fuerst examines how race, religion, and gender affect the lives of Black Muslim women in the US. Exploring this diverse community helps illuminate how intersectionality functions, but also how one’s identity shapes religious practice and the experience of discrimination.
Scholar Barry Deitz looks at the life and times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. He discusses the inspiration for Holmes and examines what other writers, actors, and directors have done with the character over the past 30 years.
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.”
Artist, legislator, and former director of the Flynn Center in Burlington, John R. Killacky draws on commentaries from his book Because Art to relate his experiences as dancer in New York in the late 1970s and ’80s, the maelstrom of the culture Wars of the 1990s, and his work advocating for artists with disabilities.
How did America’s most iconic food holiday come to include green bean casserole? What did the Wampanoag people and the Pilgrims really eat in 1621? Susan Evans McClure, executive director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, serves up the story of Thanksgiving foods and how they help us understand our American identity.
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.
Puerto Rican climate justice leader Elizabeth Yeampierre has helped pass climate legislation at all levels, including New York’s progressive Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. In this talk she describes how intergenerational BIPOC activists are changing the landscape of national climate priorities by speaking up for themselves and their neighborhoods.
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.
Artist, legislator, and former director of the Flynn Center in Burlington, John R. Killacky draws on commentaries from his book Because Art to relate his experiences as dancer in New York in the late 1970s and ’80s, the maelstrom of the culture Wars of the 1990s, and his work advocating for artists with disabilities.
Video: Citing examples from the works of Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Stuart Davis, Charles Sheeler, and others, former Head of American Paintings at Christie’s and Sotheby’s James Maroney provides an overview of American art from 1913 to 1949 and explains its importance and beauty.
Video: The Qur’an states that God created differences not only as a test for humanity but also as a path toward self-knowledge. Marlboro College professor Amer Latif considers how the Qur’an frames the perennial problem of living more harmoniously in a diverse world.
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.
Video: Middlebury political scientist Sarah Stroup focuses on two questions for both local and national discourse: What topics are suitable for public discussion? And how can we facilitate productive disagreements?
Video: Acclaimed children’s book author Katherine Paterson discusses her novel of historical fiction that tells the story of the 1912 “Bread and Roses” strike in the Lawrence, Massachusetts textile mills through the eyes of an Italian-American girl and a runaway boy.
Video: From Charlotte’s Web to his exquisite essays in The New Yorker, E. B. White remains the master’s master of elegant prose, sophisticated wit, and graceful irreverence. Drawing on his stories, essays, poems, and letters, Dartmouth professor Nancy Jay Crumbine celebrates White’s versatility and enormous legacy.
Cartoonist Glynnis Fawkes explains the research and design processes she followed to create her graphic biography, “Charlotte Brontë Before Jane Eyre.” Focusing on two segments of the biography, she illuminates moments in Brontë’s life that were key to her literary success.
When things get rough — a global pandemic, the threat of nuclear war and global climate collapse — we turn to Disney and the Hallmark channel. Middlebury professor Laurie Essig reviews the ideology that sells us hope for a better future if we only find “the one.”
Conspiracy theory, once on the fringes of American democracy, is now at its the center. Russell Muirhead examines the nature of current conspiracy talk, and what it is doing to our democracy.
Photographer Dona Ann McAdams and curator John Killacky discuss the culture wars of the early 1990s and McAdams’ exhibition at the Helen Day Art Center, “Dona Ann McAdams: Performative Acts.”
Video: Focusing on the prewar experience of non-Jewish citizens, Keene State professor Paul Vincent examines how ideology and terror undermined human dignity, numbed self-awareness, and atomized German society.
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.
