TAM Conference - Memphis
2023-03-15 00:00 - 2023-03-17 23:59 (America/Chicago) | Tennessee
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 who called Memphis home or just passed through could only dream of seeing.

Folk & Traditional Arts Day-Turkey Calls
2023-03-18 13:00 - 15:00 | Creative Discovery Museum, 321 Chestnut St, Chattanooga, TN 37402, USA
Join the Creative Discovery Museum for a demonstration and discussion of turkey calls with Kenny Brancefield at 1pm and 3pm, and tour the museum’s new Appalachian Arts exhibit to experience the sights, sounds and smells of a traditional ramp festival.
Visit the museum’s website for more information.
The Folk & Traditional Arts series is partly supported by Humanities Tennessee’s General Grant program.

Reimagining America: The Maps of Lewis & Clark
2023-03-26 00:00 - 2023-05-06 23:59 | Lewis County Depot, 112 E. Main Street, Hohenwald, TN
Join the Lewis County Historical Society at the Depot Center for a traveling exhibit, Reimagining America: The Maps of Lewis & Clark, organized by the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation.
The exhibit explores the impact on map making of the expedition, including the geography of indigenous cartographic traditions.
The project is made possible with partial support from Humanities Tennessee.

Folk & Traditional Arts Days: Ramp Cooking
2023-04-01 14:00 - 15:00 | Creative Discovery Museum, 321 Chestnut St, Chattanooga, TN 37402, USA
Join the Creative Discovery Museum for a ramp cooking class and discussion, and tour the museum’s new Appalachian Arts exhibit to experience the sights, sounds and smells of a traditional ramp festival.
Visit the museum’s website for more information.
The Folk & Traditional Arts series is partly supported by Humanities Tennessee’s General Grant program.

TN Writers/TN Stories presents Yasmine Ali
2023-04-08 12:00 - 13:30 | Tennessee State Museum, 1000 Rosa L Parks Blvd, Nashville, TN 37208, USA
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, and led to the creation of transformational laws and regulations which have since been adopted by countries around the world as a template for disaster management. Yasmine S. Ali, MD, is a cardiologist and former president of the Vanderbilt History of Medicine Society.

Southern But Not Country: The Interwar Career of Nashville Bandleader Francis Craig
2023-04-11 17:30 - 18:30 | Tennessee
Join the Tennessee Historical Society for the next event in a series of free, virtual discussions. Dr. Carrie Allen Tipton, of Vanderbilt, provides a window into interwar Southern consumption and production of mainstream popular music.
For more information and registration visit the THS website.
This event is part of a series, Tennessee 101: the History of Tennessee Music, funded, in part, by Humanities Tennessee.

Tennessee History Day Competition
2023-04-15 00:00 - 23:59 | Tennessee
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 and learning of history in public, private, and home schools. Students who participate have shown dramatic improvements in research techniques, writing skills, historical knowledge, creativity, literacy, communication, civic engagement, and college readiness. In addition to these skills, a 2011 study demonstrates that students who participate in National History Day outperform their non-NHD peers on state standardized tests in multiple subjects, including reading, science, and math, as well as social studies.
The Tennessee Historical Society became the state affiliate of National History Day in the 2008-9 academic year. Since that time, student and educator participation across the state has more than doubled. Over 7250 students across the state participate in National History Day. After competing in a cycle of contests, a delegation of approximately 65 students is selected to represent Tennessee at the National History Day contest, held each June in College Park, MD.

Carl T. Rowan, Naval Officer, Journalist, Diplomat
2023-04-15 12:00 - 13:00 | Warren Arts Performing Arts Center, Morrison
Join Warren Arts for a presentation and discussion by Mark Dudney about the life and legacy of locally-born journalist and diplomat, Carl Rowan.
This keynote event of the Caney Fork Writer’s Conference is free and open to the public. The remainder of the conference requires registration. More details may be found here.
Humanities Tennessee provided partial funding for this keynote event.

