Humanities Speaker Series
Founded in 1947, the Humanities Speaker Series is the oldest continuing program of its kind at KU. Previous speakers have included actor and author Alan Alda, poet A.E. Stallings, sociologist Matthew Desmond, and many others.
From Kitchens and Pubs to the World: Philosophy for Humanity Today and Beyond
Lewis Gordon (Professor, University of Connecticut)
THU FEB 22, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (also available online via Crowdcast)
This talk will have two parts. The first will be a reflection on the importance of everyday philosophy and the urgent need for everyone to think critically and reflectively. The second part will draw upon the first to focus on challenges that humanity faces today, in the third decade of the 21st century, especially whether our continued existence is not only viable but also worth fighting for. The lecture will explore these challenges through discussion of what addressing them entails for anyone committed to equality, freedom, justice, and lives worth living.
Gordon is professor and department head of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut, a political thinker, educator, and musician. His books include Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization and Fear of Black Consciousness. Gordon is the 2022 recipient of the Eminent Scholar Award from the Global Development Studies division of the International Studies Association.
2023-2024 KU Common Book Lecture: An Evening with N.K. Jemisin
N.K. Jemisin (Author)
THU APR 25, 7:30 PM
Watch via Crowdcast online
(Watch Party: Woodruff Auditorium, Kansas Memorial Union)
Author N. K. Jemisin will give this year’s Common Book Lecture online. The Common Book for 2023-24 is Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. Butler, who died in 2006, was influential to the career of Jemisin, a fellow science fiction writer, and Jemisin also wrote the forward to the most recent edition of Parable of the Sower.
Jemisin is the first author in the genre’s history to win three consecutive Best Novel Hugo Awards. Her work has won Nebula and Locus Awards, and she is a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Her Great Cities duology was a New York Times bestseller. Her speculative works range from fantasy to science fiction to the undefinable; her themes include resistance to oppression, the inseverability of the liminal, and the coolness of “stuff blowing up.” She’s been an instructor for Clarion and Clarion West writing workshops. Among other critical work, she was formerly the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer at the New York Times and she has been an advocate for the long tradition of science fiction and fantasy as political resistance.
KU Common Book
Every year, Jayhawks read a single book that speaks to the current moment and sparks a campus-wide conversation. The KU Common Book program is coordinated by the KU Libraries, the Hall Center for the Humanities, and the Division of Academic Success.
Past speakers
| Year | Speaker | Title |
| 2023-24 | N.K. Jemisin | An Evening with N.K. Jemisin (Common Book) |
| 2023-24 | Lewis Gordon | From Kitchens and Pubs to the World: Philosophy for Humanity Today and Beyond |
| 2023-24 | Nicole Fleetwood | Marking time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration |
| 2023-24 | Susan Wolf | Meaning in Life and Why It Matters |
| 2023-24 | A.E. Stallings | This Afterlife: Selected Poems |
| 2022-23 | Alice Wong | Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century (Common Book) |
| 2022-23 | Daniel Wildcat | Exercises of Indigenuity in an Age of Global Crises |
| 2022-23 | Cynthia Culver Prescott | Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cutural Memory |
| 2022-23 | Lee McIntyre | Post-Truth |
| 2022-23 | Victoria Chang | Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief |
