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, author and YouTuber John Green, poet A.E. Stallings, sociologist Matthew Desmond, and many others.
Navigating Campus Speech & Academic Freedom
Howard Gillman
TUE, SEP 8, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Crowdcast)
Howard Gillman is chancellor of the University of California, Irvine, and an award-winning scholar of the American Constitution and the Supreme Court, holding faculty appointments in UC Irvine’s School of Law and Department of Political Science. He also co-chairs the advisory board of UC’s National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement. Before becoming chancellor in 2014, Gillman served as UC Irvine’s provost and executive vice chancellor, and previously spent two decades at the University of Southern California, including as dean of the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in political science at UCLA.
John F. Eberhart Lecture: Excellence in Writing with Jericho Brown
Jericho Brown
MON, SEP 28, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Crowdcast)
Jericho Brown is a professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection The Tradition, which was also a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. His other honors include the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Co-sponsored with the Department of English.
From Lawrence to Low Earth Orbit: An Evening with Loral O’Hara
Loral O’Hara
THU, OCT 8, 7:00 PM
Memorial Union Ballroom (and online via Crowdcast)
This year's KU Reads selection, Orbital, follows astronauts circling the Earth aboard the ISS, and in October, someone who actually lived that story comes home to KU. Join NASA astronaut and KU alumna Loral O'Hara for a public conversation on spaceflight, science, and perspective, alongside KU faculty and a graduate student.
Loral O’Hara earned her Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Kansas and a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue University before being selected for NASA’s 2017 Astronaut Candidate Class, the “Turtles.” She later served as the Astronaut Office’s Director of Operations in Star City, Russia, and launched to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz MS-24 in September 2023, serving 204 days as a flight engineer on Expedition 70, her first spaceflight, and even participated in a live Q&A with KU students before returning safely to Earth in April 2024, having traveled more than 86.5 million miles and completed 3,264 orbits of Earth. Before joining NASA, O’Hara spent eight years as a research engineer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, working on the deep-ocean submersible “Alvin” and the remotely operated vehicle “Jason.”
An Evening with Robin Kundis Craig
Robin Kundis Craig
THU, FEB 4, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Crowdcast)
Robin Kundis Craig is the Robert A. Schroeder Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Kansas, specializing in water law, ocean and coastal governance, and the intersection of climate change and environmental policy. She is the author, co-author, or editor of 12 books and more than 100 law review articles and book chapters. In 2017, the Rockefeller Foundation awarded her a Bellagio Center Writing Residency fellowship to work on her book, Re-Envisioning the Anthropocene Ocean. Craig was also elected to the American Law Institute and the American College of Environmental Lawyers, and has been appointed to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s World Commission on Environmental Law and to the Center for Progressive Reform.
Past speakers
| Year | Speaker | Title |
| 2025-26 | Randal Jelks | My America: Langston Hughes on Democracy |
| 2025-26 | Luis Alberto Urrea | An Evening with Luis Alberto Urrea |
| 2025-26 | Felwine Sarr | The Making of the Present / La Fabrique du Présent |
| 2025-26 | Daniel E. Atkinson | The Rediscovery of George "Nash" Walker: The Price of Black Stardom in Jim Crow America |
| 2025-26 | Hannes Zacharias | Rediscovering the Arkansas River |
| 2025-26 | Ruha Benjamin | Humanities of the Future? From Artificial Intelligence to Abundant Imagination |
| 2025-26 | John Green | An Evening with John Green (Common Book) |
| 2025-26 | Caleb Gayle | Reimagining the American West |
| 2024-25 | Alicia Elliot | A Mind Spread Out on the Ground |
| 2024-25 | Peter Hessler | Other Rivers: A Chinese Education |
| 2024-25 | Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | Journey to the Edge of Space-Time |
| 2024-25 | Lisa Damour | Gender and the Speech Police |
| 2024-25 | Bonnie Garmus | Lessons in Chemistry: A Conversation with Bonnie Garmus |
| 2024-25 | Christina Sharpe | A Talk by Christina Sharpe |
| 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 |