Reimagining America Speaker Series: Dr. Antoine Saugrain
2023-04-15 13:00 - 14:00 | Lewis County Public Library, 15 Kyle Street, Hohenwald 38462
Join the Lewis Co. Historical Society in welcoming Char Ollinger Waughtel, who will discuss Dr. Antoine Saugrain at the county library.
The speaker series coincides with the exhibition Reimagining America: The Maps of Lewis & Clark, on view in the Hohenwald Historic Depot, 112 East Main Street.
The project received partial support form Humanities TN.

TN Writers/TN Stories presents Elizabeth Elkins and Scott Williams
2023-05-13 10:30 - 12:00 | Tennessee State Museum, 1000 Rosa L Parks Blvd, Nashville, TN 37208, USA
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 Accidental Fame and Lack of Fortune of West Tennessee’s David Crockett, Scott Williams uncovers what propelled Crockett’s fascinating journey, while also examining the birth of Tennessee during one of the most fascinating periods in American history.

Folk & Traditional Arts Days: Old Time Music
2023-05-13 13:00 - 15:00 | Creative Discovery Museum, 321 Chestnut St, Chattanooga, TN 37402, USA
Join the Creative Discovery Museum for an old time music concert and discussion with the players at 1pm and 3pm, and tour the museum’s new Appalachian Arts exhibit to experience the sights, sounds and smells of a traditional ramp festival.
Visit the museum’s website for more information.
The Folk & Traditional Arts series is partly supported by Humanities Tennessee’s General Grant program.

Abraham Verghese at Parnassus Books
2023-05-18 18:30 - 19:30 | Tennessee
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 one general admission seat, and one signed copy of The Covenant of Water. There will be a signing line after the event where books may be personalized.
www.parnassusbooks.net
From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone, comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, and following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret
The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning–and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl–and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi–will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.
A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years
About the Author
Abraham Verghese is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the author the NBCC Award finalist My Own Country and the New York Times Notable Book The Tennis Partner. His most recent book, Cutting for Stone, spent 107 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and sold more than 1.5 million copies in the U.S. alone. It was translated into more than twenty languages and is being adapted for film by Anonymous Content. Verghese was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2016, has received five honorary degrees, and is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He lives and practices medicine in Stanford, California where he is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine. A decade in the making, The Covenant of Water is his first book since Cutting for Stone.

Social Judgement: Physiognomy & Silhouettes
2023-06-29 08:00 - 17:00 | Exchange Place Historic Site, 4812 Orebank Rd, Kingsport, TN, United States
The Exchange Place Junior Apprentices will attend a workshop exploring the widespread prejudices associated with 18th-19th centuries practice of silhouette portraiture and similar expressions over time to the present.

Historic Figures of Tipton-Haynes
2023-07-01 00:00 - 2023-08-31 23:59 | Chester Inn State Historic Site and Museum, 116 W. Main Street, Joneborough, TN, 37659, United States
Organized by the Tipton-Haynes Historic Site, this traveling exhibit that explores the people and the past of the storied site, and the property’s role in broader, regional history.
Click here for more information about the Chester Inn, or here for more about Tipton-Haynes.
The project is partly supported by Humanities Tennessee.

Community Author Experience Project: Tammera Hicks
2023-07-11 18:30 - 20:30 | Tennessee
Join the Soddy Daisy Community Library for a discussion with Tammera Hicks, Director of Native American Services, who will explore the stories, myths, history and culture of Native Americans in the region.

Humanities TN provide partial support for the Community Author Experience Project.

Community Author Experience Project: Kimberly Brock
2023-07-13 17:30 - 20:30 | Tennessee
Author Kimberly Brock will present a writing workshop, followed by a discussion of her historical fiction at the Soddy Daisy Community Library.

Register for free at Eventbrite.

Humanities TN provided partial support for the Community Author Experience Project.

