A.E. Stallings, poet

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.

A Talk by Christina Sharpe

Christina Sharpe 
TUE SEP 10, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

Christina Sharpe is a writer, professor, and researcher currently serving as the Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is also a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class at the University of Johannesburg. The New York Times describes her work as “expanding the vocabulary of life in slavery’s long shadow—peeling back the meaning of familiar words and resurrecting neglected history.” Her writings explore literature, the cinematic, artifacts, personal memories, and scenes from everyday life.

Sharpe was named a Guggenheim Fellow this year, a testament to her contributions to the field of Black studies and her innovative approach to research and writing. She is also the recipient of a Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize and a Windham-Campbell Prize.

Lessons in Chemistry: A Conversation with Bonnie Garmus

Bonnie Garmus
MON SEP 30, 7:00 PM
Liberty Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

The Hall Center will host a conversation with Bonnie Garmus, the author of Lessons in Chemistry, a number-one global bestseller and winner of several national and international awards. Her debut novel centers around Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in the 1960s who finds herself relegated to a television cooking show after her academic career is derailed. The story, which has also been made into an Apple TV miniseries, explores Elizabeth’s journey navigating societal expectations, gender discrimination in scientific fields, and her own ambitions in a world where women’s roles are often narrowly defined.

Garmus’s exploration of themes of resilience, identity, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment amidst societal constraints has won world-wide acclaim, including Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year, Hay Festival’s Book of the Year, Goodreads Choice Award Debut of the Year, British Book Awards Author of the Year, Waterstones Author of the Year, Books Are My Bag Author of the Year Award, and Readers’ Choice Award, Germany and Australia’s Booksellers Book of the Year, Australia’s International Book of the Year, and many more.

Novelist and KU Professor Laura Moriarty will lead the conversation with Garmus. In addition to being a published author herself, Moriarty  conducts research on fiction writing with a particular interest in how writers use voice, characters, plot, and language to engage readers. 

Emily Taylor and Marilyn Stokstad Women’s Leadership Lecture

Gender and the Speech Police: Unpacking the varied guidance on how girls and women are "supposed" to speak

Lisa Damour
WED FEB 12, 7:00 PM
Lied Center Pavilion (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

Women hear a lot of advice about how to talk, but not all of it fits with what the research shows about effective communication. Lisa Damour will address popular misconceptions about how women speak and share her path-breaking work on how everyone can develop effective strategies for advancing their ideas, managing conflict, and saying “no” without harming their relationships.

Damour is the author of three New York Times best sellers: Untangled, Under Pressure, and The Emotional Lives of Teenagers. She co-hosts the “Ask Lisa” podcast, works in collaboration with UNICEF, and is recognized as a thought leader by the American Psychological Association.

Journey to the Edge of Space-Time

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
MON MAR 10, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

Every day we move through space, but what is it? And how is space-time different from our every day-concept of space? Exploring concepts from the vacuum to quantum radiation from black holes, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein will take us on a journey to the edge of space-time, discussing along the way what it means for humanity to attempt to answer these questions. Regarded as one of the leading physicists of her generation, she is also one of fewer than one hundred Black American women to earn a doctorate from a department of physics. Her viewpoint has been praised as vibrant and buoyantly nontraditional, taking a bold approach to science and society.

Prescod-Weinstein is an associate professor at the University of New Hampshire. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars, and dark matter. She also does research in Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. Nature recognized her as one of 10 people who shaped science in 2020, and Essence has recognized her as one of “15 Black Women Who Are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers.”

Other Rivers: A Chinese Education 

Peter Hessler
TUE APR 1, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

Peter Hessler will discuss his book, Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, which uses his inside view of China’s education system as a way of examining the country. In 1996, when he arrived in China, almost all of the people in Hessler’s classroom were first-generation college students. They typically came from large rural families, and their parents, subsistence farmers, could offer little guidance as their children entered a brand-new world. By 2019, when Hessler arrived at Sichuan University, he found a very different China, as well as a new kind of student—an only child whose schooling was the object of intense focus from a much more ambitious cohort of parents. Hessler also draws insights from the experience of his own daughters, who gave him an intimate view of their local school in China.

Hessler is an award-winning author and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, Cairo correspondent from 2011 to 2016, and Chengdu correspondent from 2019 to 2021. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he was named a MacArthur fellow in 2011.

