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.
Public Events
2025 Being Human Festival (US)
April 12–28, 2025
In partnership with humanists and humanities organizations across the country, the National Humanities Center is supporting 19 community-focused public events across the US.
“Positionality and Inequality in the Humanities”
February 28, 2024
In this Scholar-to-Scholar talk, NHC Fellows explore how scholars’ backgrounds and communities inform the research questions they pursue in the humanities.
Restoring Our Vitality: The Heart of the Matter and the Future of the Humanities
February–April 2023
In the wake of a global pandemic, amid festering social and political divisions, and with trust in higher education and other institutions ebbing, how might the humanities meaningfully improve life in twenty-first-century America?
A Crisis of Caring: The Humanities and Our Health
April 11–14, 2022
This interdisciplinary conference considers the ways that knowledge drawn from humanities disciplines and methodologies can help identify the symptoms and causes of our malaise while guiding us toward a healthier, more caring future.
In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities
April 7–22, 2021
This conference examines issues surrounding the integration of AI through a series of virtual events highlighting perspectives from leading humanists, scientists, engineers, artists, writers, and executives collectively advancing inquiry into key emerging questions.
Videos
UNC-TV’s “Conversation”: An Interview with Robert D. Newman
From the Director
National Humanities Center President and Director Robert D. Newman discusses the significance of the humanities in everyday life, the enduring importance of humanities scholarship, and the mission of the Center to advance humanities research, teaching, and public engagement.
Making Negro Literature: Literary Workspaces at the Margins of Print Culture
Public Events
Elizabeth McHenry (NHC Fellow, 1998–99) has been focusing on African American bibliographies, which emerged as experimental knowledge structures that provided ways of mapping and making sense of an emerging and rapidly evolving canon of “Negro literature.”
The Pre-History—and Likely Sequels—of the Insurrection at the U.S. Capitol
Scholar-to-Scholar Talk
The attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was the most violent assault on democracy in modern American history. Nancy MacLean (NHC Fellow, 2008–09; 2021–22) explains how it was the product of decades of intentional cultivation.
An Evening with Seymour Hersh
Public Events
Seymour “Sy” Hersh, one of our nation’s most important investigative journalists, discusses his most recent book, Reporter: A Memoir.
Podcasts
Activism and Resistance in Contemporary Latinx Theater
Elena Machado Sáez (NHC Fellow, 2022–23)
Sáez analyzes the ways that Latinx theater in the United States depicts forms of activism and resistance while building shared archives and communities.
The Zealy Daguerreotypes: Confronting Images of Enslavement
Gregg A. Hecimovich (NHC Fellow, 2022–23)
Some of the best-known pre-Civil War images of enslaved African Americans, these photographs tell us about legacies of white supremacy and enslavement in the United States.
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.
Humanities Moments
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage & the Humanities
May marks Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. This exhibit captures some of the many ways in which members of the Asian Pacific diaspora have left their indelible imprint on American history and culture.
Asian American Dreams
“Helen Zia’s Asian American Dreams was the first Asian American studies book I’d ever read and it inspired me to pursue my MA in Asian American studies at UCLA and my PhD in cultural studies at UC–Davis.”
How Korean Fan Dancing Helped Me Connect with My Adopted Son
“As a middle-aged American Caucasian woman with an adopted son from South Korea, I had a longing to understand my son’s heritage and feel more connected to him.”
Wabi-Sabi: The Perfectly Imperfect
“As part of my undergraduate degree in Asian studies, I took a class on Haiku, a traditional form of Japanese poetry. In analyzing and understanding the magic of these three-lines poems, we talked a lot about the traditional Japanese aesthetics on which they are based.”
Humanities in Action
Individual Rights vs. Social Responsibilities in a Pandemic
In a pluralistic society committed to personal freedom, how can the humanities help us take action to ensure the common good?
Healing Rifts and Restoring Civility
What role do the humanities play in resolving conflicts, establishing justice, and fostering unity?
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?
