The Chicago Humanities Festival is a foundation which organizes an annual series of lectures, concerts, and films in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. The main festival takes place in the first and second weeks of November. The festival was started in 1990 by the Illinois Humanities Council and became an independent foundation in 1997. The annual Festival is generally built around a theme. In 2010, the theme was the Human Body. The Foundation also presents other shows and lectures during the remainder of the year.

Mission

The Chicago Humanities Festival is designed to create opportunities for people to explore the humanities

Humanities

The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....

. In addition to its annual Festival of the Humanities, it presents programs throughout the year on the study and enjoyment of the humanities.

History

Under the aegis of the Illinois Humanities Council and its then-chairman Richard J. Franke, the notion of a "humanities day" was proposed, and then expanded into a "festival." Eileen Mackevich created the first Chicago Humanities Festival, a one-day affair, held on November 11, 1990 at the Art Institute of Chicago and Orchestra Hall, before an audience of 3,500 people. Eight programs addressed the theme Expressions of Freedom, including a keynote address by playwright Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

. Founding co-sponsor institutions included the Art Institute of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Chicago, Illinois. It is one of the five American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1891, the Symphony makes its home at Orchestra Hall in Chicago and plays a summer season at the Ravinia Festival...

, Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lyric Opera of Chicago

Lyric Opera of Chicago is one of the leading opera companies in the United States. It was founded in Chicago in 1952, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicolà Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma...

, and the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

.

In 1997, the Festival formally separated from the Illinois Humanities Council and established itself as an independent, nonprofit organization. Under Eileen Mackevich's leadership, by 2006, the independent Festival had expanded to nearly 150 programs over 16 days, in more than 30 venues, involving nearly 40 partner institutions and several hundred site volunteers, and attracting a combined audience of nearly 50,000.

A Children's Humanities Festival was introduced in 2000. In addition, a year-round slate of education programs is devoted to supporting classroom teachers and students. The Festival also expanded its presence year-round, offering public lectures, readings, concerts, and special events that anticipate and build interest in the November Festival.

In 2006 Lawrence Weschler

Lawrence Weschler

Lawrence Weschler is an author of works of creative nonfiction.A graduate of Cowell College of the University of California, Santa Cruz , Weschler was for over twenty years a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies...

 was appointed as the first artistic director of CHF, and in 2007 Stuart Flack joined as Executive Director. Festival-sponsored exhibits and commissioned artworks are displayed.

Stages, Sights & Sounds (Spring 2009)

In 2009 the Children's Humanities Festival was renamed to Stages, Sights & Sounds to better reflect the full breadth of the spring festival. The spring festival’s emphasis on performance provides contrast
to the fall festival’s adult-centered programming, which includes more lectures and
discussions in exploration of a central theme that changes each year.

Past Festivals

CHF I: Expressions of Freedom (1990)

Notable Presenters: Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

, Ed Paschke

Ed Paschke

Edward Francis Paschke was a Polish American painter. His childhood interest in animation and cartoons, as well as his father's creativity in wood carving and construction, led him toward a career in art...

, Philip Gossett

Philip Gossett

Philip Gossett is an American musicologist and historian, and recently officially retired from the post of Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor of Music at the University of Chicago...

CHF II: Culture Contact (1991)

Notable Presenters: Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...

, John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman

John Edgar Wideman is an American writer, professor at Brown University, and sits on the contributing editorial board of the literary journal Conjunctions.-Early life:...

, Michael Ondaatje

Michael Ondaatje

Philip Michael Ondaatje , OC, is a Sri Lankan-born Canadian novelist and poet of Burgher origin. He is perhaps best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel, The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy-Award-winning film.-Life and work:...

, Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros

Sandra Cisneros is an American writer best known for her acclaimed first novel The House on Mango Street and her subsequent short story collection Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories...

CHF III: From Freedom to Equality (1992)

Notable Presenters: John Updike

John Updike

John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....

