The Alexander Grass Humanities Institute (AGHI) and the Ivy Bookshop/Bird in Hand present a gathering series called “Humanities in the Village.” The endeavor seeks to bring fresh scholarly work from our city’s thriving universities and colleges into conversation with a broader public audience. How does humanities research intersect with contemporary social and political concerns? Can we include these intersections in our developing work, bringing our scholarship into closer resonance with the pressing public matters of this time?
AGHI, in partnership with the East City Bookshop, also hosts Humanities on the Hill at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center at 555 Pennsylvania Ave NW in Washington DC.
Join us for these talks every month during the academic year and frequently during the winter and summer breaks. See our Events calendar for specific details. To learn more about our past public humanities events, scroll down to our archive section.
Want to present at a Humanities in the Village or Humanities on the Mall event?
Have a new book, project, or big idea ready for a public audience and wider discussion? We are scheduling Humanities in the Village and Humanities on the Hill (previously “on the Mall”) gatherings for Fall 2024 and Spring 2025. If you are a faculty member or graduate student at any Baltimore or DC college or university and would like to pitch us an event for a public audience, please fill out our form. (And please note which location and series you would like to be considered for.)
Archive—Past Events:
Humanities on the Hill (DC)—Fall 2024 thru Spring 2025
- September 8 – “Spinoza: 6 Reasons for the Excommunication of the Philosopher” with Film director, David Ofek, Yitzhak Melamed, and Virginia Jewiss
- September 25 – Why the Museum Matters with Dan Weiss and Jennifer Kingsley
2024 Humanities in the Village events
- January 29 – David Steiner (author of A Nation at Thought: Restoring Wisdom in America’s Schools) in conversation with Fred Lazarus (president emeritus of MICA) [photo at top]
- February 26 – Nate Brown (UWP), reading new short fiction and in conversation with Jean McGarry (Writing Seminars, emerita)
- April 29 – Jennifer Gosetti Ferencei (author of Imagination: A Very Short Introduction) in conversation with Jane Bennett
- August 26 – Joseph Plaster, (author of Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco’s Tenderloin) with Drew Daniel (English, JHU)
- September 30 – Diego Javier Luis (author of First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History with Johaina Katinka Crisostomo
- October 28 – Peter Pomerantsev (author of How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler with Dave Troy
- More events for 2024–25 to come! Want to pitch us an event? Fill out this form.
Humanities on the Mall (DC)—Fall 2023 thru Spring 2024:
- November 5: Bill Egginton (author of The Rigor of Angels) conversation with Emma Snyder (The Ivy bookshop)
- December 3: Danielle Evans (author of The Office of Historical Corrections) in conversation with Bill Egginton
- February 4: “Students, College Campuses, Difficult Conversations” panel—featuring Michael S. Roth (president, Wesleyan University), Chris Celenza (JHU Dean of KSAS), and Aliza Watters (JHU Assistant Dean and Director of First-Year Seminars)
- March 3: “The Physics of Democracy” with JHU’s Sean Carroll and Hahrie Han
- April 7: “Devoti Tutti [Devoted]” screening + discussion with Bernadette Wegenstein (JHU) and Eugenio Refini (NYU)
2023 Humanities in the Village events
- January — Laura Mason, book event for The Last Revolutionaries (in conversation with Sarah Pearsall)
- February — Elizabeth Bronwyn Boyd, book event for Southern Beauty (in conversation with Samanda Robinson)
- March — Greg Smithsimon, book event for Liberty Road (in conversation with Lawrence Jackson)
- August—Bill Egginton, book event for The Rigor of Angels (in conversation with Sean Carroll)
- September—Melanie Marotta, book event for African American Adolescent Female Heroes (in conversation with Samanda Robinson)
- October—Irena Stein (author of Arepa, founder of Alma Cocina) in conversation with D. Watkins
- November—Zekeh Gbotokuma (author of Obamanomics and Francisconomics) in conversation with Linda Loubert (colleagues from Morgan State University)
2022 Humanities in the Village events
- January 31 – Harold Morales: “Betting On Hope: Baltimore’s Black Butterfly and the Work Of 2020”
- February 28 – John Murungi, Towson U: Decolonization of the Postcolonial African Body
- March 28 – Jean McGarry, JHU: Book Release – Blue Boy (In-person / Bird in Hand)
- April 25 – Tim Murray, Cornell University: Book talk – Technics Improvised: Activating Touch in Global Media Art (In-person at the Ivy Bookshop)
- May 23 – Will Linder and Dr. Ralph Hruban – A Scientific Revolution
- August 29 – Virginia Jewiss – A New Life For Dante’s Vita Nuova (In-person at the Ivy Bookshop)
- September 26 – Sean Carroll – The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion (In-person at the Ivy Bookshop)
- November 7 – Alexander Heffner – Journalist & Civic Educator (virtual)
2021 Humanities in the Village events
- January 25 – Jeanne-Marie Jackson author of the African Novel of Ideas (In Conversation With William Egginton & Ato Quayson)
- February 22 – Salvadore Pappalardo: Modernism In Trieste: Literary Europe And The Alternatives To National Identification
- March 29 – Writing And Translating Love With Julien Tribotté, JHU, French
- April 26 – Audrey Fastuca, Italian, JHU – Letting Southern Italy Speak for Itself
- August 30 – Lingxin Zhang – Drugs, amulets, and birth charts: Women’s health in ancient Egypt
- September 27 – Jennifer Stager & Leila Easa – “A Feminist Practice of Monumentalizing: Scaling Loss, Listing Names”
- October 25 – Donald Berger – Where Poems Come From: A Poetry Reading and Discussion of Influence and Processes of Composition
2020 Humanities in the Village events
- January 27 – Jean McGarry, Writing Seminars, JHU – Reading “The Last Time,” a story from Dream Date
- February 24 – A Conversation with Kondwani Fidel and Devin Allen
- May 18 (online) – Jan Dutkiewicz, Political Science, JHU; Alex Blanchette
- July 6 (online) – Before Comic Books: The Early Newspaper Comic Strip and American Culture, Jean Lee Cole, Loyola University of Maryland
- July 27 (online) – Russia’s Age of Genius: Jeffrey Brooks, History, JHU
- August 31 (online) – On Not Being Someone Else: Tales from our Unled Lives. Andrew H. Miller, English, JHU
- October 26 (online) – Ernest Quarles, JHU – Framing Frederick Douglass: The Female Talented Tenth That Shaped America.
- November 30 (online) – Martin Shuster, Philosophy, Goucher College: The Art and Politics of New Television