| 2021-22 | Natalie Diaz | Postcolonial Love Poem |
| 2021-22 | Terry Tempest Williams | The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks |
| 2021-22 | Alexus Pauline Gumbs | Dub: Finding Ceremony |
| 2021-22 | Robin Wall Kimmerer | Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Common Book) |
| 2021-22 | Bathsheba Demuth | Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait |
| 2021-22 | Irin Carmon | Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Women's Leadership in Modern America |
| 2021-22 | Amitav Ghosh | The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis |
| 2020-21 | Lual Mayen | From Refugee to Game Developer: Peacemaking through the Art of Gaming |
| 2020-21 | Denise Brennan | Whose Exploitation Counts? Trafficking Survivors As Exceptions in An Era of Mass Deportation |
| 2020-21 | Donna Gabbacia | Gender and International Migration: From the Slavery Era to the Global Age |
| 2020-21 | Tara Westover | An Evening with Tara Westover (Common Book) |
| 2020-21 | Erika Lee | America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States |
| 2020-21 | Juan Felipe Herrera | An Evening with Juan Felipe Herrera |
| 2020-21 | Jerry Mitchell | Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era |
| 2020-21 | Jose Olivarez | Citizen Illegal |
| 2020-21 | Dierdre Cooper Owens | Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology |
| 2020-21 | Kwame Anthony Appiah | The Lies That Bind |
| 2019-20 | Nadine Strossen | HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship |
| 2019-20 | Alan Alda | An Evening with Alan Alda |
| 2019-20 | Sarah Deer | Sovereignty of the Soul: Centering the Voices of Native Women |
| 2019-20 | Brittney Cooper | Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpowers |
| 2019-20 | Jesmyn Ward | An Evening with Jesmyn Ward |
| 2018-19 | Walter Mosley | Political Optimism in the Age of Trump |
| 2018-19 | Neil Gaiman | An Evening with Neil Gaiman |
| 2018-19 | Marie Grace Brown | Body Movements: Positioning Sudanese Women in an Age of Empire |
| 2018-19 | Maria Hinojosa | Frontline: latinos and Immigration from a Woman's Perspective |
| 2017-18 | Andrea Wulf | The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World |
| 2017-18 | Brian Donovan | American Gold Digger: Law, Culture, and Marriage in the Early 20th Century |
| 2017-18 | Peter Balakian | A Conversation with Poet Peter Balakian |
| 2017-18 | Zadie Smith | Why Write?: An Evening with Zadie Smith |
| 2017-18 | Matthew Desmond | Evicted: Poverty & Profit in the American City |
| 2017-18 | Joan Breton Connelly | The Parthenon Enigma |
| 2017-18 | Siddhartha Mukherjee | The Gene: An Intimate History |
| 2016-17 | Evan Osnos | The Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China |
| 2016-17 | Matthew Stewart | Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic |
| 2016-17 | Terrance Hayes | An Evening with Terrance Hayes |
| 2016-17 | Alice Dreger | Good Causes, Bad Acts |
| 2015-16 | Robin D.G. Kelley | Mike Brown's Body: A Meditation on War, Race, and Democracy |
| 2015-16 | Hannah Britton | Human Trafficking in the Heartland |
| 2015-16 | Iain McCalman | The Great Barrier Reef |
| 2015-16 | Krista Tippet | The Adventure of Civility |
| 2015-16 | Alice Goffman | On the Run: Fugitive Life in the American City |
| 2015-16 | Rick Perlstein | The Invisible Bridge: From Nixon to Reagan to Palin and Beyond |
| 2014-15 | James Oakes | Rethinking Emancipation: Freedom National |
| 2014-15 | Natasha Trethewey | Poetry & History: An Evening with U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey |
| 2014-15 | Anna Deveare Smith | Snapshots: Portraits of a World in Transition |
| 2014-15 | Amy Wilentz | Haiti: Tragedy & Hope |
| 2014-15 | John Symons | What Can We Teach Our Posthuman Descendants? |
| 2014-15 | Katherine Boo | Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity |
| 2013-14 | Jeffrey Toobin | The Supreme Court in the Age of Obama |
