Oregon Humanities

Do you know about Civic Season?

It’s an annual youth-led tradition that runs from Juneteenth to July 4th, connecting our country’s oldest federal holiday with our newest. Oregon Humanities is excited to have several of our own events featured in this year’s lineup—along with 1,600+ others across Oregon and the country!

From walking tours and podcasts to karaoke events, readings, and community discussions, there are so many ways to participate. You can find the full list of what’s happening locally, including several of our virtual events, at the link below.

The folks at Made By Us also cretaed a handy "Build My List" tool for mapping out your own itinerary, which you can check out here:

https://thecivicseason.com/

Civic Season Juneteenth to July 4th is Civic Season, for America's 250th and beyond. Explore what you stand for, connect with others and shape the future of our country.

We always love seeing how our partners across the country describe the work of the public humanities. This piece from our friends at Humanities New York gets right to the heart of what we do and why:

"Much of our political and digital culture encourages people to react before they have had time to think, interpret, or listen carefully. But human experience is rarely that clean or immediate. Most people understand their own lives through contradiction, memory, revision, and unfinished thought. The humanities make room for that reality."

Thanks to the HNY team for shining this light!

Read more:

www.humanitiesny.org

We're so excited to announce the recipients of our first Humanities Action Fellowship: Charlie Bloomer (Sandy), Frida Cruz (Medford), Koda Fejeran (Salem), Infinity Hamilton (Nyssa), Jolly Wrapper (Portland), and Declan Zupo (Eugene).

This fellowship supports young adults in developing or facilitating public humanities programs in their communities. Our six fellows will each receive a $1,500 honorarium as well as support from a mentor to complete a community-focused project that brings people together across differences of background, experience, or belief.

Congratulations to our 2026 fellows!

Meet the 2026 Humanities Action Fellows Oregon Humanities is excited to announce the recipients of the 2026 Humanities Action Fellowship

Poet Naomi Shihab Nye joins us for the final Consider This conversation of the season this Thursday. The event is sold out, but you can watch live on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/cc7NzEEnrug

This event is part of By the People: Conversations Beyond 250, a series of community-driven programs created by humanities councils across the United States, its territories, and the District of Columbia in collaboration with local partners. Together, these programs explore 250 years of the nation's cultural life and imagine its shared future. The initiative was developed by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage as a complement to the 2026 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

On this month's episode of The Detour—just in time for the World Cup—we talk with Georgia Cloepfil and Jules Boykoff, two Oregon authors who are also former pro soccer players, about politics, play, pain, and transcendence on and off the field.

https://oregonhumanities.org/rll/podcast/episode/jules-boykoff-and-georgia-cloepfil/

Congratulations to Sarah Fox, whose Watershed Rock Opera recently won an Oregon Heritage Award of Excellence. Fox was an Oregon Humanities Community Storytelling Fellow in 2025 while she was researching the production. Read about the project here: https://www.oregonhumanities.org/rll/magazine/currents-winter-2025/channeling-the-stories-of-the-local-watershed/

Congratulations—and a huge thank-you—to the team at Tonkon Torp LLP who were honored by the Multnomah Bar Association for their work on our lawsuit to hold the federal government to its commitment to fund state and territorial humanities councils.

Oregon Humanities Team at Tonkon Torp Honored with MBA Pro Bono Award of Merit Tonkon Torp attorneys Anna Sortun, Steven Wilker, Paul Balmer, and Gracey Nagle have been honored by the Multnomah Bar Association (MBA) with a 2026 Pro Bono Award of Merit. The award is in recognition of their work representing Oregon Humanities and the Federation of State Humanities Councils in Or...

Last week, a federal court ruled that the cancellation of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities led by DOGE in 2025 was unlawful. This decision doesn't directly affect Oregon Humanities or the other members of the Federation of State Humanities Councils. We are plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit against the NEH and DOGE, which is still ongoing.

The DOGE-ing of the Humanities Is Being Reversed The Trump administration hastily canceled research grants last year—but just hit a roadblock in court.