The Role of the Replica
2023-07-14 00:00 - 2023-12-31 23:59 | The Parthenon, 2500 West End Ave, Nashville, TN 37203, USA, 2901 Parthenon Ave, United States
Visit the Parthenon’s latest exhibition for an interactive, hands-on exploration of how replicas of ancient items and places are created, and why they teach us so much about our understanding of the past.
Visit the Centennial Park Conservancy’s webpage for more information and a calendar of events.
Humanities TN provided partial support for this project.

Ruta Sepetys: You: The Story: A Writer's Guide to Craft Through Memory
2023-07-15 10:30 - 12:00 | Tennessee State Museum, 1000 Rosa L Parks Blvd, Nashville, TN 37208, USA
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 of the craft of writing (such as plot, character development, or dialogue), Sepetys then inspires readers with a series of writing prompts and exercises.

WYXR x MoSH: The Way They Play panel discussion
2023-07-20 18:00 - 20:00 | Tennessee
WYXR and the Memphis Museum of Science & History (MoSH) are joining forces to uplift the voices of prominent local guitarists in Memphis by hosting a live panel discussion called “The Way They Play.” The panel guests will include multiple Memphis guitarists featured in the touring exhibit “America At The Crossroads: The GUITAR and a Changing Nation,” and its companion exhibit, “Grind City Picks: The Music that Made Memphis, on view June 10-Oct 23. Humanities TN provided partial support for the public panel.

Community Author Experience Project: Kiersten Modglin
2023-07-20 18:30 - 20:30 | Tennessee
Join the Soddy Daisy Community Library for a discussion with author Kiersten Modglin, who will discuss her body of work in addition to her latest undertaking.

Register for free at Eventbrite.

Humanities TN provided partial support for the Community Author Experience Project.

Voices & Votes: Let's Talk about It
2023-07-27 18:00 - 19:00 | Dickson County Library, TN, United States
The Promise Land Heritage Association is hosting a discussion panel program to complement the Smithsonian-Museum on Main Street exhibit “Voices and Votes: Democracy in America” which is currently on display at the Promise Land Historic Site in Charlotte.
The public is invited to join the discussion with distinguished panelists about the history of voting, local campaigns and elections, civic engagement, and the importance of voting.
The panelists are:

Zach Kinslow, Executive Director of Clement Railroad Hotel Museum and Democratic Committeeman for Tennessee’s 23rd District;
Angela Redden, owner of Reading Rock Books and former candidate for the 69th District State Representative seat;
Sissy Driver, a Commissioner of the Dickson County Election Commission;
Dr. Brian Russell, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tennessee State University.

The moderator for the discussion is Dr. Learotha Williams, scholar of African American, Civil War and Reconstruction, and Public History at Tennessee State University. The discussion panel program is free and open to the public. There will be an opportunity for questions and comments by members of the audience. For additional information about the “Voices and Votes: Democracy in America” exhibit or to schedule a tour, contact the Promise Land Heritage Association at 615-707-2130.

Community Author Experience: Rhyme N Chatt Interactive poetry Organization
2023-07-27 18:30 - 20:30 | Tennessee
The Soddy Daisy Community Library welcomes poets Taylor Iman, N’nako Kande, and MK Simon from Rhyme N Chatt Interactive Poetry Organization, to read from their works and discuss the poetic process.

Register for free at Eventbrite.

Humanities TN provided partial funding for the Community Author Experience Project.

African American Fife & Drum Music in TN
2023-08-09 17:30 - 18:30 | Virtual
Join the TN Historical Society for a free, virtual discussion with musicologist John Shaw about these historic bands, which have served both as a rallying tool for political militancy and provided community music for funerals, picnics, parades, and dances.
The event is part of a series, “Tennessee Music 101: The History of TN Music.” Click here for more information and to register.
Humanities Tennessee is pleased to provide partial support for this series.

