The Center promotes understanding of the humanities and highlights their vital role in a vibrant, democratic society through a variety of public programs and initiatives, podcasts, and events.
Humanities in Action
Addressing Structural Racism in the Academy
We must pay attention to those whose experiences of the academy have been shaped by encounters with racial bias if we are to have hope of correcting it.
Pursuing Justice and Preserving Open Debate
How do we balance our pursuit of a more just and equitable society with our desire to protect freedom of expression?
Calling on the Humanities in the Midst of a Pandemic
What role do the humanities play in confronting a crisis like COVID-19?
Loss, Grief, and the Humanities in the Time of Pandemic
The humanities demonstrate we are never alone in our experience, but are always caught up in recurring and collective cycles of life, death, and suffering.
Humanities Moments
A National Reckoning
Contributors to this collection reflect on the long, and often overlooked, history of racial inequality with an eye towards how the humanities can help overcome past injustices.
Creating Shelter: Moments from Home
In this collection of moments, contributors imagine home as a place, a feeling, a set of relationships, and as a site of learning and personal growth.
Homeschooling and the Humanities
College freshman Isabella Kemp shares her self-realizations and new understandings gained through homeschooling family members during the quarantine.
Using Language to Humanize Healthcare
Dr. Michael Stanley celebrates a principle of healthcare that draws from philosophy, mythology, and literature to understand individuals and their circumstances.
Podcasts
Discovery and Inspiration
Podcast Series
What makes scholars so passionate about the subjects they pursue? What is it like for them to make a new discovery? To answer a confounding question? And what can we learn by taking the time to ask scholars about the research they are doing?
Nerds in the Woods
Podcast Series
A series of virtual audio journeys through the intellectual woods, surveying some of the compelling topics being studied by historians and philosophers, scholars of literature, art, and other fields who come to the Center from all over the world.
Activism Beyond the City: Women, Rural Communities, and the Struggle for Black Freedom
Katherine Mellen Charron (Fellow, 2019–20)
Charron discusses her research into the legacies of local, community-based, rural Black women’s activism in North Carolina.
Religious Toleration in America
John Corrigan (Fellow, 2014–15)
In this podcast, host Richard Schramm talks with John Corrigan about America’s often forgotten history of religious intolerance despite our ideals, and how that history has been all but lost.
Events
NHC Virtual Book Club Series: The American Experiment
September 30–October 28, 2020
This series of the National Humanities Center’s popular virtual book club examines our democracy—its history, accomplishments, failings, and current challenges.
Local Color
On Exhibit
Joel Elliott and Richard Schramm have spent years traveling around the Southeast capturing images that reveal the complex character of this region and its people in details that we might otherwise miss.
NHC Virtual Book Club Series: Race and Injustice
July 15–August 19, 2020
This installment in our virtual book club series featured six gifted scholars whose work helps illuminate the long history, bitter realities, and complex dynamics surrounding racial oppression in the United States.
Beyond Despair: Theory and Practice in Environmental Humanities
April 3–5, 2019
This unique three-day summit of environmental humanities scholars and experts from across the country featured a dynamic intersection between discussion, presentations, and exhibitions, grounded in practical site excursions.
Videos
NHC Virtual Book Club: “American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us”
David Bromwich, Yale University
Bromwich provides an essential analysis of the forces in play beneath the surface of our political system.
“Local Color” Artists’ Panel
Moderated by William Ferris
Ferris, esteemed Southern folklorist and former chairman of the NEH, talks with photographers Joel Elliott and Richard Schramm about their experiences traveling around the region taking pictures.
Educating Citizens and Reforming Generations
Alan Taylor (Fellow, 1993–94)
In the wake of the American Revolution, republican reliance on popular sovereignty complicated efforts by elites to improve voters through education.
An Evening with Seymour Hersh
NHC Public Event
Seymour “Sy” Hersh, one of our nation’s most important investigative journalists, discusses his most recent book, Reporter: A Memoir.
