News

The works of Percival Everett, Distinguished Professor at the University of Southern California, feature satirical and ironic accounts of race in American life, experiments in literary form, and philosophically rich reconsiderations of historical periods and events. His 2024 novel, James, retells the story of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the enslaved character, Jim. James has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award. The Tanner Conversation with Everett on October 29th in Kingsbury Hall with Jeremy Rosen and Rone Shavers (Department of English) was followed by dialogues with two cohorts of students: graduate students in Utah’s English and Creative Writing programs, and high school students from Rowland Hall school, who had read both James and Huckleberry Finn in their classes.

Now in its second year at the University of Utah, Great Books in the Humanities introduces first-year students to foundational literary and philosophical works from across world civilizations, alongside recent scholarship that deepens our understanding of enduring questions. At an evening reception at the Fort Douglas Commander’s House on October 16, campus and community members gathered to hear from this year’s Great Books faculty about their books and their approaches to teaching them to students.

In a blend of memoir and scholarly investigation, Dailey recounts the life and death of her mother, who was “a gifted teacher, a passionate reader, and a pathological liar.”

What makes a leader authoritarian, and how do they rule? This central question animates the work of Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and Italian studies at New York University.

The Humanities Games Symposium brought together scholars from the University of Utah and other institutions to present groundbreaking and field-defining work in games humanities.

The College of Humanities at the University of Utah has named Scott Black, Professor of English at the U, as the new director of the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center.

Bruce Bastian was a longtime supporter of the Tanner Humanities Center and his partnership was instrumental in furthering the center’s mission to provide public outreach and educational enrichment to the University campus and the broader community.

On March 19, as part of the Tanner Humanities Center’s Author Meets Reader series, Min Jin Lee stepped into the Utah Museum of Fine Arts’s Dumke Auditorium for a conversation with Professor David S. Roh.

The University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center will host Whyte, a professor of environment and sustainability and George Willis Pack Professor at University of Michigan, in conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants,” on Wednesday, April 17 at 7 p.m. in the Moot Courtroom of the S.J. Quinney College of Law.

The Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah hosted a talk with Danielle Endres, professor of communication and director of the U’s Environmental Humanities program. Endres discussed her new book Nuclear Decolonization: Indigenous Resistance to High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting, which details the activism of the Western Shoshone, Southern Paiute and Goshute people against establishing nuclear waste repositories on Indigenous land.

The University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center will host Min Jin Lee, author of “Free Food for Millionaires” and editor of “The Best American Short Stories 2023,” as part of the Author Meets Readers series at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Tuesday, March 19, at 7 p.m. Lee will be in conversation with David Roh, professor of English at the U. A book signing hosted by The King’s English will follow with Lee’s novels available for purchase.

The Tanner Humanities Center will host  Danielle Endres, professor of communication and director of the University of Utah's Environmental Humanities program, to discuss her new book, "Nuclear Decolonization: Indigenous Resistance to High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting." As part of the Author Meets Readers series, Endres will discuss her new book with Logan Gomez, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, at The Obert C. & Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center Jewel Box on Feb. 21, 2024, at 1 p.m.  

LaToya Ruby Frazier believes life is not to be "belittled or squandered"— both one's own life and the lives of others. The first work of Frazier's I encountered was "The Notion of Family," I felt this commitment then (the same is true for her body of work at large), as I did again with intense and moving clarity when I was lucky enough to attend her talk organized by the Tanner Humanities Center. I invoke the word luck because it is not every day that you meet an artist who means and owns all her utterances, imbued with both intention and care.

David Wallace-Wells is not a writer known for his optimism; his book, after all, is called, “The Uninhabitable Earth.” He is known for a bluntness sometimes read as alarmist, a direct engagement with the definite and potential harms climate change will impose that often feels pessimistic, almost antagonistic, if not towards us as readers than at least towards our shared wishful delusions about climate change as it is and will be.

Frazier is a multimedia artist and 2015 MacArthur Fellow whose work spans genres and disciplines but often includes themes touching on environmental racism, industrial, family, personal narrative, and interdisciplinary connections. Her work has been featured in many prestigious museums, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Bronx Museum of New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, among many others

Hosted by the University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center, Frazier will give the Gardner P. Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Tuesday, Nov. 14, at 7 p.m. Tickets are free and open to the public but must be reserved in advance.

