Partner Programs

Join us for our first TN Writers | TN Stories with Marissa R. Moss, Her Country (Henry Holt) in conversation with Jewly Hight, WNXP editorial director and NPR music reporter. Our new book series, in partnership with Humanities Tennessee, Chapter 16 and Vanderbilt University Press, begins with a reading by music journalist Marissa R. Moss of Her Country and a discussion with Jewly Hight, WNXP editorial…

As part of our book series and Juneteenth programming, Leigh Ann Gardner reads from To Care for the Sick and Bury the Dead: African American Lodges and Cemeteries in Tennessee, before joining journalist, author and historian, and board member of the Nashville Chapter of the Afro-American Genealogical Society, Natalie Bell, in discussion. Benevolent Orders, the Sons of Ham, Prince…

The East TN Historical Society will host history teachers to study the people and events of the Trail of Tears, and explore best practices for bringing this history to the classroom. Site visits include New Echota, Chief Van House, Red Clay, and the Hiawassee Heritage Center. This teachers' institute is partially supported through Humanities TN's…

Australia advertise that they fry their chicken “Nashville-style.” Thousands of people attend the Music City Hot Chicken Festival each year. The James Beard Foundation has given Prince’s Chicken Shack an American Classic Award for inventing the dish. But for almost seventy years, hot chicken was made and sold primarily in Nashville’s Black neighborhoods—and the story…

As part of our programming for our exhibition, Painting the Smokies: Art, Community, and the Making of a National Park, Zentner reads from his award-winning young adult novel, In the Wild Light. Life in small-town Tennessee has never been easy. Cash already lost his mother to an opioid addiction and is losing his papaw, who raised him, one…

In Title IX, Pat Summitt, and Tennessee’s Trailblazers, Mary Ellen Pethel introduces readers to past and present pioneers—each instrumental to the success of women’s athletics across the state of Tennessee and the nation.

Join us in Memphis on March 14-17 as we gather on the river with the TAMfam to explore this theme, visit landmark historic sites and museums with national significance and prepare ourselves to be leaders in our state during times that may continue to be difficult but also offer opportunities for change that the revolutionaries…

A gripping and meticulously crafted work of narrative nonfiction, Walk Through Fire: The Train Disaster That Changed America (on-sale February 21, 2023) reconstructs the events of a horrific explosion in 1978 that can still be felt today. The explosion of a tank car full of liquid propane devastated the small town of Waverly, Tennessee, shocked the nation,…

Tennessee History Day is the state level contest for National History Day. Students from across Tennessee come to Nashville to showcase the exhibits, performances, websites, papers, and documentary films they have created. National History Day is a year-long education program for students in grades 6-12 that engages both educators and students to improve the teaching…

Join us as we explore biographies — each with a unique approach — of two legendary Tennessee figures, David Crockett and Timothy Demonbreun. In We Should Soon Become Respectable: Nashville's Own Timothy Demonbreun, Author Elizabeth Elkins sorts through the legends and nails down the facts in order to present the true story of "Nashville's First Citizen." In The…

Parnassus Books, in partnership with Humanities TN, is pleased to present an evening with Abraham Verghese as he discusses his new book, The Covenenant of Water. This is a ticketed event which will take place IN STORE on Thursday, May 18th at 6:30pm Central Time. Masks are strongly encouraged during this event.  Ticketing: Each ticket is $35.00 and includes…

You: The Story is a powerful how-to book for aspiring writers that encourages you to look inward and excavate your own memories in order to discover the authentic voices and compelling details that are waiting to be put on the page. Masterfully weaving in humorous and heartfelt stories from her own life that illustrate an aspect…

In graduate school, Rachel Martin volunteered with a Southern oral history project. One day, she was sent to a small town in Tennessee, in the foothills of the Appalachians, where locals wanted to build a museum to commemorate the events of September 1956, when Clinton High School became the first school in the former Confederacy…

The first book to explore the history of college fight songs as a culturally important phenomenon, From Dixie to Rocky Top zeroes in on the US South, where college football has forged a powerful, quasi-religious sense of meaning and identity throughout the region. Tracing the story of Southeastern Conference (SEC) fight songs from the late nineteenth to the…

The presidential election of 1844 had it all: an unpopular incumbent forced out of the race, a perennial presidential loser, a candidate whose career appeared to be on life support, a long-shot whose political ideology had been transformed by religious conversion, even a political assassination. Out of this collection of contenders emerged James K. Polk,…

Poet, editor, and educator Ciona Rouse is the author of Vantablack, the first chapbook of Third Man Books (2017). Her poetry has appeared in the journals Oxford American, Wildness, Booth, The Account, Still, Talking River, Gabby Journal, Matter: a journal of political poetry and commentary and other publications. She has been featured on NPR Music and has work selected by Ada Limón for the podcast The Slowdown.

The Tigerbelles tells the epic story of the 1960 Tennessee State University all-Black women's track team, which found Olympic glory at the 1960 games in Rome. The author tells a story of desire, success and failure--of beating the odds--against the backdrop of a changing America, but tells it in an intimate way. Readers will come to…

Southern History Remixed: On Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Dilemma of Race is a book about popular music. But it also is a book about southern history. The two are not mutually exclusive. Ultimately, it is an exploration which demonstrates that what occurs in the musical realm does affect and reflect what happens in the historical…

On September 10, 1957, Hattie Cotton Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee, blew up. On March 16, 1958, the Jewish Community Center was bombed. On April 19, 1960, the home of Civil Rights attorney and Nashville city councilman, Z. Alexander Looby was dynamited. He and his wife were lucky to escape with their lives. These bombings…

Parasite meets Such a Fun Age in a scorching debut that is as heartbreaking as it is thrilling, examining the intersection of race, class, and female friendship, and the devastating consequences of everyday actions. After her best friend’s mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith’s picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs has spiraled out of control—so much so that she hires a…

*THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT* As Charles Strobel, beloved Nashville priest and advocate for the unhoused, reached the end of his life in 2023, he began to contemplate the last message he wanted to leave for his family, friends, and community. With the help of his niece, Katie Seigenthaler, and his colleague, Amy Frogge, Charlie…