A Mind Spread Out on the Ground

Alicia Elliott
THU APR 17, 7:00 PM
Haskell Auditorium (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)

Alicia Elliott, a Mohawk writer and editor living in Ontario, will address topics such as intergenerational trauma, colonization, and the complexities of living as an Indigenous woman in contemporary society. These themes are pursued in the essays comprising her bestselling memoir A Mind Spread Out on the Ground. Her innovative and deeply personal storytelling reveals powerful insights on parenthood, love, art, poverty, representation, the land, memory, and mental health, exposing the enduring impact of colonialism and racism on Indigenous lives.

Elliott’s short fiction was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and The Journey Prize Stories 30. She was chosen as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award for A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, which was a national bestseller in Canada and won the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award. 

2024-2025 HSS Speakers

Accommodations

  • Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend Hall Center sponsored events. If you require a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in any of our events, please contact Program Coordinator Eliott Reeder at eliottor@ku.edu.

Past speakers

YearSpeakerTitle
2023-24N.K. JemisinAn Evening with N.K. Jemisin (Common Book)
2023-24Lewis GordonFrom Kitchens and Pubs to the World: Philosophy for Humanity Today and Beyond
2023-24Nicole FleetwoodMarking time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration
2023-24Susan WolfMeaning in Life and Why It Matters
2023-24A.E. StallingsThis Afterlife: Selected Poems
2022-23Alice WongDisability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century (Common Book)
2022-23Daniel WildcatExercises of Indigenuity in an Age of Global Crises
2022-23Cynthia Culver PrescottPioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cutural Memory
2022-23Lee McIntyrePost-Truth
2022-23Victoria ChangDear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief
2021-22Natalie DiazPostcolonial Love Poem
2021-22Terry Tempest WilliamsThe Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks
2021-22Alexus Pauline GumbsDub: Finding Ceremony
2021-22Robin Wall KimmererBraiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Common Book)
2021-22Bathsheba DemuthFloating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
2021-22Irin CarmonRuth Bader Ginsburg and Women's Leadership in Modern America
2021-22Amitav GhoshThe Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis
2020-21Lual MayenFrom Refugee to Game Developer: Peacemaking through the Art of Gaming
2020-21Denise BrennanWhose Exploitation Counts? Trafficking Survivors As Exceptions in An Era of Mass Deportation
2020-21Donna GabbaciaGender and International Migration: From the Slavery Era to the Global Age
2020-21Tara WestoverAn Evening with Tara Westover (Common Book)
2020-21Erika LeeAmerica for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States
2020-21Juan Felipe HerreraAn Evening with Juan Felipe Herrera
2020-21Jerry MitchellRace Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era
2020-21Jose OlivarezCitizen Illegal
2020-21Dierdre Cooper OwensMedical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology
2020-21Kwame Anthony AppiahThe Lies That Bind
2019-20Nadine StrossenHATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship
2019-20Alan AldaAn Evening with Alan Alda
2019-20Sarah DeerSovereignty of the Soul: Centering the Voices of Native Women
2019-20Brittney CooperEloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpowers
2019-20Jesmyn WardAn Evening with Jesmyn Ward
2018-19Walter MosleyPolitical Optimism in the Age of Trump
2018-19Neil GaimanAn Evening with Neil Gaiman
2018-19Marie Grace BrownBody Movements: Positioning Sudanese Women in an Age of Empire