, Czesław Miłosz

CHF IV: From Communication to Understanding (1993)

Notable Presenters: William Safire

William Safire

William Lewis Safire was an American author, columnist, journalist and presidential speechwriter....

, David McCullough

David McCullough

David Gaub McCullough is an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award....

, Marlo Thomas

Marlo Thomas

Margaret Julia “Marlo” Thomas is an American actress, producer, and social activist known for her starring role on the TV series That Girl . She also serves as National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital...

CHF V: Crime and Punishment (1994)

Notable Presenters: Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe

Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...

, Scott Turow

Scott Turow

Scott F. Turow is an American author and a practicing lawyer. Turow has written eight fiction and two nonfiction books, which have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over 25 million copies...

, Sherman Alexie

Sherman Alexie

Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr. is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and occasional comedian. Much of his writing draws on his experiences as a Native American. Two of Alexie's best known works are The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven , a book of short stories and Smoke Signals, a film...

CHF VI: Love and Marriage (1995)

Notable Presenters: Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...

, Stevie Wonder

Stevie Wonder

Stevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...

, Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman is an American author, poet, and naturalist known best for her work A Natural History of the Senses. Her writing style, referring to her best-selling natural history books, can best be described as a blend of poetry, colloquial history, and easy-reading science...

, Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century...

CHF VII: Birth and Death (1996)

Notable Presenters: Edward Albee

Edward Albee

Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...

, Jane Urquhart

Jane Urquhart

Jane Urquhart, OC is a Canadian novelist and poet.-Biography:Born 200 miles north of Thunder Bay, Ontario in Little Longlac , Ontario, Jane Urquhart is the third of three children and the only daughter of Marian and Walter Carter, a prospector and mining engineer...

, Stephen Ambrose

Stephen Ambrose

Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a long time professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many best selling volumes of American popular history...

CHF VIII: Work & Play (1997)

Notable Presenters: Peter O’Toole, Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen, CH is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members...

, Michael Moore

Michael Moore

Michael Francis Moore is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist. He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries...

CHF IX: He/She (1998)

Notable Presenters: Wendy Wasserstein

Wendy Wasserstein

Wendy Wasserstein was an American playwright and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University...

, Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch is an American poet and critic who wrote a national bestseller about reading poetry. He has published eight books of poems, including The Living Fire: New and Selected Poems , which brings together thirty-five years of work. He is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial...

, Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell

Galway Kinnell is an American poet. He was Poet Laureate of Vermont from 1989 to 1993. An admitted follower of Walt Whitman, Kinnell rejects the idea of seeking fulfillment by escaping into the imaginary world. His best-loved and most anthologized poems are "St...

CHF X: New & Old (1999)

Notable Presenters: Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa

Yusef Komunyakaa is an American poet who currently teaches at New York University and is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Komunyakaa is a recipient of the 1994 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, for Neon Vernacular and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He also received the Ruth Lilly...

, Mordecai Richler

Mordecai Richler

Mordecai Richler, CC was a Canadian Jewish author, screenwriter and essayist. A leading critic called him "the great shining star of his Canadian literary generation" and a pivotal figure in the country's history. His best known works are The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Barney's Version,...

CHF XI: NOW! (2000)

Notable Presenters: Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman is an American physicist, writer, and social entrepreneur. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of the international bestseller Einstein's Dreams. He was the first professor at MIT to receive a joint appointment in the sciences and the...

, Harold Ramis

Harold Ramis

Harold Allen Ramis is an American actor, director, and writer, specializing in comedy. His best-known film acting roles are as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters and Russell Ziskey in Stripes , both of which he also co-wrote...

, Alison Lurie

Alison Lurie

Alison Lurie is an American novelist and academic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she has also written numerous non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.-Personal...

CHF XII: Words & Pictures (2001)

Notable Presenters: Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Nimoy

Leonard Simon Nimoy is an American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer. Nimoy's most famous role is that of Spock in the original Star Trek series , multiple films, television and video game sequels....

, Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections , a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction...

, Witold Rybczynski

Witold Rybczynski

Witold Rybczynski , is a Canadian-American architect, professor and writer.Rybczynski was born in Edinburgh of Polish parentage and raised in Surrey, England before moving at a young age to Canada. He attended Loyola High School , located on Sherbrooke street, in Montreal-Ouest...

, Junot Diaz

Junot Díaz

Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer and creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience...

, Art Spiegelman

Art Spiegelman

Art Spiegelman is an American comics artist, editor, and advocate for the medium of comics, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book memoir, Maus. His works are published with his name in lowercase: art spiegelman.-Biography:Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, Sweden, to Polish Jews...

CHF XIII: Brains & Beauty (2002)

Notable Presenters: Francis Fukuyama

Francis Fukuyama

Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford. Before that he served as a professor and director of the International Development program at the School of...

, Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

, Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Eugenides

Jeffrey Kent Eugenides is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer. Eugenides is most known for his first two novels, The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex . His novel The Marriage Plot was published in October, 2011.-Life and career:Eugenides was born in Detroit, Michigan,...

, Francine Prose

Francine Prose

Francine Prose is an American writer. Since March 2007 she has been the president of PEN American Center. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991....

, Mira Nair

Mira Nair

Mira Nair is an Indian film director and producer based in New York. Her production company is Mirabai Films.She was educated at Delhi University and Harvard University. Her debut feature film, Salaam Bombay! , won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned the nomination...

CHF XIV: Saving + Spending (2003)

Notable Presenters: Roberto Benigni

Roberto Benigni

Roberto Remigio Benigni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director of film, theatre and television.- Early years :...

, Oscar Hijuelos

Oscar Hijuelos

Oscar Jerome Hijuelos is an American novelist. He is the first Hispanic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.- Early life and career :...

, Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe

Thomas Kennerly "Tom" Wolfe, Jr. is a best-selling American author and journalist. He is one of the founders of the New Journalism movement of the 1960s and 1970s.-Early life and education:...

CHF XV: Time (2004)

Notable Presenters: August Wilson

August Wilson

August Wilson was an American playwright whose work included a series of ten plays, The Pittsburgh Cycle, for which he received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama...

, Maxine Hong Kingston

Maxine Hong Kingston

Maxine Hong Kingston is a Chinese American author and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where she graduated with a BA in English in 1962. Kingston has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese immigrants living in the United...

, Clive Barker

Clive Barker

Clive Barker is an English author, film director and visual artist best known for his work in both fantasy and horror fiction. Barker came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories which established him as a leading young horror writer...

CHF XVI: Home and Away (2005)

Notable Presenters: Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

, Salman Rushdie, Annie Proulx, Susan Orlean

Susan Orlean

Susan Orlean is an American journalist. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1992, and has contributed articles to Vogue, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and Outside....

CHF XVII: Peace and War (2006)

Notable Presenters: Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman

Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...

, Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi, born ca. 1947, is an Iranian academic and bestselling writer who has resided in the United States since 1997 when she emigrated from Iran. Her field is English language literature....

, Joel Meyerowitz

Joel Meyerowitz

Joel Meyerowitz is a street photographer who began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art...

, Frank McCourt

Frank McCourt

Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angela’s Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood....

, Joan Baez

Joan Baez

Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....

, Errol Morris

Errol Morris

Errol Mark Morris is an American director. In 2003, The Guardian put him seventh in its list of the world's 40 best directors. Also in 2003, his film The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.-Early life and...

, Wesley Clark

Wesley Clark

Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr., is a retired general of the United States Army. Graduating as valedictorian of the class of 1966 at West Point, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and later graduated from the...

, Garry Trudeau

Garry Trudeau

Garretson Beekman "Garry" Trudeau is an American cartoonist, best known for the Doonesbury comic strip.-Background and education:...

