Humanities – Creative Minds Out Loud

Episode 106: Sharing the Bounties of Human Culture

“The humanities give people time to reflect and think about issues in a different way than our daily living,” says Jack Cheng, Academic Director of the Boston Clemente Course.

The Clemente Course is a college-level introduction to the humanities for adults facing economic hardship and adverse circumstances. Cheng shares how teaching adults makes for a rich learning environment and pushes him to be a better teacher.

Since 2001, Jack Cheng has taught art history at the Dorchester/Boston site of the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities, and has served as Academic Director since 2012. The Boston Clemente Course is the subject of a forthcoming documentary by Lost Nation Pictures. Jack has worked as an archaeologist at sites in Turkey, Syria, and Sudan.

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Episode 89: Common Spaces for Sharing Our Humanity

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“The humanities are human beings interpreting what human beings do,” says Brian Boyles, Executive Director of Mass Humanities. He discusses Mass Humanities’ work to support communities who are doing humanities work in the public square. He says that given the crises we’re facing as a country, the more the humanities can be a part of those conversations, the better.

Brian Boyles is Executive Director for Mass Humanities, where he works with communities, scholars, and supporters to advance the council’s mission. Prior to joining MH, he spent 11 years at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, directing the opening of the Louisiana Humanities Center that year, developing programs that responded to the post-Katrina recovery, supervising the council’s grants and public programming, and leading its partnerships with the Smithsonian’s Museum on Main Street, and the CreateLouisiana fund for filmmakers.

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Episode 74: New Bedford Asks: What Would an Abolitionist Do Now?

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There’s more to New Bedford than just whaling. Lee Blake, President of the New Bedford Historical Society, discusses how the city’s residents are pulling their history together to create a new conversation about what New Bedford did to end slavery, and how that history can inform and inspire a more progressive social agenda.

Lee Blake As president of the New Bedford Historical Society, Ms. Blake leads an organization that preserves and celebrates the legacy of African Americans, Cape Verdeans, and Native Americans in her home town of New Bedford, MA. The Society has worked to preserve and document the history of the freedom seekers who found their way to New Bedford, a hub on the Underground Railroad in the 19th century.
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Episode 72: Mass Historical Society is “Getting Out”

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Catherine Allgor, President of Massachusetts Historical Society, shares her path to becoming an historian, and how the Society is expanding efforts to “get out” – by digitizing collections, expanding community partnerships, and more. (Also, don’t miss this conversation we had with Allgor last year about Mass History Day, a state affiliate of National History Day, a highly-regarded program that gives students a chance to dig deep into the past through creative learning and presentations.)

Catherine Allgor has been appointed the next president of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Previously, she had been the Nadine and Robert Skotheim Director of Education at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, and a former Professor of History and UC Presidential Chair at the University of California, Riverside. Allgor attended Mount Holyoke College as a Frances Perkins Scholar and received her Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University, where she also won the Yale Teaching Award. Her dissertation received a prize as the best dissertation in American History at Yale and The Lerner-Scott Prize for the Best Dissertation in U.S. Women’s History.
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Episode 45: The Humanities Equip Us with Tools of Introspection & Analysis

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Rose Sackey-Milligan is a Senior Program Officer at Mass Humanities and Academic Director of the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities, a college-level learning experience for adults whose aspirations for higher education and engagement with the humanities are thwarted by socioeconomic circumstances. She discusses the vital role of the humanities – philosophy, ethics, jurisprudence, language, literature, and more – to offer people a space and opportunity to explore ever-evolving ideas of history and culture.

Rose Sackey-Milligan is a socio-cultural anthropologist and former Director of the Social Justice Program, Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. At Mass Humanities she is a Senior Program Officer, Reading Frederick Douglass Together statewide coordinator, and Academic Director of the Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities in Springfield, MA.

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