2018-19Maria HinojosaFrontline: latinos and Immigration from a Woman's Perspective
2017-18Andrea WulfThe Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World
2017-18Brian DonovanAmerican Gold Digger: Law, Culture, and Marriage in the Early 20th Century
2017-18Peter BalakianA Conversation with Poet Peter Balakian
2017-18Zadie SmithWhy Write?: An Evening with Zadie Smith
2017-18Matthew DesmondEvicted: Poverty & Profit in the American City
2017-18Joan Breton ConnellyThe Parthenon Enigma
2017-18Siddhartha MukherjeeThe Gene: An Intimate History
2016-17Evan OsnosThe Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
2016-17Matthew StewartNature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic
2016-17Terrance HayesAn Evening with Terrance Hayes
2016-17Alice DregerGood Causes, Bad Acts
2015-16Robin D.G. KelleyMike Brown's Body: A Meditation on War, Race, and Democracy
2015-16Hannah BrittonHuman Trafficking in the Heartland
2015-16Iain McCalmanThe Great Barrier Reef
2015-16Krista TippetThe Adventure of Civility
2015-16Alice GoffmanOn the Run: Fugitive Life in the American City
2015-16Rick PerlsteinThe Invisible Bridge: From Nixon to Reagan to Palin and Beyond
2014-15James OakesRethinking Emancipation: Freedom National
2014-15Natasha TretheweyPoetry & History: An Evening with U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey
2014-15Anna Deveare SmithSnapshots: Portraits of a World in Transition
2014-15Amy WilentzHaiti: Tragedy & Hope
2014-15John SymonsWhat Can We Teach Our Posthuman Descendants?
2014-15Katherine BooBehind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
2013-14Jeffrey ToobinThe Supreme Court in the Age of Obama
2013-14Peter BrownThrough the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-500 AD
2013-14Anne D. HedemanImagining the Past: Interplay Between Literary & Visual Imagery in Late Medieval France
2013-14Junot DiazAn Evening with Junot Diaz: Literature, Diaspora, and Immigration
2013-14Jill LeporeUnseen - The History of Privacy
2013-14Arsalan IftikharThe Role of Islam in Post 9/11 America
2012-13Edwidge DanticatAn Evening with Edwidge Danticat
2012-13Stephen GreenblattThe Swerve: How the World Became Modern
2012-13Robin RowlandFrom Hope to Audacity: The Evolution of President Obama's Rhetoric and the 2012 Campaign
2012-13Sarah VowellAn Evening with Sarah Vowell
2012-13Nikky FinneyMaking Poetry in Our Anthropocene Age
2011-12Jamaica KincaidLandscapes and Memory
2011-12Alain de BottonReligion for Athiests
2011-12Jeff MoranThe Antievolution Controversies and American Culture
2011-12Luois MenandA Man is Shot: The Cold War Meaning of a Cinematic Technique
2011-12Diane RavitchWill School Reform Improve the Schools?
2011-12Laurance ReesTalking with Nazis
2010-11Henry Louis Gates, JrAfrican American Lives: Geneaology, Genetics, and Black History
2010-11Mae NgaiIllegal Immigration: Origins and Consequences
2010-11Susan HarrisPious Hypocrisies: Mark Twain, the Phillipines, and America's Christian Mission
2010-11Joseph O'NeillAn Evening with Joseph O'Neill
2010-11Ross DouthatThe Obama Presidency in the Shadow of the Midterms
2010-11Elizabeth KolbertScience, Politics, and Climate Change
2009-10Kevin WilmottRevolution, History, and the Power of Independent Film to Change the World
2009-10Mary OliverAn Evening with Poet Mary Oliver
2009-10Rory StewartAfghanistan: Rhetoric and Reality
2009-10Chris AbaniStories of Struggle, Stories of Hope: Art, Politics, and Human Rights
2009-10T.R. ReidWe're Number 37! Why Other Countries Have Better, Fairier, and Cheaper Healthcare than the USA
2009-10Lewis HydeCulture as Commonwealth
2008-09Dipesh ChakrabartyThe Decline and Prospect of Universal History
2008-09James McBrideThe Color Of Water: Search for Identity
2008-09Anthony CorbeillAndrogynous Gods, Androgynous Nouns, and the Invention of Heterosexuality in Ancient Rome
2008-09Jeannette WallsThe Glass Castle: Hunting Demons and Other Life Lessons
