Humor and the Humanities

SAR Humanities Festival Keynote Presentation

Given that many dimensions of human life can fall far beyond the reach of merriment, some frequently cited works in the Humanities evoke an atmosphere of the somber and solemn. But, in the everyday practice of the Humanities, human beings have stuck with an unbreakable habit of immersing themselves in stories infused with wit, hilarity, and absurdity, and this habit has positioned people to move forward in times of difficulty. Accordingly, the robust alliance between the Humanities and Humor will serve as the foundation of this program. Recounting some of their favorite stories, the speakers will celebrate the forces unleashed when Humor and the Humanities team up to confirm courage and replenish resilience. As the Standing Rock Sioux writer, thinker, and activist Vine Deloria, Jr. put it in Custer Died for Your Sins in 1969:

When a people can laugh at themselves and laugh at others and hold all aspects of life together without letting anyone drive them to extremes, then it seems to me that that people can survive.

Patty Limerick is a Professor of History, the Director of the Applied History Initiative, and the Campus Partner for Academic Affairs for the Veteran and Military Affairs office at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is the author of Desert Passages (1985), The Legacy of Conquest (1987), Something in the Soil (2000), and A Ditch in Time (2012). She has served as President of the American Studies Association, the Western History Association, Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians, as Vice President of the Teaching Division of the American Historical Association, and as a Member of the National Council on the Humanities. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1995 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021. Limerick has dedicated her career to bridging the gap between academics and the general public and to demonstrating the benefits of applying historical perspective to contemporary dilemmas and conflicts.

Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo) is the newly appointed president of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2022 to 2025 after serving on the National Council on the Humanities for six years alongside Patricia Limerick. She has served on the board of the National Indian Education Association and as a trustee for the National Museum of the American Indian. Lowe’s career in higher education has included roles as executive director of the Harvard University Native American Program and director of the Native American Cultural Center at Yale University.

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Host or Publisher School for Advanced Research