Adult Audiences
Find a Lecture
Who Can Apply
How to Apply
Common Questions
Planning Tips
Speaker Admin
Schools
Become a Speaker

Discussion Groups

Grants

HumList

Events

Support the Council

About Us
Launched in 1983, the Speakers in the Humanities program brings the best in humanities scholarship to thousands of people at hundreds of cultural organizations in virtually every corner of New York. To host a lecture in your town, just select a topic, contact the Speaker, and apply for funding through the Council. Any not-for-profit organization in New York State is eligible to use the program. Speakers events must be open to the public and free of charge. If your application is successful, the Council covers the cost of the Speaker's honorarium and travel expenses.
How to apply to host a lecture

Confirm Your Eligibility
Speakers in the Humanities is available to most not-for-profit

organizations. Read more >

Select a lecture
Search or browse presentation listings to find the right topic for your audience. Find a lecture >

Contact the Speaker to arrange a date and time
Get in touch with the Speaker you have selected, using his or her listed contact information. Browse Speaker directory >

Apply to the Council for Funds
Once you have completed steps 1 through 3, apply to the Council for funding. Apply now >

Plan and Promote Your Event
Start publicizing your lecture as soon as you receive notice of Council funding approval. View Planning Tips >

Need more information about Speakers in the Humanities?
View answers to Frequently Asked Questions >

Browse the new We the People lecture topics >

 
Celebrate the Fourth of July with an American History Topic
The Wild, Wild East: New York's Drama of Westward Expansion
Robert Spiegelman
America's first "Wild West" was New York's frontier. This multimedia lecture illuminates the fateful crossroads where settler dreams meet native lifeways, at the heart of Westward Expansion.
Traveling the New York City African American Experience 1623-1830
Sherrill D. Wilson
African enslavement and freedom in early 1600’s-1830’s in New York City is the focus of this illustrated presentation.
 
Offer a series of Medicine, Science and Technology lectures in August
Time and Space: Einstein's Impact on Modern Art and Theatre
Magda Romanska
How did Einstein's Theory of Relativity influence the worlds of modern art and theatre? This presentation will place special focus on Robert Wilson's opera, Einstein on the Beach.
The Scandal of Women's Bicycling in the Gilded Age
Ellen Gruber Garvey
Women found new freedom, mobility, and power as they took to bicycling in the 1890s. The establishment responded by calling them sexually loose, masculine, and unmarriageable.

Don't see what you're looking for? Apply for funding to create your own program. Read more >