The Humanities Today Lecture Series examines the role the humanities play in our lives and the lives of communities on the periphery of or excluded from the traditional avenues of humanities education. This series is supported by funds donated in the memory of Renate Usmiani, a professor of the Department of English at Mount St. Vincent University, remembered and beloved in her support for and teaching of the humanities.
2025 – Dr. Peter Adamson, “Philosophy from Everywhere, for Everyone: Podcasting Global Philosophy”
On Wednesday, April 16 at 6:30 PM at the North Memorial Library Dr. Adamson presented “Philosophy from Everywhere, for Everyone: Podcasting Global Philosophy” for our the Humanities Today Lecture Series. Since 2010, Peter Adamson has been producing the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps, a podcast that has been downloaded more than 45 million times across nearly 700 episodes, covering not just European but also Africana, Chinese, Indian, and Islamic philosophy. In his lecture he discussed the challenges and benefits of this sort of public outreach project in philosophy, and also talked about how the project has evolved over time, often in response to listener feedback.
Peter Adamson is Professor of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy at the LMU in Munich. He is the author of Al-Kindī and Al-Razī in the series “Great Medieval Thinkers” from Oxford University Press, and has edited or co-edited numerous books, including The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy and Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays. He is also the host of the History of Philosophy podcast (www.historyofphilosophy.net), which appears as a series of books with Oxford University Press.
2024 – Dr. Roosevelt Montás, “Human, Humanity, Humanities: Reflections On Our Condition”
On March 11, 2023, Dr. Roosevelt Montás of Columbia University presented the inaugural lecture “Human, Humanity, Humanities: Reflections On Our Condition” at the Halifax Central Library. With a packed audience, Dr. Montás explored what it means to be human and what do the humanities contribute to our experience of ourselves. He reflected on why the humanities are both so important and so elusive, and why they are critical to who we are, and yet so imperiled in our society.
Born in the Dominican Republic, Roosevelt Montás moved to the United States as a teenager and found that his early encounters with, and later study of, great books would have a profound impact on the course of his life. Dr. Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University and the former director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum (2008-2018). He is director of the Center for American Studies’ Freedom and Citizenship Program, which brings low-income high school students to the Columbia campus to study political theory and aid them in preparing successful college applications. Dr. Montás also helped to launch a branch of the Clemente Course of the Humanities—the program that inspired the creation of our own Halifax Humanities Society—and has shown a lifelong commitment to the study of the humanities.