Content about 2012

Each year the National Endowment for the Humanities hosts numerous summer programs for educators. The workshops and seminars cover a variety of topics in the humanities and are free of charge with stipends available for travel and other costs. If you are or you know a school, college, or university educator, take a look at the 2013 list of opportunities here.

Deadlines vary for application, so take a look soon and often!

Philanthropists Jim and Janet Ayers have donated 500 copies of the recent book The Art of Community: Janet and Jim Ayers’ Collection of Tennessee Art, to Humanities Tennessee. One hundred percent of the proceeds from sales of the book will benefit Humanities Tennessee programs, including the Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word.

Student Reader Day events this fall were bigger and better than ever thanks to generous grants from the Nashville Predators Foundation and Dollar General Literacy Foundation. We were able to send seven wonderful authors from this year’s Southern Festival of Books program to eight Title 1 elementary, middle, and high schools and we were able to purchase more than 1,600 books for participating students to keep to start (or add to) their own personal library.

To be part of the Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word as a reader, an author, or a volunteer is to be part of the larger literary community that comes together in Nashville every October. For three days, panel discussions, readings, and signings connect writers with readers.  This year, more than 60 exhibitors, three performance stages, and Nashville’s best food trucks helped to make the weekend a true celebration for book lovers.

Humanities Tennessee is proud to support two new projects designed to bring the humanities to rural and underserved audiences. On October 26th and 27, authors  read and discussed their work during a book festival at the Smoky Mountain Heritage Center in Townsend. This winter, the Global Education Center will host Egyptian Coptic poet Matthew Shenoda for public readings and a writing workshop at the Casa Azafran Community Center.

This conversation will focus on how people have remembered the Civil War, and whether their identity has shaped those memories, and, thus, the meaning of the Civil War to different individuals. The two major pieces under discussion are Robert Penn Warren’s The Legacy of the Civil War and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?”

This conversation focuses on questions of slavery and citizenship during the first century of American statehood. It is centered on the Supreme Court case of Dred Scot v. Sanford, but reaches back to the Declaration of Independence and forward to the 14th Amendment.

Barbara Kingsolver is known to both literary fiction enthusiasts and foodies. The Poisonwood Bible and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle author will come to the library on November 27 to discuss Flight Behavior. This newest novel tackles the contentious issue of climate change through characters of Kingsolver's native Appalachia.

On December 13, Pulitzer Prize winning biographer Jon Meacham will join us to discuss his newest work, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. This newest biography of our third president shows that Jefferson's genius lay in that he was both philosopher and politician.

This fall, Humanities Tennessee, in partnership with the Nashville Public Library, the Nashville Public Library Foundation, and Parnassus Books, is excited to present an outstanding lineup of authors for the Salon@615 series at the Main Library in Downtown Nashville.  The following have been confirmed: Molly Ringwald, Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis, Michael Chabon, Louise Erdrich, Sherman Alexie, Dennis Lehane, Mem Fox, Emma Donoghue, Barbara Kingsolver, Jon Meacham.

Each year, Humanities Tennessee provides funding support to Knoxville Public Library for the Children's Festival of Reading and to the Tennessee Historical Society in support of Tennessee History Day, the state competition for National History Day. Each of these programs promotes education in the humanities for the youth of Tennessee.

We have posted this year's lineup of confirmed authors. Read it early and often -- we'll update the list regularly over the next few weeks.