WTTW at the Chicago Humanities Festival 2019

The Chicago Humanities Festival, which begins this fall on October 26 and runs through November 10, is an ideal series of events for PBS viewers: authors and speakers both popular and academic, wide-ranging topics, both serious and light-hearted discussions. So it's a no-brainer that WTTW is a media partner, and that several of the programs are related to WTTW. Here's a rundown. 

Caitlin Doughty: Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?

On Saturday, October 26 at 12:00 pm at the Field Museum, licensed mortician Caitlin Doughty speaks with Mark Bazer, host of WTTW's The Interview Show, about her newest book, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Doughty has become unexpectedly popular for her lively and irreverent approach to death and all the rites that surround it – in other words, she's the perfect interviewee for Bazer, who delights in off-the-beaten path topics and fascinating people. 

Daniel Immerwahr: How to Hide an Empire

Daniel Immerwahr is a historian at Northwestern University whose newest book, How to Hide an Empire, explores the United States' little-discussed imperialist history. He discussed the book, in particular an obscure law relating to guano that helped the U.S. expand, on Chicago Tonight earlier this year. He speaks as part of the Humanities Festival on Sunday, October 27 at 12:30 pm in Northwestern's McCormick Auditorium.

Jennifer Lackey: Incarceration and Education 

Jennifer Lackey is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern and the director of the Northwestern Prison Education Program. On Sunday, October 27 at 2:30 pm in Northwestern's McCormick Auditorium, she will discuss education in prison, a topic that will also be covered in great depth on WTTW at the end of November in a multi-part documentary called College Behind Bars by Ken Burns's frequent collaborator Lynn Novick. (WTTW is hosting a free screening and discussion of the film with Novick and formerly incarcerated alums of the Bard Prison Initiative on Tuesday, October 29 at 6:00 pm at Malcolm X College.) Lackey will be introduced by WTTW's Dan Protess, the producer and director of an upcoming WTTW digital series on gun violence called Firsthand, who will also show a clip from Firsthand.

Sister Helen Prejean: Dead Man Walking

Sister Helen Prejean is one of the country's foremost advocates against the death penalty. Her book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States inspired not just debates about capital punishment but also an Academy Award-winning film, a play, and an opera by Jake Heggie, with a libretto by playwright Terrence McNally, that the Lyric Opera of Chicago is presenting in November. Earlier this month, George Preston, the general manager of WTTW's sister station WFMT, moderated a panel at the Lyric with Prejean and Heggie that is available to watch, as a taste of Prejean's conversation with the Chicago Sun-Times's Mary A. Mitchell on Thursday, Octboer 31 at 6:00 pm in the sanctuary of First United Methodist Church. 

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

On Sunday, November 3 at 11:00 am at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. receives the Chicago Tribune Literary Award as part of the Humanities Festival. In addition to his voluminous work as a literary scholar and professor at Harvard and his status as a public intellectual, he has produced numerous series for PBS, from documentaries about African and African American history (his most recent, Reconstruction: America After the Civil War, is available to stream by Passport members) to explorations of genealogy, as in his popular Finding Your Roots (also available to stream).

The Legacy of the Chicago Defender

Earlier this year, the legendary African American newspaper the Chicago Defender ceased print production after 114 years and became a digital-only publication. On Friday, November 8 at 6:00 pm at the Blanc Gallery, WTTW News's Brandis Friedman speaks with Myiti Sengstacke-Rice, a fifth generation member of the family that published the Defender from the beginnging, about the legacy of the paper and its enormous impact on African American – and indeed, just American – history. (The event is sold out, but you can be added to a wait list.)