Celebrating the Humanities Day, April 27,2011 « Missouri Humanities Council

The Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, the Missouri Humanities Council, and the Center for the Humanities at the University of Missouri-St. Louis are pleased to announce our first annual “Celebrating the Humanities Day,” to take place on Wednesday, April 27, 2011. This celebration is meant to showcase the importance of the activities associated with the humanities: reading, making, viewing, writing, analyzing, in short, how we, as scholars, as artists, as citizens, and as members of the general public, engage critically with our culture and its representations.

Two speakers will be featured for this event: Chicago Humanities Festival founder Richard Franke will present an overview of the Chicago Humanities Festival mission and provide advice about how St. Louis can organize a similar event. Mr. Franke’s presentation will be at 12:30 p.m. At 5 p.m., Geoffrey Galt Harpham, president and director of the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina, will give a lecture based on his new book, The Humanities and the Dream of America (University of Chicago Press, 2011).

Wednesday, April 27, 12:30 pm to 2:00 pm, Luncheon
The Knight Center, Room 200, Washington University in St. Louis

Humanities and Civic Involvement
By Chicago Humanities Patron Richard Franke

Richard J. Franke is past chairman and CEO of John Nuveen & Co., where he was known for incorporating humanities and the arts into the life of the firm. Educated at Springfield High School, Springfield, Illinois (Class of 1949), Yale (BA, 1953, Phi Beta Kappa) and the Harvard Business School (MBA, 1957), Franke has become a nationally recognized spokesman for the humanities. In addition to serving on numerous cultural boards, he endowed the Humanities Center at the University of Chicago, which bears his name, and he is the founder of the Chicago Humanities Festival, an annual, citywide event lasting several weeks that is devoted to the humanities and the arts. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Clinton and elected into the American Academy for Arts and Sciences. He has served as a Senior Fellow of the Yale Corporation, and he currently serves on the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Barbara. RSVP is required for this event.

Wednesday, April 27, 5 pm, Public Lecture
Formal Lounge of the Women’s Building, Washington University in St. Louis

Melancholy in the Midst of Abundance: How America Invented the Humanities
By Geoffrey Galt Harpham, president and director of the National Humanities Center

Geoffrey Galt Harpham is president and director of the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, the only institute for advanced study in the world dedicated exclusively to the humanities. He was trained as a literary scholar, but his work has encompassed a wide range of topics and fields. Among his many books are On the Grotesque: Strategies of Contradiction in Art and Literature (1982); Shadows of Ethics: Criticism and the Just Society (1999); and Language Alone: The Critical Fetish of Modernity (2002). In recent years, he has become a prominent historian of and advocate for the humanities; The Humanities and the Dream of America appeared in 2011. Under his leadership, the National Humanities Center has sponsored initiatives that have encouraged dialogue between the humanities and the natural and social sciences. Professor Harpham’s talk is free and open to the public.