2008-09Michael ChabonConquering the Wilderness: Imaginative Imperialism and the Invasion of Legoland
2008-09Susan EstrichThe 2008 Election: What's at Stake
2007-08Carol Ann CarterArt @ Work: Mapping Transformation
2007-08Ian BurumaAmong the Unbelievers: Muslims in Europe
2007-08Paul MuldoonThe Eternity of the Poem
2007-08Orville SchellThe China Miracle: How Did It Happen and How Durable Is It?
2007-08Sara AhmedThe Promise of Happiness
2007-08Alexander McCall SmithThe Very Small Things of Life: An Evening with Alexander McCall Smith
2006-07Maria Carlson (KU, Slavic)Culture and History Matter: Russia's Search for Identity After the Fall
2006-07Kwame Anthony AppiahMaking Sense of Moral Conflict
2006-07Nancy CottGrooming Citizens: Marriage and Civic Status in U.S. History
2006-07Richard DawkinsThe God Delusion
2006-07Nuruddin FarahThe Fork in the Fork in the Road
2006-07Andrei CodrescuAn Evening with Andrei Codrescu
2005-06Allan Cigler (KU, Political Science)The New Electoral Landscape: Two Political Churches and an Unbelieving Mass Electorate
2005-06Scott TurowConfessions of a Death Penalty Agnostic
2005-06Samantha PowerCan U.S. Foreign Policy Be Fixed?
2005-06Salman RushdieStep Across This Line: An Evening with Salman Rushdie
2005-06Deborah LipstadtHistory On Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving
2004-05Ted Wilson (KU, History)The GI Generations: Sending American Soldiers into Battle in World War II
2004-05Akbar AhmedIslam Under Siege
2004-05Rita DoveThe Poet at the Dance
2004-05Steven PinkerThe Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
2004-05Gary HartSecurity in the New Age of the 21st Century
2003-04E.O. WilsonThe Future of Life
2003-04Linda Stone-Ferrier (KU, History of Art)The Rembrandt Research Project: Issues and Controversies
2003-04Sherman AlexieKilling Indians: Myths, Lies and Exaggerations
2003-04Peter GayModernism in Exile
2002-03David Bergeron (KU, English)Shakespeare in the Closet
2002-03Paule MarshallTriangular Quest for Self and Community: Brooklyn - Barbados - Benin
2002-03Robert D. KaplanThe Roots of Future Conflict
2002-03Jared DiamondGuns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
2001-02Dava SobelGalileo's Reconciliation: Science and Faith
2001-02Frances Reid & Deborah HoffmanLong Night's Journey into Day
2001-02Alice WalkerRemembering Langston
2001-02Joane Nagel (KU, Soclology)The Color of Sex: Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality in America
2001-02Edward Saidthe Dilemmas of American Humanism
2000-01Stan Lombardo (KU, Classics)Homer's Light
2000-01Donna J. HarawayThe Birth of the Kennel: Diversity in the Dog Genome
2000-01Robert DarntonPoetry and the Police in the 18th Century
2000-01Julian BondCrossing the Color Line: From Rhythm and Blues to Rock'n'Roll
1999-00Jeane J. KirkpatrickYear 2000: Global Issues
1999-00Anna Deavere SmithSnapshots: Glimpses of America in Change
1999-00Jonathan KozolLove Against Fear: The Ethics and Compassion of Young Children Under Siege
1999-00Stephen Jay GouldQuestioning the Millennium: Why We Cannot Predict the Future
1998-99Patricia WilliamsToward a Theory of Grace
1998-99John Michael VlachThe Strength of These Arms: Endurance, Creativity and Authority in the Plantation Landscape
1998-99JoAnne AkalaitisLiving in Performance
1998-99Sandra Zimdars-Swartz (KU, Religion)Wounds on Wounds: Christianity, Pain and Religious Experience
1997-98Robert Hemenway (KU)Humanities and American Politics
1997-98Nancy Kassabaum BakerAn Evening with Nancy
1997-98Ira Michael HeymanExhibition Dilemmas
1997-98Donald Worster (KU, History)The Inhabited Prairie: Nature and Culture on the Great Plains
1997-98Winona LaDukeNative American Environmentalism at the Cusp of the Millennium
1996-97Rolena AdornoThe Spanish New World in the Narrative Imagination
1996-97Richard WhiteWorking with Nature
1996-97Gwendolyn BrooksPoetry Reading
1995-96Charles Eldredge (KU, History of Art)John Steuart Curry, Prairie Prodigal
