Hello, everyone.
My name is Christopher Kaufman
Ilstrup. I'm the Executive Director
of Vermont Humanities.
You may be wondering why I'm
standing here in front of the State
House.
Well, I'm here to talk about our
Fall Conference, and the theme is
democracy. So what better place to
be? Normally, of course, we'd
be welcoming you at UVM,
but we need to do things a little
bit differently this year.
Beginning on August 19th, we're
going to be releasing a new piece of
our conference every Wednesday night
on our Facebook page and on our
website.
Topics will include things like
Abenakian democracy,
political cartooning, the women's
suffrage movement, the importance of
a free press, and
the impact of civic architecture on
our democracy.
Hopefully, starting in October,
we'll be able to gather in small,
physically-distanced groups.
We're planning events to
occur in Rutland and Bellows Falls,
St. Johnsbury and Burlington,
the four corners of our state.
Please do watch the videos as
they're released. We'll announce
them on our email and social
media. You can sign up for our
emails to get notices each week of
what's happening that week.
Normally for our Fall Conference we
ask people to contribute about one
hundred and fifty dollars to support
the conference.
But this year, we're going to make
it free and open to the public.
But it is course not free to
produce. And we need to pay our
scholars for their work.
So if you can make a donation,
please visit our webpage at
www.vermonthumanities.org/democracy
to support this year's conference.
We're all looking forward to sharing
our fall conference talks with you,
to having great discussions online,
and hopefully meeting in person
later this fall.
Now, let's get started.
