Upcoming Speakers: 2024-2025

Upcoming Speakers 2024-2025

Talks will begin throughout the state starting January 2024.

Hosts: You can reach out to Sarah Faulkner at sarah@humanities.org to start the booking process.

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Art and Music

Students work together to paint a large wall mural in the Madhubani style.

Ancient Art, Modern Freedom: Madhubani Painting as a Tool for Liberation

Deepti Agrawal

Photograph of Quincy Jones playing with a band in Seattle

Stomp and Shout: The Untold Story of Northwest Rock & Roll

Peter Blecha

Black and white photograph of Jimi Hendrix playing the guitar in 1967

They Want Our Rhythm, but Not Our Blues: African American Innovation through Pop Culture

LaToya Brackett

Beyond Words: Storytelling through Indian Classical Dance

Piyali Biswas De

Image of a breakdancer upside-down, balancing on one hand. It's night time and the dancer is lit from behind.

That Ribbon of Highway: Woody Guthrie in the Pacific Northwest

Joel Underwood

Culture

Photograph of the Teapot Dome Service Station located in Zillah, WA: a white and red building in the shape of a teapot, complete with spout and handle. A sign sticks out of the top reading "GAS".

History

We Are Also in Bondage Here: Black Women in the Washington Civil Rights Movement

Quin’Nita Cobbins-Modica

A drawing of a UFO flying over the mountains

UFO Northwest: How Washington State Spawned the Men In Black

Steve Edmiston

Betty Robinson crosses the finish line to win the first Olympic gold in the women’s 100m final in 1928.

Fast Girls: Trailblazing Women Olympians

Elise Hooper

Photograph of a crowded chamber with Gary Cooper testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a “friendly” witness

Un-American Activities: The Blacklist Era and Hollywood

Robert Horton

Fish Wars: Tribal Rights, Resistance, and Resiliency in the Pacific Northwest

Kestrel Smith

Image of retro advertisement for Washington apples out of Wenatchee.

Big Apples, Big Business: How Washington Became the Apple State

Amanda Van Lanen

Image of Yakima Nation fishing scaffolding.

Hunting, Fishing, and Native Sovereignty

Aaron Whitefoot

Literature

Black and white image of a hand-drawn werewolf on the night of a full moon.

Race, Gender, and Monsters: What Vampires and Werewolves Reveal About Ourselves and Our Culture

Bernadette Calafell

The image is taken from the book cover of "Parable of the Sower", a 1993 speculative fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler. The image depicts a black woman with her hands raised, a glowing orb seemingly suspended between them.

Future Tense: The Thrill of Speculative Fiction

Tara Campbell

A photograph of a group of kids looking at a comic book

Sequential: The Storytelling Power of Comic Books

Josh Tuininga

Image of scattered, old, black and white photographs

How to Write a Family Portrait / Como Escribir un Retrato Familiar

Kristen Millares Young

Philosophy

Morality and Medicine: How Philosophy Can Help with Healthcare Decisions

William Kabasenche

The Trickster: How this Ancient Archetype Helps Us to Imagine a Better World

Shepherd Siegel

Keeping It Real: How Conversation Creates Truth

Mike VanQuickenborne

Science and Technology

Photograph of Muhammad Ahmad as a child with his father

When Your Grandpa Is a Bot: AI, Death, and Digital Dopplegangers

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad

Image of two 90s-era computers facing each other with a rainbow heart in between.

Love and Modems: How the Early Internet Helped LGBT Communities

Avery Dame-Griff

Society

A photograph of someone curled up on a couch, clutching their legs to their chest.

The Firsts: Latina Struggles in the United States

Maria Chávez

A photograph of a dilapidated teal couch sitting outside in front of a pink wall.

Homelessness and the Meaning of Home

Josephine Ensign

Have You No Sense of Decency? Shame in American Politics

Carolyn Long

Honoring Women Peacebuilders in Africa and Beyond

Richard Middleton-Kaplan

Various pills spilled on a table cast in a blue light

What If We’re Wrong about Drugs?

Ingrid Walker

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Our Mission

Humanities Washington opens minds and bridges divides by creating spaces to explore different perspectives.

"It isn't enough to say we 'need' the humanities because we ARE the humanities. They are gifts to us from our predecessors, ancestors, and contemporaries. They represent the imagination, [the] innovative, and ask us to think deeply—as the greatest philosophers and artists have always asked us for the last 2,500 years—about our experience, and to think beyond the various intellectually lazy forms of ideology circulating in America today."

Charles Johnson

Author and National Book Award winner for Middle Passage