1995-96Kwame Anthony AppiahAgainst National Culture: For Cosmopolitan Patriotism
1995-96Bernard WilliamsTruthfulness and Democratic Politics
1995-96Carol GluckWar and Memory in Japan- Fifty Years Later
1995-96Daniel T. Politoske (KU, Music and Dance)From Berlin to Krakow: Musical Treasures Rediscovered
1994-95Drucilla CornellPornography's Temptation
1994-95Manning MarableBeyond Black and White: Unlearning Racism
1994-95Elizabeth BrounChilde Hassam's America
1994-95Janet Sharistanian (KU, English)Gender, Modernism, Politics: The Case of Tess Slesinger
1993-94Cornel WestBeyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism
1993-94Sheldon HackneyBeyond the Culture Wars
1993-94Dominick LaCapraThe Return of the Historically Repressed: Secularization and Approaches to the Holocaust
1993-94Del Brinkman (KU, Journalism)William Allen Wight and the Presidents: Fifty Years of Influence on Washington by a Small-Town Kansas Editor
1992-93Gordon ParksCreativity
1992-93Rex Martin (KU, Philosophy)Are Rights Enough? Social Justice in Our Nations Third Century
1992-93Martin JayModernism, Post Modernism: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought
1992-93Roberto Gonzalez EchevarriaThe Second Discovery of America: History and Literature in the Writings of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera
1991-92Patricia LimerickTroubled Land and Haunted Places: A Re-envisioning of the American West
1991-92Martha BantaImperialist Acts and Efficiency Movements at the Turn of the Century: Veblen, Cuba and the Jameses
1991-92Jacques D'AmboiseThe Arts Set the Stage for Life
1991-92Ronald Willis (KU, Theatre and Film)The Answer is Theater! What's the Question?
1990-91Lawrence LevineThe Meaning of America: Frank Capra and the Politics of Culture During the Great Depression
1990-91Arnold RampersadFour Black American Lives: Du Bois, Hughes, Hurston and Wright
1990-91Patricia GrahamCollaborating for Children in Schools: Historical Views
1990-91Boris NotkinGood Evening from Moscow
1990-91John G. Clark (KU, History)Her Huge Shadow: Energy and America's Responsibilities to the Globe
1989-90William CrononDust Bowl Days: Stories of Environmental Change
1989-90Catharine R. StimpsonWomen, Literature and Society
1989-90Anthony SeegerFolk Music and American Culture
1988-89Chu-Tsing Li (KU, History of Art)
1988-89Peter Casagrande (KU, English)Moving Easy in Harness: Creativity and Constraint
1988-89Paul KurtzWhat is Secular Humanism?
1988-89William McGlaughlinAn Evening with William McGlaughlin
1988-89Ivar IvaskAn Evening with Ivar Ivask
1987-88Robert Hudson (KU, History of Medicine)
1986-87Victor Papanek (KU, Arch & Urban Design)
1985-86Elizabeth Shultz (KU, English)
1984-85Richard Schowen (KU, Biochemistry)
1983-84Frances Heller (KU, Law)
1982-83Frances Horowitz (KU, Human Development)
1981-82Jim Moeser (KU, Music)
1980-81Richard DeGeorge (KU, Philosophy)
1979-80Harold Orel (KU, English
1978-79William Griffith(KU, History)
1977-78Barbara Craig (KU, French)
1976-77Andrew Debicki (KU, Spanish & Portugeuse)
1975-76Stitt Robinson (KU, History)
1974-75George Lawner (KU, Music)
1973-74Marilyn Stokstad (KU, Art History)
1972-73William P. Albrecht (KU, English)
1971-72Oswald P. Backus (KU, History)
1970-71John Brushwood (KU, Spanish and Portugeuse)
1969-70Milton Steinhardt (KU, Music)
1968-69Donald R McCoy (KU, History)
1967-68Merrel D. Clubb (KU, English)
1966-67Clifford Griffin (KU, Hisotry)
1965-66Paul Roofe (KU, History of Medicine)
1964-65James Seaver (KU, History)
1963-64Richard DeGeorge (KU, Philosophy)
1962-63Errol Harris (KU, Philosophy)
1962-63Elmer Beth (KU, Journalism)
1961-62Mary Grant (KU, Classics)
1960-61W. Clarke Wescoe (KU, Chancellor)
1959-60Jan Chiapusso (KU, Music)
1958-59William Paden (KU, Englsh)
1957-58M. Carl Slough (KU, Law)
1956-57L. R. Lind (KU, Classics)
1955-56J. Neale Carman (KU, French)
1947-48T.V. SmithThe Humanities and Modern Life