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Statewide Outreach Fall 2024

Carolina Public Humanities is excited to be engaging with diverse communities and cultivating a range of collaborative models through our statewide outreach programming. This includes:

  • Continuing to partner with the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources to help facilitate updates to state historic sites, focusing this year on Morrow Mountain State Park, Edenton, and Tryon Palace.
  • Encouraging semester-long conversations on community college campuses through the continuation of our “Portraits of Climate Change” initiative (a collaboration with our friends at Southern Cultures, and a project generously supported by the North Caroliniana Society).
  • Humanities on the Road programs, a project of our State Outreach and Strategic Partnerships initiative, Carolina Public Humanities partners with community colleges and cultural institutions throughout North Carolina to bring humanities scholars from UNC Chapel Hill to engage with public communities around the state.

Humanities on the Road – Fall 2024

Eurovision Calling!: Pop Music and the Serious Politics of Europe
with Andrea Bohlman, Associate Professor of Music at UNC-CH 

Wednesday, October 9th from 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Cape Fear Community College – Wilmington, NC 

In this lively presentation, participants will learn about the deeper contexts behind issues too often reduced to sound bites. Whether you follow the annual Eurovision Song Contest closely or have never seen it before, don’t miss this chance to engage with its history, music, and spectacular performances – and to learn about cultural and political dynamics that animate the contest from within.  

How Baseball Became as American as Apple Pie
with Matt Andrews, Teaching Professor of History at UNC-CH 

Monday, October 21st from 5:30 – 6:30 pm
Wayne Community College – Goldsboro, NC 

Baseball was one of the most popular sports in the United States throughout much of the 20th century, and it was also entangled with wider issues in American history, including rituals of nationalism, racial and class hierarchies, images of masculine celebrity, and the emergence of new media and advertising. Join UNC’s award-winning teacher of sports history, Matt Andrews, for an insightful historical commentary on baseball’s influential role in modern American mythologies and new perspectives on “America’s pastime.”  

Art of the Islamic World 
with Esra Bayraktar, Lecturer in Turkish at UNC-CH; and Hatice Erbas Sorkunlu, Artist 

Friday, November 22nd from 12:00 – 1:30 pm 
Guilford Technical Community College – Jamestown, NC 

What role has art played in the history of the Islamic world? How have practices around “Islamic Art” transformed as the religion has crisscrossed cultures and times? This dynamic program will begin with a presentation introducing audiences to Islamic art followed by a workshop in which participants can get hands-on experience with ebru, or Turkish paper marbling – a centuries-old art form that has evolved alongside religious traditions of calligraphy and bookmaking.