CHF XVIII: The Climate of Concern (2007)

Notable presenters: Wangari Maathai

Wangari Maathai

Wangari Muta Mary Jo Maathai was a Kenyan environmental and political activist. She was educated in the United States at Mount St. Scholastica and the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the University of Nairobi in Kenya...

, E.L. Doctorow, Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman

Philip Pullman CBE, FRSL is an English writer from Norwich. He is the best-selling author of several books, most notably his trilogy of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials, and his fictionalised biography of Jesus, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ...

, Majora Carter

Majora Carter

Majora Carter is an economic consultant, public radio host, and environmental justice advocate from the South Bronx area of New York City. Carter founded the non-profit environmental justice solutions corporation Sustainable South Bronx before entering the private sector.-Early life:Carter...

, Peter Singer

Peter Singer

Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...

, Roger Payne

Roger Payne

Roger Searle Payne is a biologist and environmentalist famous for the 1967 discovery of Whale song among Humpback whales. Payne later became an important figure in the worldwide campaign to end commercial whaling.Payne studied at Harvard University and Cornell...

, Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams

Terry Tempest Williams , is an American author, conservationist and activist.Williams’ writing is rooted in the American West and has been significantly influenced by the arid landscape of her native Utah in which she was raised...

, W.S. Merwin, Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky OC is a Canadian photographer and artist who has achieved international recognition for his large-format photographs of industrial landscapes. His work is housed in more than fifteen major museums including the Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Bibliothèque...

, Maya Lin

Maya Lin

Maya Ying Lin is an American artist who is known for her work in sculpture and landscape art. She is the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Personal life:...

, Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a screenwriter. He is also the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia.-Life:Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts,...

, Colin Quinn

Colin Quinn

Colin Edward Quinn is an American stand-up comedian and writer best known for his five years in the cast of Saturday Night Live, as the sidekick/announcer of MTV's late 1980s gameshow Remote Control and as host of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn on Comedy Central from 2002–2004.-Early years:Quinn was...

, Cat Chow, Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.-Life and career:Marcus was born in San Francisco...

, Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen, CH is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members...

, and the head writers of The Onion

The Onion

The Onion is an American news satire organization. It is an entertainment newspaper and a website featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news, in addition to a non-satirical entertainment section known as The A.V. Club...

CHF XIX: Thinking Big! (2008)

Notable presenters: David McCullough

David McCullough

David Gaub McCullough is an American author, narrator, historian, and lecturer. He is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award....

, Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist and Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. One of the youngest economics professors in the history of Harvard University, Sachs became known for his role as an adviser to Eastern European and developing country governments in the...

, Robert Darnton

Robert Darnton

Robert Darnton is an American cultural historian, recognized as a leading expert on 18th-century France.-Life:He graduated from Harvard University in 1960, attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, and earned a Ph.D. in history from Oxford in 1964, where he studied with Richard Cobb,...

, Wendy Kopp

Wendy Kopp

Wendy Sue Kopp is the CEO and Founder of Teach For America , the national teaching corps and the CEO of Teach For All.-Background:...

, Erika Doss, Robert Irwin

Robert Irwin

Robert Irwin may refer to:* Robert Irwin , Canadian politician* Robert Irwin , American installation artist* Robert Irwin , British historian, novelist and writer on Arabic literature...

, Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:...

, Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive...

, Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh

Amitav Ghosh , is a Bengali Indian author best known for his work in the English language.-Life:Ghosh was born in Calcutta on July 11, 1956, to Lieutenant Colonel Shailendra Chandra Ghosh, a retired officer of the pre-independence Indian Army, and was educated at The Doon School; St...

, Colonel Eileen Collins, Jonathan Alter

Jonathan Alter

Jonathan Alter is an American journalist and author who was a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine from 1983 until 2011. He is currently a lead columnist for Bloomberg View, a new commentary website. He is also a contributing correspondent to NBC News, where since 1996 he has appeared...

