DHF Program Highlights

The Delaware Humanities Forum promotes the humanities by providing an assortment of resources to the people of Delaware. Program highlights are detailed below.

Speakers Bureau (est. 1978)
Provides more than 60 free lectures and discussions to non-profit organizations statewide. Speakers Bureau presentations have included talks on Delaware folklore, survivors of the Holocaust, ethics in health care, and violence in American society.

Visiting Scholars Program (est. 1986)
Provides free college and university lectures to thousands of Delaware elementary and secondary school children, grades 1-12. VSP topics include Delaware history, African American history, anthropology, various aspects of literature, and teen ethics.

Grants Program (est. 1973)
Gives nonprofit organizations funds to host a wide range of their own humanities programming. Recent projects funded by DHF Grants include:

• A Film on Dr. Eugene McGowen (Delaware's first African-American school psychiatrist)
• Delaware Silver
• Democracy in East Asia
• The First Annual Louis L. and J. Saunders Redding Lecture in the Humanities featuring John Hope Franklin, esteemed author and the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus in History
• Italian Heritage Wall: The Immigration Experience
• Pets in America
• Pre Raphaelite Humanities Series
• Quilts in a Material World
• Romeo and Juliet: A Bridge to Literature for Adjudicated Youth
• Self-guided audio tour of Milton, Delaware
• We Sing Choruses in Public

Annual Lectures
Forum-supported Annual Lectures are held once a year during the October/November timeframe in a New Castle County setting. This event has brought distinguished lecturers to Delaware including Pulitzer Prize winners like David Halberstam and Wendy Wasserstein.

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Special Presentations
Periodically, special presentations are offered to the public at no cost. Past programs have included a six-part series People You Should Know, celebrating Black History and Women's History Months, and Distant Voices, a program exploring the experience of a Japanese American during his World War II internment. Contemporary programming includes a Literature and Medicine program targeted at medical professionals, a Civic Discourse program targeted at legal professionals and programs which apply the humanities to environmental issues ("Green" programs). Our 35th anniversary celebration in 2008-2009 is centered on a theme of "Picturing Delaware: Inside and Outside the Frame," a theme which is infused into almost all of our programs for the year, including the newly-introduced Humanities Salons.