| 2013-14 | Peter Brown | Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-500 AD |
| 2013-14 | Anne D. Hedeman | Imagining the Past: Interplay Between Literary & Visual Imagery in Late Medieval France |
| 2013-14 | Junot Diaz | An Evening with Junot Diaz: Literature, Diaspora, and Immigration |
| 2013-14 | Jill Lepore | Unseen - The History of Privacy |
| 2013-14 | Arsalan Iftikhar | The Role of Islam in Post 9/11 America |
| 2012-13 | Edwidge Danticat | An Evening with Edwidge Danticat |
| 2012-13 | Stephen Greenblatt | The Swerve: How the World Became Modern |
| 2012-13 | Robin Rowland | From Hope to Audacity: The Evolution of President Obama's Rhetoric and the 2012 Campaign |
| 2012-13 | Sarah Vowell | An Evening with Sarah Vowell |
| 2012-13 | Nikky Finney | Making Poetry in Our Anthropocene Age |
| 2011-12 | Jamaica Kincaid | Landscapes and Memory |
| 2011-12 | Alain de Botton | Religion for Athiests |
| 2011-12 | Jeff Moran | The Antievolution Controversies and American Culture |
| 2011-12 | Luois Menand | A Man is Shot: The Cold War Meaning of a Cinematic Technique |
| 2011-12 | Diane Ravitch | Will School Reform Improve the Schools? |
| 2011-12 | Laurance Rees | Talking with Nazis |
| 2010-11 | Henry Louis Gates, Jr | African American Lives: Geneaology, Genetics, and Black History |
| 2010-11 | Mae Ngai | Illegal Immigration: Origins and Consequences |
| 2010-11 | Susan Harris | Pious Hypocrisies: Mark Twain, the Phillipines, and America's Christian Mission |
| 2010-11 | Joseph O'Neill | An Evening with Joseph O'Neill |
| 2010-11 | Ross Douthat | The Obama Presidency in the Shadow of the Midterms |
| 2010-11 | Elizabeth Kolbert | Science, Politics, and Climate Change |
| 2009-10 | Kevin Wilmott | Revolution, History, and the Power of Independent Film to Change the World |
| 2009-10 | Mary Oliver | An Evening with Poet Mary Oliver |
| 2009-10 | Rory Stewart | Afghanistan: Rhetoric and Reality |
| 2009-10 | Chris Abani | Stories of Struggle, Stories of Hope: Art, Politics, and Human Rights |
| 2009-10 | T.R. Reid | We're Number 37! Why Other Countries Have Better, Fairier, and Cheaper Healthcare than the USA |
| 2009-10 | Lewis Hyde | Culture as Commonwealth |
| 2008-09 | Dipesh Chakrabarty | The Decline and Prospect of Universal History |
| 2008-09 | James McBride | The Color Of Water: Search for Identity |
| 2008-09 | Anthony Corbeill | Androgynous Gods, Androgynous Nouns, and the Invention of Heterosexuality in Ancient Rome |
| 2008-09 | Jeannette Walls | The Glass Castle: Hunting Demons and Other Life Lessons |
| 2008-09 | Michael Chabon | Conquering the Wilderness: Imaginative Imperialism and the Invasion of Legoland |
| 2008-09 | Susan Estrich | The 2008 Election: What's at Stake |
| 2007-08 | Carol Ann Carter | Art @ Work: Mapping Transformation |
| 2007-08 | Ian Buruma | Among the Unbelievers: Muslims in Europe |
| 2007-08 | Paul Muldoon | The Eternity of the Poem |
| 2007-08 | Orville Schell | The China Miracle: How Did It Happen and How Durable Is It? |
| 2007-08 | Sara Ahmed | The Promise of Happiness |
| 2007-08 | Alexander McCall Smith | The Very Small Things of Life: An Evening with Alexander McCall Smith |
| 2006-07 | Maria Carlson (KU, Slavic) | Culture and History Matter: Russia's Search for Identity After the Fall |
| 2006-07 | Kwame Anthony Appiah | Making Sense of Moral Conflict |
| 2006-07 | Nancy Cott | Grooming Citizens: Marriage and Civic Status in U.S. History |
| 2006-07 | Richard Dawkins | The God Delusion |
| 2006-07 | Nuruddin Farah | The Fork in the Fork in the Road |
| 2006-07 | Andrei Codrescu | An Evening with Andrei Codrescu |
| 2005-06 | Allan Cigler (KU, Political Science) | The New Electoral Landscape: Two Political Churches and an Unbelieving Mass Electorate |
| 2005-06 | Scott Turow | Confessions of a Death Penalty Agnostic |
| 2005-06 | Samantha Power | Can U.S. Foreign Policy Be Fixed? |
