Beginning in September 2021, the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH)’s “A More Perfect Union” (AMPU) Initiative has sparked conversation, education, and civic engagement opportunities across the states and territories. Awarding … Read more
Beginning in September 2021, the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH)’s “A More Perfect Union” (AMPU) Initiative has sparked conversation, education, and civic engagement opportunities across the states and territories. Awarding … Read more
In February, the humanities council community commemorates the critical contributions, lived experiences, and cultural heritage of Black Americans who have shaped the country’s history…
“I was trying to bring these two worlds together and kind of create a pathway for everyone to engage with this work,” Wilkins said.
From “Native American” and “American Indian” to “Alaska Native” and “Native Hawaiian,” no generalized term is exactly right, explained panelists, given that these terms originate in English.
November marks a time of gratitude but also commemoration with National Native American Heritage Month, and Indigenous cultures are often the focus of humanities councils’ work.
In a year that demanded so much from our humanity, these programs brought opportunities for community members to express themselves, gather together, and provide much-needed context for what we were experiencing as a nation.
Writer and visual artist Melissa Melero-Moose talks about fostering creativity during the pandemic on the Reno-Sparks Indian colony in Hungry Valley, NV. Eric Hemenway, director of the Department of Repatriation, Archives and Records for the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, explains how storytelling can uncover misrepresentations about Native communities.
L. Danyetta Najoli, co-founder of The Black American Tree Project, explains how the immersive story-telling project’s design evokes a sense of reckoning with slavery’s origins. Dr. Jack Tchen, the Inaugural Clement A. Price Chair in Public History and the Humanities and Director of the Price Institute at Rutgers University, takes a deep dive into histories of dispossession.
Jenny De Groot, a children’s librarian on Orcas Island in the Pacific Northwest, reads some of her favorite books while sharing how her remote community found ways to connect during the pandemic. Dr. Chuck Fluharty, founder, President, and CEO of the Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI), explores the future of rural and urban communities through a public humanities lens.
Adrienne Kennedy, a climate activist and organizer from south Lumberton, North Carolina, talks about what environmental justice looks like for her after Hurricane Matthew destroyed her home. Dr. Joseph Campana, director of the Center for Environmental Studies at Rice University, explores ways the humanities can help us process relentless patterns of climate catastrophe.
In the summer of 2020, Kristina Moe was preparing to open Water/Ways, a Smithsonian travelling exhibit and one of the first North Carolina Humanities “Watershed Moments” events of the year, at the Macon County Public Library where she works as a reference assistant. “To be honest, I was very nervous,” Moe recalled.
Carol Ann Carl, a storyteller from Pohnpei Island in the Federated States of Micronesia, talks about how she uses poetry to advocate for historically marginalized communities, and two-term US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey describes how poetry can articulate acts of civic engagement.