As Seen On the Daily Utah Chronicle

The first story I ever read by Carmen Maria Machado was not "The Husband Stitch" or "Especially Heinous." It was not her excellent and essential memoir “In the Dream House,” a book I’ve read and re-read and been in love with and also a little bit angry at for how good it is. It was not even the one-sentence story I regularly teach my students, “Mary When You Follow Her.” The first story I ever read by Carmen Maria Machado was initially published in Lightspeed Magazine in 2014. It’s a story formatted and organized as a Kickstarter, one that works with a premise both darkly funny and sad. The title is “Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead.”

The Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah is honored to host Wallace-Wells, author of "The Uninhabitable Earth," for the Tanner Lecture on Human Values at the Marriott Library Gould Auditorium, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023, at noon. A book signing hosted by The King’s English will follow with copies for purchase.

Bestselling author and current New York Times science journalist David Wallace-Wells will speak at the Marriott Library Gould Auditorium on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023, at noon as part of the Tanner Lecture on Human Values Series.

Carmen Maria Machado effortlessly navigates between literary form and eerie undertones, challenging traditional genre formats. Her narrative style, significantly influenced by her Cuban heritage and the vibrant storytelling tradition, abundant with elements of fantasy, fairytale, and horror, transcends conventional genre boundaries.

In modern-day America, books that explore the lives of Black, Latinx, Indigenous, queer, or transgender characters, or are written by individuals from these communities, make up the bulk of the American Library Association's annual list of the most frequently censored books in libraries and schools. According to Machado, bans on books restrict access to valuable literature and hinder students from gaining a deeper understanding of themselves and others

The Tanner Humanities Center is proud to welcome back former fellow, Danielle Olden, associate professor of history, as part of the Author Meets Reader Series, Sept. 20, 2023, at 1 p.m. in The Obert C. & Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center Jewel Box. Olden will be discussing her book and ongoing research of historical racial construction and desegregation. 

Erika George, director of the Tanner Humanities Center and Samuel D. Thurman Professor of Law has stepped down from her role as of August 31, 2023. After four years of leadership, Geroge believes it is time to return the reins to faculty members within the Humanities.

Tanner Humanities Center hosts author Gretchen Henderson Tuesday, April 18, at 2 p.m. The naturally occurring phenomena of tar seeps are becoming more exposed at the Great Salt Lake as the climate rises. Causing insects, rodents, coyotes and birds, such as the American White Pelican, to become stuck and entrapped in the sticky tar.

The Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah is pleased to host Robinson, an award-winning science fiction author, for the Tanner Lecture on Human Values on March 16 at 7 p.m. at Kingsbury Hall.

Last fall, I was the keynote speaker at the North Dakota Library Association’s annual conference. The theme was “Libraries: The Place For Everyone.” There were rainbow flags, paper-link chains and multicolor glitter scattered across tables. It was the safest I have ever felt back home as an out, gay man. When I was a young person, libraries were where I went to find stories that made me feel I could fit in, not only in North Dakota, but in the wider world. But two pieces of legislation that may soon be signed into law in North Dakota would make it possible to restrict libraries and, in some cases, to imprison librarians.

Indigenous peoples have for centuries remained “nearly nonexistent in the American book of poetry,” writes former United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. This absence forms part of a more significant problem in American culture, “indigenous peoples of our country are often invisible.” However, hundreds if not thousands of Native Nations poets are working today, and perhaps none has done as much to restore their visibility as Harjo.

The banning of literature and the silencing of authors continues to be on the rise. The news is full of stories of books being pulled from the shelves of public school libraries. In August, prizewinning author Salman Rushdie was attacked onstage after decades of hiding in response to death threats for his book, "The Satanic Verses.” According to Azar Nafisi, bestselling author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books,” books are a threat to those who seek to rule through absolutism. Their power resides in the way they allow us to imagine lives lived differently from our own and to resist the imposition of any one particular way of life.

Living in Salt Lake City, you’ve probably heard The Great Salt Lake is rapidly drying up and its disappearance could cause immense damage to Utah’s public health, environment, and economy. What you may not have heard is there’s a name for that overwhelming feeling of dread; climate anxiety. Britt Wray’s acclaimed book, "Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis" (2022), blends scientific knowledge with emotional awareness to help make sense of the mental health impacts amid the ecological crisis.