| 2005-06 | Salman Rushdie | Step Across This Line: An Evening with Salman Rushdie |
| 2005-06 | Deborah Lipstadt | History On Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving |
| 2004-05 | Ted Wilson (KU, History) | The GI Generations: Sending American Soldiers into Battle in World War II |
| 2004-05 | Akbar Ahmed | Islam Under Siege |
| 2004-05 | Rita Dove | The Poet at the Dance |
| 2004-05 | Steven Pinker | The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature |
| 2004-05 | Gary Hart | Security in the New Age of the 21st Century |
| 2003-04 | E.O. Wilson | The Future of Life |
| 2003-04 | Linda Stone-Ferrier (KU, History of Art) | The Rembrandt Research Project: Issues and Controversies |
| 2003-04 | Sherman Alexie | Killing Indians: Myths, Lies and Exaggerations |
| 2003-04 | Peter Gay | Modernism in Exile |
| 2002-03 | David Bergeron (KU, English) | Shakespeare in the Closet |
| 2002-03 | Paule Marshall | Triangular Quest for Self and Community: Brooklyn - Barbados - Benin |
| 2002-03 | Robert D. Kaplan | The Roots of Future Conflict |
| 2002-03 | Jared Diamond | Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies |
| 2001-02 | Dava Sobel | Galileo's Reconciliation: Science and Faith |
| 2001-02 | Frances Reid & Deborah Hoffman | Long Night's Journey into Day |
| 2001-02 | Alice Walker | Remembering Langston |
| 2001-02 | Joane Nagel (KU, Soclology) | The Color of Sex: Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality in America |
| 2001-02 | Edward Said | the Dilemmas of American Humanism |
| 2000-01 | Stan Lombardo (KU, Classics) | Homer's Light |
| 2000-01 | Donna J. Haraway | The Birth of the Kennel: Diversity in the Dog Genome |
| 2000-01 | Robert Darnton | Poetry and the Police in the 18th Century |
| 2000-01 | Julian Bond | Crossing the Color Line: From Rhythm and Blues to Rock'n'Roll |
| 1999-00 | Jeane J. Kirkpatrick | Year 2000: Global Issues |
| 1999-00 | Anna Deavere Smith | Snapshots: Glimpses of America in Change |
| 1999-00 | Jonathan Kozol | Love Against Fear: The Ethics and Compassion of Young Children Under Siege |
| 1999-00 | Stephen Jay Gould | Questioning the Millennium: Why We Cannot Predict the Future |
| 1998-99 | Patricia Williams | Toward a Theory of Grace |
| 1998-99 | John Michael Vlach | The Strength of These Arms: Endurance, Creativity and Authority in the Plantation Landscape |
| 1998-99 | JoAnne Akalaitis | Living in Performance |
| 1998-99 | Sandra Zimdars-Swartz (KU, Religion) | Wounds on Wounds: Christianity, Pain and Religious Experience |
| 1997-98 | Robert Hemenway (KU) | Humanities and American Politics |
| 1997-98 | Nancy Kassabaum Baker | An Evening with Nancy |
| 1997-98 | Ira Michael Heyman | Exhibition Dilemmas |
| 1997-98 | Donald Worster (KU, History) | The Inhabited Prairie: Nature and Culture on the Great Plains |
| 1997-98 | Winona LaDuke | Native American Environmentalism at the Cusp of the Millennium |
| 1996-97 | Rolena Adorno | The Spanish New World in the Narrative Imagination |
| 1996-97 | Richard White | Working with Nature |
| 1996-97 | Gwendolyn Brooks | Poetry Reading |
| 1995-96 | Charles Eldredge (KU, History of Art) | John Steuart Curry, Prairie Prodigal |
| 1995-96 | Kwame Anthony Appiah | Against National Culture: For Cosmopolitan Patriotism |
| 1995-96 | Bernard Williams | Truthfulness and Democratic Politics |
| 1995-96 | Carol Gluck | War and Memory in Japan- Fifty Years Later |
| 1995-96 | Daniel T. Politoske (KU, Music and Dance) | From Berlin to Krakow: Musical Treasures Rediscovered |
| 1994-95 | Drucilla Cornell | Pornography's Temptation |
| 1994-95 | Manning Marable | Beyond Black and White: Unlearning Racism |
| 1994-95 | Elizabeth Broun | Childe Hassam's America |
| 1994-95 | Janet Sharistanian (KU, English) | Gender, Modernism, Politics: The Case of Tess Slesinger |
