Jesmyn Ward shares forthcoming work on trauma, writing, and hope
In her 2025 David P. Gardner Graduate Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts on October 23, Jesmyn Ward shared with the audience at the Salt Lake City Public Library a new piece to appear…
Biographer Alex Beam discusses Wallace Stegner, novelist, conservationist, and Utah alum
At a Tanner Humanities Center and Marriott Library event on October 20, journalist Alex Beam introduced his new biography, Wallace Stegner: Dean of Western Writers (Signature Books). Drawing on the Stegner archive housed in the…
Evening with Great Books features works in literature, philosophy, and history
The Tanner Humanities Center’s second annual Evening with Great Books event was held at the Alta Club in downtown Salt Lake City on October 16. More than sixty community members and Center supporters enjoyed dinner…
Interview with Teri Harman on Water Commons symposium
Environmental Humanities graduate student Teri Harman was a key organizer of The Water Commons: Living Legacies of Utah Waterways held on September 19, 2025 at the Marriott Library Gould Auditorium. The event was sponsored by…
Daniel Mendelsohn, Translator of the Odyssey, Brings Homer’s Epic to Life at Utah
Daniel Mendelsohn has spent six and a half years completing a new translation of Homer’s Odyssey for the University of Chicago Press—the publisher’s first since Richmond Lattimore’s influential 1962 edition. The author of the acclaimed…
Annual Report for 2025
Annual Report for 2025 In our annual report, you can learn about the Tanner Humanities Center’s 2024–2025 events and fellowships, strategic goals in the upcoming year, and new initiatives. Download (pdf)
The Tanner Humanities Center’s public events for 2025-2026
The Tanner Humanities Center is pleased to announce its calendar of public events for 2025–2026. All events are free and open to the public, though advance registration may be required. More information about times, locations,…
Tanner fellows’ work-in-progress talks: Alexis Christensen, John Harfouch, Megan Weiss, Ataya Cesspooch, and Thérèse de Raedt
Every spring, research fellows at the Tanner Humanities Center give work-in-progress talks in a casual setting and receive feedback from colleagues across campus. “Our community of fellows is at the heart of the Tanner…
David Damrosch: Tanner Lecture on Human Values and Symposium on scriptworlds
Neither transparent vehicles of meaning, nor expressions of authenticity, writing systems, or scripts, encode the contingencies of historical events and often exceed their intended purpose. This dynamism of scripts was the subject of the 2025…
Louis Chude-Sokei: Sound and cultures of the Black diaspora
Author and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei explored the complexities of Black identity across the African diaspora at a Tanner Conversation event at the Salt Lake City Public Library on April 1. Chude-Sokei is Professor of English,…
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: Sterling M. McMurrin lecture on Mormon Studies and Claudia Lauper Bushman
In a culminating keynote to a festschrift conference on March 15 honoring the work of Claudia Lauper Bushman, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich discussed the institutional and biographical contexts for Bushman’s career as a scholar…
Ed Yong: How birding changed my life
To a packed and enthusiastic auditorium at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts on February 25, Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer Ed Yong discussed the implications of becoming “bird curious.” Having become increasingly popular…