2020 presented Nevada Humanities with the opportunity to transform and shift our programming online. In case you missed some of our virtual events in the blur of 2020, we invite you to look back in a retrospect of our 2020 virtual events on our YouTube channel.
Read MoreBy Wendy Kveck
The impetus for curating New Monuments for a Future Las Vegas for the Nevada Humanities Exhibition Series, which is currently on view at the Nevada Humanities Program Gallery and online at nevadahumanities.org, was my experience teaching the inaugural Las Vegas Seminar, Finding America in Las Vegas, last spring in the Department of Art at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. A lofty premise! but I stand behind it.
By Staff of Nevada Humanities
At Nevada Humanities, we create and fund programs that use the humanities to illuminate our diverse histories and chart a path forward in a dramatically changing world. We know the critical role that the humanities play in nurturing just and healthy communities, in connecting people, providing space for diverse perspectives, and strengthening our community bonds with deeper intellectual and cultural engagement.
By Michael Green
The obituary stood out to me: Frederick Hesse Stitt, Jr. It noted that he was 62, well liked, and overcame addiction. I knew all that. I met him at the gym, and he gave me a greater gift than he realized. That I would recognize a name in the obituary column probably is unsurprising. I write and teach about Las Vegas history, and I’m likely to know some names that others would miss.
By Kathleen Kuo
I have been working remotely from my home in Las Vegas since April 1, my first day of employment at Nevada Humanities. It feels strange to be homebound, leaving only for essential errands, and I feel this lack of human connection even more so because of Nevada Humanities’ emphasis on producing and forging meaningful human connections and programs.
An Interview with Antoinette Cavanaugh—New Board Chair of Nevada Humanities
Humanities, from my viewpoint, is the individual and unique artistic expression of our perceptions, feelings, and passions about the world around us. Our individual gifts of expression provide others the opportunity to interpret that which is expressed. These creative interactions then encourage growth and understanding of and between all of us.
Staff of Nevada Humanities
Wishing you and yours a most Happy Thanksgiving Day! Celebrate, give thanks, and seek out the humanities in the world around you.
By Staff of Nevada Humanities
GivingTuesday, a global day of giving that harnesses the collective power of individuals, communities, and organizations to encourage philanthropy and to celebrate generosity worldwide is coming and you can be part of the movement to fund our work.
By Staff of Nevada Humanities
As record numbers of Americans have cast their ballots in the 2020 election season, Nevada Humanities is sharing essays and reflections from first-time and seasoned voters throughout the state.
By Emilee Wirshing
clay mineral rusts
the desert brush
an alchemy of iron & time,
when our rituals need sacrifice
we steep the knuckled twigs
of ephedra for tea, wander
bare ankled through fields
of jumping cholla.
By Daniel Enrique Pérez
As the United States reckons with its legacy of racial violence and discrimination against several communities of color and religious minorities—Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, Jewish, and Muslim—I am reminded of the important role the names of places play.
By Sally Denton
Living in the long shadow of the coronavirus pandemic during a particularly prickly presidential election year, it’s easy to be consumed by the daily headlines and forget those better angels of our common humanity. But it’s at just such times that the Humanities are more important than ever, because they remind us of the great spirit that exists in the American people.
By Bill Marion
You may not know it, but October is National Arts and Humanities Month. As the Chair of the Board of Nevada Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, it has fallen on me to say something about why we should dedicate a full month to the Arts and Humanities, particularly when venerable institutions like hot dogs, apple pie, and the American flag only get a day each. This of course then leads to the questions of what are the arts? What are the humanities?
By Aliza Pantoja
To whom it may concern:
I have written this letter in support of Nevada Humanities. This letter has not been written on behalf of them or as a request from them. We are an organization that has continued to create and support programs that resonate with the people of our state during the recent, uncertain times. I am proud of the work that we do, and I think our group of sometimes nine or more women are a true representation of an organization that tries to create something good in our state.
By Kurt Rasmussen
The muddy lake is like an ocean to the boy
who is your son, digging landscapes in the sand.
He is a wastrel god with tiny, pruned-up hands
creating worlds and wrecking them with savage joy.
—written while sheltering in place
October is National Arts & Humanities Month. We thought this collaborative poem written by Nevada poets would be a fitting way to kick off this celebratory month. Enjoy!
Read MoreBy Ken Lamug
Growing up in Quezon City, Philippines, I dreamed that I would be an archaeologist. I remember looking through hand-me-down copies of the Britannica Encyclopedia (which was missing a few volumes) and old prints of National Geographics. Opening the double-spread map of an ancient Mayan city was a marvel. The hieroglyphs and photos of artifacts were mesmerizing. I would take notes and redraw them.
By William Marion
On a shelf in my study is a book with a Nevada Humanities bookmark titled The Way Things Work: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Technology. It includes about 300, two-page descriptions of things we take for granted, and which we generally know little about except for the fact that we know they work. I read one excerpt every day – hence, the bookmark. Today, I read about clocks and watches; a couple of weeks ago the topic was steam engines. It’s a pretty eclectic book.
By Emily Budd
On November 2, 1986, the Stonewall Park group held their first town meeting in Queer Rhyolite. Fred Schoonmaker and Alfred Parkinson, a gay couple with a small following, had just moved here as they began the process to purchase the ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada. Located on colonized Western Shoshone land between Death Valley National Park and the Nevada Test Site, the abandoned mining town was the new prospect for their queer utopian vision.
By Stephanie Gibson, Kathleen Kuo, and Sara Ortiz
In late 2019, a committee of writers, scholars, book sellers, and community members throughout our state met to select two books–a fiction and non-fiction title–as part of Nevada Reads, our statewide reading club. The two chosen: Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, and Severance by Ling Ma. This pairing was selected, in part, because of the corresponding themes of displacement, transience, and economic upheaval found in both books. As 2020 unfolded, these themes became increasingly germane. With Severance especially, Ling Ma’s satirical portrait of a global fever illness that transforms life in the U.S. became eerily prophetic as COVID-19 swept our world.