| 1993-94 | Cornel West | Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism |
| 1993-94 | Sheldon Hackney | Beyond the Culture Wars |
| 1993-94 | Dominick LaCapra | The Return of the Historically Repressed: Secularization and Approaches to the Holocaust |
| 1993-94 | Del Brinkman (KU, Journalism) | William Allen Wight and the Presidents: Fifty Years of Influence on Washington by a Small-Town Kansas Editor |
| 1992-93 | Gordon Parks | Creativity |
| 1992-93 | Rex Martin (KU, Philosophy) | Are Rights Enough? Social Justice in Our Nations Third Century |
| 1992-93 | Martin Jay | Modernism, Post Modernism: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought |
| 1992-93 | Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria | The Second Discovery of America: History and Literature in the Writings of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera |
| 1991-92 | Patricia Limerick | Troubled Land and Haunted Places: A Re-envisioning of the American West |
| 1991-92 | Martha Banta | Imperialist Acts and Efficiency Movements at the Turn of the Century: Veblen, Cuba and the Jameses |
| 1991-92 | Jacques D'Amboise | The Arts Set the Stage for Life |
| 1991-92 | Ronald Willis (KU, Theatre and Film) | The Answer is Theater! What's the Question? |
| 1990-91 | Lawrence Levine | The Meaning of America: Frank Capra and the Politics of Culture During the Great Depression |
| 1990-91 | Arnold Rampersad | Four Black American Lives: Du Bois, Hughes, Hurston and Wright |
| 1990-91 | Patricia Graham | Collaborating for Children in Schools: Historical Views |
| 1990-91 | Boris Notkin | Good Evening from Moscow |
| 1990-91 | John G. Clark (KU, History) | Her Huge Shadow: Energy and America's Responsibilities to the Globe |
| 1989-90 | William Cronon | Dust Bowl Days: Stories of Environmental Change |
| 1989-90 | Catharine R. Stimpson | Women, Literature and Society |
| 1989-90 | Anthony Seeger | Folk Music and American Culture |
| 1988-89 | Chu-Tsing Li (KU, History of Art) | |
| 1988-89 | Peter Casagrande (KU, English) | Moving Easy in Harness: Creativity and Constraint |
| 1988-89 | Paul Kurtz | What is Secular Humanism? |
| 1988-89 | William McGlaughlin | An Evening with William McGlaughlin |
| 1988-89 | Ivar Ivask | An Evening with Ivar Ivask |
| 1987-88 | Robert Hudson (KU, History of Medicine) | |
| 1986-87 | Victor Papanek (KU, Arch & Urban Design) | |
| 1985-86 | Elizabeth Shultz (KU, English) | |
| 1984-85 | Richard Schowen (KU, Biochemistry) | |
| 1983-84 | Frances Heller (KU, Law) | |
| 1982-83 | Frances Horowitz (KU, Human Development) | |
| 1981-82 | Jim Moeser (KU, Music) | |
| 1980-81 | Richard DeGeorge (KU, Philosophy) | |
| 1979-80 | Harold Orel (KU, English | |
| 1978-79 | William Griffith(KU, History) | |
| 1977-78 | Barbara Craig (KU, French) | |
| 1976-77 | Andrew Debicki (KU, Spanish & Portugeuse) | |
| 1975-76 | Stitt Robinson (KU, History) | |
| 1974-75 | George Lawner (KU, Music) | |
| 1973-74 | Marilyn Stokstad (KU, Art History) | |
| 1972-73 | William P. Albrecht (KU, English) | |
| 1971-72 | Oswald P. Backus (KU, History) | |
| 1970-71 | John Brushwood (KU, Spanish and Portugeuse) | |
| 1969-70 | Milton Steinhardt (KU, Music) | |
| 1968-69 | Donald R McCoy (KU, History) | |
| 1967-68 | Merrel D. Clubb (KU, English) | |
| 1966-67 | Clifford Griffin (KU, Hisotry) | |
| 1965-66 | Paul Roofe (KU, History of Medicine) | |
| 1964-65 | James Seaver (KU, History) | |
| 1963-64 | Richard DeGeorge (KU, Philosophy) | |
| 1962-63 | Errol Harris (KU, Philosophy) | |
| 1962-63 | Elmer Beth (KU, Journalism) | |
| 1961-62 | Mary Grant (KU, Classics) | |
| 1960-61 | W. Clarke Wescoe (KU, Chancellor) | |
| 1959-60 | Jan Chiapusso (KU, Music) | |
| 1958-59 | William Paden (KU, Englsh) | |
| 1957-58 | M. Carl Slough (KU, Law) | |
| 1956-57 | L. R. Lind (KU, Classics) | |
| 1955-56 | J. Neale Carman (KU, French) | |
| 1947-48 | T.V. Smith | The Humanities and Modern Life |