, Ronald Mallett

Ronald Mallett

Ronald Lawrence Mallett is an American theoretical physicist, academic, and author. He has taught physics at the University of Connecticut since 1975. He is best known for his scientific position on the possibility of time travel....

, and Laurence Tribe

Laurence Tribe

Laurence Henry Tribe is a professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. He also works with the firm Massey & Gail LLP on a variety of matters....

CHF XX: Laughter (2009)

Notable presenters: Matt Groening

Matt Groening

Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....

, John Hodgman

John Hodgman

John Kellogg Hodgman is an American author, actor, and humorist. In addition to his published written works, such as The Areas of My Expertise, More Information Than You Require, and That Is All, he is known for his personification of a PC in contrast to Justin Long's personification of a Mac in...

, Sarah Jones

Sarah Jones

Sarah Jones is a Tony- and Obie Award-winning American playwright, actress, and poet.Called "a master of the genre" by The New York Times, Jones has written and performed four multi-character solo shows, including Bridge & Tunnel, which was produced Off-Broadway in 2004 by Oscar-winner Meryl...

, Bob Sabiston

Bob Sabiston

Bob Sabiston is an American film art director, computer programmer, and creator of the Rotoshop software program for computer animation. Sabiston began developing software as a graduate researcher in the MIT Media Lab from 1986 to 1991...

, Lynda Barry

Lynda Barry

Lynda Barry is an American cartoonist and author. One of the most successful non-mainstream American cartoonists, Barry is perhaps best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek. Barry's cartoons often view family life from the perspective of pre-teen girls from the wrong side of the...

, Jules Feiffer

Jules Feiffer

Jules Ralph Feiffer is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays...

, Robert Mankoff

Robert Mankoff

Robert Mankoff is the current cartoon editor for The New Yorker magazine. Before he succeeded Lee Lorenz as editor, Mankoff was a cartoonist for The New Yorker for 20 years....

, Barbara Ehrenreich

Barbara Ehrenreich

-Early life:Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander to Isabelle Oxley and Ben Howes Alexander in Butte, Montana, which she describes as then being "a bustling, brawling, blue collar mining town."...

, Paul Farmer

Paul Farmer

Dr. Paul Edward Farmer is an American anthropologist and physician. He is currently the Kolokotrones University Professor at Harvard University, formerly the Presley Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, an attending physician and Chief...

, Claire McCaskill

Claire McCaskill

Claire Conner McCaskill is the senior United States Senator from Missouri and a member of the Democratic Party. She defeated Republican incumbent Jim Talent in the 2006 U.S. Senate election, by a margin of 49.6% to 47.3%. She is the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in her own...

, Robert Reich

Robert Reich

Robert Bernard Reich is an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator. He served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and was Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997....

, Billy Collins

Billy Collins

Billy Collins is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York and is the Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute, Florida...

, Ronald K.L. Collins, Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan is an American poet and educator. She has published seven volumes of poetry and an anthology of selected and new poems. Ryan was the sixteenth United States Poet Laureate, from 2008 to 2010...

, Tim Reid

Tim Reid

Timothy L. "Tim" Reid is an American actor, comedian and film director best known for his roles in prime time American television programs, such as Venus Flytrap on WKRP in Cincinnati , Marcel "Downtown" Brown on Simon & Simon , Ray Campbell on Sister, Sister and William Barnett on That 70's Show...

, Tom Dreesen

Tom Dreesen

Tom Dreesen is an American stand-up comedian.Dreesen grew up in Harvey, Illinois, south of Chicago. His family was one of the few white families in a largely African American community...

, Ian Frazier

Ian Frazier

Ian Frazier is an American writer and humorist. He is best known for his 1989 non-fiction history Great Plains, his acclaimed 2010 best-selling opus Travels in Siberia, and as a writer and humorist for The New Yorker....

, John Adams (composer)