Hall Center for the Humanities

09/03/2026

The Department is excited to welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown to KU.

Join us for the John F. Eberhardt Memorial Lecture, “Love Poems No Matter What!” on Monday, September 28 at 7 p.m. at the Hall Center Conference Hall.
Brown is the author of The Tradition, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and a professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University.
The Raven Book Store will be on site selling books.

This event is co-sponsored by KU English and the Hall Center for the Humanities.
Learn more at the link in our bio.

09/03/2026

🚀 From Lawrence to Low-Earth Orbit. KU alum & NASA astronaut Loral O'Hara returns to campus for a free, public conversation about her time aboard the ISS — part of KU Reads' "Orbital" programming.

📅 Oct. 8, 7-8:30 p.m. | Kansas Union Ballroom

🗞️ https://rockcha.lk/oharaoct8

08/21/2026

08/21/2026

"THATCamp helped me visualize the kinds of digital humanities projects that would sync with my work..." 🎙️ Katie Wade, Graduate Student in WGSS

The Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities at KU will host THATCamp 2026 on Aug. 28 at Hall Center for the Humanities ... encouraging exploration at the intersection of technology and humanities.

🗞️ https://rockcha.lk/that26

07/22/2026

THATCamp is a most-of-the-day event that allows members of the KU community to propose, brainstorm, and engage in a range of topics around the digital humanities.

Think of it as a low-risk, DH-focused networking event and a great way to kick off the year!

Join us for a day of unconference activities centered around building our DH community.

Planning to attend? Register by August 10.

Use the link or QR code in the flyer to learn more and view the schedule.

06/10/2026

Stop by the Hall Center (900 Sunnyside Ave) to pick up these free commemorative postcards celebrating Langston Hughes 125th birthday!

This set of 10 postcards highlights places that were significant to Hughes during his early life in Lawrence, pairing contemporary photos with historic images of the same locations.

Read more about the project ➡️ https://news.ku.edu/news/article/ku-and-community-partners-publish-postcards-celebrating-the-life-of-langston-hughes-in-lawrence

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Available at the Hall Center and from our partners: Spencer Museum of Art, Watkins Museum of History, Lawrence Public Library, KU Commons

06/01/2026

We are so proud to welcome filmmaker Boots Riley back to the Free State Festival with his latest film, I Love Boosters! Boots's new comedy has been called “a wickedly clever skewering of the moral rot at the center of the fashion industry delivered with enough vision to make your eyes hurt" on RogerEbert.com. A groundbreaking artist in cinema, music and theatre, Boots is a Lawrence favorite and this will be a must see festival moment on June 24 - 6:30pm at Lawrence Arts Center!

Thank you to event sponsors:
KU Film and Media Studies
KU African and African-American Studies
Hall Center for the Humanities

And festival sponsors:
Kansas Public Radio
Lawrence Business Magazine

05/22/2026

Congratulations to this year's Applied Humanities Boot Camp grads! This week-long course introduced graduate students to career paths outside of academia in federal, state, nonprofit and community organizations. Led by Sarah Bishop, CEO of Coneflower Consulting and former interim director of the Hall Center, bootcampers networked with professionals from various industries, worked on resumes, and participated in mock interviews to prepare for their future careers.

"Your skills are so valuable, and so needed out there. It is a gift to the world when you choose to move outside [of academia]."

Thank you to Sarah, the panelists, and everyone who attended Boot Camp this week!

05/15/2026

For 50 years, the Hall Center has served as the University of Kansas' home for the humanities, supporting research, interdisciplinary conversation, and public programs that bring humanistic inquiry to communities across the state.

As the 2025-2026 academic year comes to a close, we want to thank you all for being here for two big milestones: 20 years in our home at 900 Sunnyside Ave., and 50 years as KU's humanities center, which we celebrated with music, stories, and the people who made it all possible.

We look forward to the next fifty!

📹: Cindy Knudsen
📸: Mark McDonald
View the full album at: https://www.smugmug.com/gallery/n-GQSJ99

05/07/2026

"As my mother said to me: Hughes, as a poet, helped us to dream. And if you could dream freedom, in simple terms ... that was his power."

Dr. Randal Maurice Jelks, Dr. Maryemma Graham, and a room full of Langston Hughes fans rode out a tornado watch as the former KU professors discussed Hughes' abolitionist roots, his vision of democracy, and the power of art as activism in the final Humanities Speaker Series talk of the semester.

Jelks, an award-winning author, documentary film producer and Ruth N. Halls Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University, was presenting his most recent book, "My America: Langston Hughes on Democracy." Graham, founder of the Project on the History of Black Writing and Distinguished Professor Emerita in the KU Department of English, has spent decades preserving the work of Black writers whose stories had been lost or underappreciated.

Thank you to everyone who braved the storm with us last month for this talk! If you missed it, you can watch the recording here: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/jelks