According to C. Thi Nguyen, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, game playing can be a cure for the unease of living in the world. The experience is satisfying because of the internal logic of the game, rather than its service to any real-world application. Games allow the players to solve problems in ways that are pleasurable, interesting and beautiful. But be advised, as Nguyen argues in his critically acclaimed book, “Games: Agency as Art,” game playing is the opposite of love.

I was standing on a subway platform in Brooklyn, NY in April as the sun was just hitting the top of the station. I was on the phone with my parents who were back home, almost four hundred miles away in Norwood, NY. I was finishing my gap year between my undergraduate degree and the start of my graduate program at the University of Utah in the fall. I had just gotten the news that I would be working with the Tanner Humanities Center to help facilitate events with writers and humanists on campus.

Established in 1990, our Gateway to Learning Educator Workshops offer K-12 Utah teachers rigorous, affordable professional development opportunities and continuing education courses at the University of Utah. Under the direction of nationally recognized University of Utah faculty members, teachers attend week-long summer workshops to explore current scholarship on academic subjects, new pedagogical methods, curriculum development, and innovative classroom technologies.

The Tanner Humanities Center was proud to host author Nnedi Okorafor in a virtual conversation with Director Erika George and Assistant Professor of English Andrew Shephard. The discussion focused on her writing, which she describes as "Africanfuturism" and "Africanjujuism," as well as her newest novel, NOOR.

The Tanner Humanities Center was proud to host Shoshana Zuboff, author of, "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," for the Obert C. Tanner Lectures on Artificial Intelligence and Human Values, a special series of the Tanner Lectures program.

Tanner Humanities Center staff share their favorite quotes and excerpts from historically banned books to celebrate Banned Books Week 2021.

The Utah Informatics Initiative (UI2) and Tanner Humanities Center hosted a two-day symposium on September 21-22, 2021, dedicated to the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Society. Watch Day 1 & Day 2 of the Symposium NOW.

Anthony Doerr was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the author of the story collections The Shell Collector and Memory Wall, the memoir Four Seasons in Rome, and the novels About Grace and All the Light We Cannot See, which was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2015 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His newest novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, was published on September 28, 2021.

October 28, 2020 - Migrant Crossings examines the experiences and representations of Asian and Latina/o migrants trafficked in the United States into informal economies and service industries.

Earthjustice is proud to announce that Erika George has joined the organization’s Board of Trustees. George brings a vital array of expertise that is critical to leveraging gaps between human rights and environmental advocacy.

A friend of the Tanner Humanities Center, Stacy Bare is a local writer, entrepreneur, well-being advocate, and veteran of the United States Army. He received a Bronze Star for his service in Iraq from 2006-07. Working at the intersection of outdoor recreation and health Bare co-founded the Great Outdoors Lab in 2014 and launched Adventure Not War in 2015. http://www.adventurenotwar.com/contact His work with veterans has earned him a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year Award.

Professor David Kieran, author of, "Signature Wounds: The Cultural Politics of Mental Health During the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars," served as one of the Center's visiting fellows in 2015-2016.

We at Tanner Humanities aim to learn to solve complex problems with creativity, make sense of cultural trends and changes, build our capacity for empathy and hope, cultivate connections to one another and our global community, and practice effective communication.

Longtime friend of the Tanner Humanities Center, Martha Bradley-Evans, has been awarded the 2020 Rosenblatt Prize for Excellence.

The Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah presents the 2020 World Leaders Lecture Forum given by Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code, Friday, March 6, 11 a.m. at Kingsbury Hall.

The Obert C. and Grace A Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah welcomes author Ibram X. Kendi to kick off the new Tanner Talks series, Tuesday, Feb. 18 at 3 p.m. at the Alumni House.

The Obert C. and Grace A Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah welcomes author Ben Fountain for the 2020 David P. Gardner Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts, Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts.

Join the Marriott Library on Thursday, November 14th at 6pm as they commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death.

Artist and architect Maya Lin will deliver the Tanner Lecture on Human Values on November 20, 2019 at Kingsbury Hall

Professor Katharine Coles presents her Work in Progress Talk "The Stranger I Become" on October 31st at 12pm

The two-day conference explores the LGBTQ+ community within the LDS Church

Erika George, U professor of law, will take the lead on July 1, 2019.

Tanner Humanities Center, in partnership with the World Trade Center Utah, will host former President of Mexico on Feb. 12