Rachel Louise Martin, A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation
2023-08-12 10:30 - 12:00 | Tennessee State Museum, 1000 Rosa L Parks Blvd, Nashville, TN 37208, USA
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 to undergo court-mandated desegregation. But not everyone wanted to talk. As one founder of the Tennessee White Youth told her, “Honey, there was a lot of ugliness down at the school that year; best we just move on and forget it.”
For years, Martin wondered what it was some white residents of Clinton didn’t want remembered. So she went back, eventually interviewing over sixty townsfolk—including nearly a dozen of the first students to desegregate Clinton High—to piece together what happened back in 1956: the death threats and beatings, picket lines and cross burnings, neighbors turned on neighbors and preachers for the first time at a loss for words.

Clarence Brown Film Festival
2023-08-16 00:00 - 2023-08-20 23:59 | TN, United States
Celebrate the work and legacy of Knoxville’s Clarence Brown, one of Hollywood’s most highly regarded directors. His prolific body of work spanned the silent era into the 1950s.
Join international experts in downtown Knoxville for an exploration of Brown’s legacy through film screenings, talks, tours, and more. All events are free and open to the public.

A Community Born of Water & Stone Exhibit Opening
2023-08-17 12:00 - 13:00 | Historic Ramsey House, 2614 Thorngrove Pike, Knoxville, TN, 37914, United States
Join Historic Ramsey House for a ribbon cutting ceremony to open a new permanent exhibit, “A Community Born of Water & Stone,” which explores the history, legacy and stories of people and events surrounding the property in rural Knoxville.
Find our more about this historic site on their website.
Humanities Tennessee is pleased to provide partial support for this project.

Voices & Votes: Democracy in America Exhibition Opening
2023-08-19 15:00 - 16:00 | Maury County Library, 211 W. 8th Street, Columbia, TN, 38401, United States
Join the African American Heritage Society of Maury County (AAHSMC) for the opening of the Smithsonian’s “Voices & Votes” exhibition at the public library. The interactive exhibit explores, through multiple perspectives, the roots and legacy of the nation’s democratic experiment.
Contact the AAHSMC for more details.
Humanities Tennessee is the proud organizer of this exhibit tour through the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street program. See our website for the full schedule of “Voices & Votes.”

UNMASKING: Chattanooga Elders Speak
2023-08-20 13:30 - 15:30 | Bessie Smith Cultural Center and Chattanooga African American Museum, 200 E M L King Blvd, Chattanooga, TN, 37403, United States
Join Mark Making for a theater performance based on oral history interviews of Chattanooga elders, followed by a facilitated discussion with the elders, performers and the audience.
Click here to learn more about this free event.
The event is supported, in part, by Humanities Tennessee’s Opportunity Grant program.

2023 Southern Festival of Books Preview
2023-09-07 18:30 - 19:30 | Parnassus Books, 3900 Hillsboro Road, Suite #14, Nashville, TN, 37215
Parnassus Books is pleased to partner with The Women’s National Book Association (Nashville) in hosting a preview of the 2023 Southern Festival of Books.
Serenity Gerbman, of Humanities Tennessee, will be in conversation with Parnassus’ own Elyse Adler to preview which authors will be attending this year’s Festival and what Nashville’s readers won’t want to miss during the annual event. Parnassus Books will be donating 10% of the evening’s book sales to Humanities Tennessee.
The preview is open to the public. This is a free event which will take place IN STORE on Thursday, September 7th at 6:30pm Central Time. Because space will be limited, registration is required to attend this event. Please register for free by filling out the form below! (Note: If for any reason you need to cancel your registration, please call the store at 615-953-2243 at least 24 hours before the event so your space can be provided to another guest.) Masks are recommended for all attendees during this event.

Carrie Tipton: From Dixie to Rocky Top: Music and Meaning in Southeastern Conference Football
2023-09-09 10:30 - 12:00 | Tennessee State Museum, 1000 Rosa L Parks Blvd, Nashville, TN 37208, USA
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 early twenty-first century, author Carrie Tipton places this popular repertory within the broader commercial music industry and uses fight songs to explore themes of authorship and copyright; the commodification of school spirit; and the construction of race, gender, and regional identity in Southern football culture.
