Wyoming Humanities is proud to partner with, sponsor and collaborate with dozens of agencies and organizations around the state and country each year. Every year, the topics change with current events and new ideas but our commitment to help bolster programs and events around the state remains the same. For a list of some of our more common partner agencies, click here. And be sure to check back often as we help bring exciting topics to Wyoming.
Take a Closer Look
225th Anniversary of the Bill of Rights
December 2016 marks the 225th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Together with the National Archives, Wyoming Humanities and local venues around the state will display a small exhibit to help commemorate this foundation document. The display details many important details such as the amendment process and the fact that out of 11,000 attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution, only 27 have ever been successful.
This exhibit will be available for viewing beginning December 15th at the locations below and can be viewed until January. Locations and dates will be updated as available.
Initial Locations for viewing:
Albany County Library
University of Wyoming Coe Library/Union
Big Horn County Library
Campbell County Public Library
Carbon County Higher Education Ceter C-TEC
Rawlins Elementary School 2-5
Eastern Wyoming College – Douglas Campus
Crook County Library
CWC Intertribal Center
Fort Washakie School Community Library
Goshen County Library
Eastern Wyoming College
Hot Springs County Library
Wyoming Supreme Court JLC
Wyoming State Library
Wyoming State Archives and Museum
Natrona County
Community College Casper
Niobrara County Library
Park County Library
Park County Library Powell Branch
Park County Library Meeteetse Branch
Platte County Library
Sheridan County Fulmer Public Library
Community College Sheridan
Sublette County Library
Sweetwater County/White Mountain Library
Community College Rock Springs
Teton County Board of County Commissioners
Wyoming Humanities Jackson Office
Uinta County Library
UCB – Lyman
UCB – Mountain View
Washakie County Library
Weston County Museum
Pulitzer Centennial Campfire Initiative
Over the last year, Wyoming Humanities (WH), our state’s humanities council, implemented a $30,000 grant from the Pulitzer Prize Board for Reporting on Equality in the Equality State: Wyoming’s Journalistic Past, Present, and Future, a program to commemorate the Pulitzer Prizes’ Centennial in Wyoming during 2016 though the Pulitzer’s Centennial Campfires Initiative.
WH partnered with WyoFile.com, WyoHistory.org and the Wyoming Press Association (WPA), to produce a series of in-depth articles that examine journalism in Wyoming examining past Pulitzer prize-winning topics as a lens to view similar issues in Wyoming. WH also partnered with the WPA to host a panel discussion, “Journalism in the Equality State – Where are we going?”, about the past, present, and future of journalism and promoting/celebrating the project at the Wyoming Press Association Winter Convention on January 20, 2016.
WyoFile published a series of articles that exemplify the impact of journalism and the humanities in American life today. From a story about President Obama releasing a Casper mother early from a long prison sentence to a research story on Wyoming worker’s compensation fraud, WyoFile set a high standard for these impactful stories, each of them demonstrating the values represented by the Pulitzer-prize winning journalism.
“Wyoming journalists play a critical role in civic life, from watchdogging elected bodies, to telling the stories of citizens’ plights and successes,” said WyoFile editor-in-chief Dustin Bleizeffer. “WyoFile is proud to be a part of this collaboration that celebrates good journalism by putting it into action.”
WyoHistory.org, in partnership with the WPA, produced profiles and stories about pivotal journalists throughout Wyoming’s history. These stories and articles are available through the WyoHistory.org website and will also be available to state news agencies for publication.
“Longtime Washington Post Publisher Phil Graham called journalism ‘the first rough draft of history,’” said Tom Rea, WyoHistory.org editor. “With articles on past Wyoming newspapers, the remarkable people who ran them and the remarkable people who wrote them, we at WyoHistory.org are delighted to offer readers a look at some colorful Wyoming history—right as it was happening.”
The Pulitzer Prize Centennial Campfires Initiative is a joint venture with the Federation of State Humanities Councils in celebration of the 2016 centennial of the Prizes. The initiative seeks to focus on journalism and the humanities, to imagine their future and to inspire new generations to consider the values represented by Pulitzer Prize-winning work.
World To Wyoming
In a long-standing relationship, Wyoming Humanities continues its partnership with the University of Wyoming’s Center for Global Studies and UW’s Department of Global and Area Studies along with Wyoming’s community colleges by sponsoring the World to Wyoming outreach program. This program brings a variety of unique lectures including those by National Geographic and UW writer-in-residence and Mark Jenkins as well as graduate research projects to our state. Speakers and topics have included Dr. Elinor Burkett, a visiting scholar who brought her award-winning documentary, iThemba; conferences and talks about the environment and energy as well as human rights and feminism in Islam.
This upcoming series brings Burma’s Ressurection: An Expedition Deep into a Forbidden Land. A documentary by National Geographic writer Mark Jenkins, with a team of North Face athletes, attempted to climb the highest peak in Burma, Hkakabo Razi, 19,300 ft. The peak lies in the far north of the country on the border of Tibet. Taking trains, motorcycles, buses, and a boat up the Irrawaddy River, then hiking for two weeks through an almost impenetrable jungle, the team battles leeches, poisonous spiders, and venomous snakes. From basecamp they set out to ascend the serrated, heavily glaciated West Ridge of Hkakabo Razi. Featured in the Sept. 2015 issue of National Geographic Magazine as the story, “Point of No Return,” and in the Renan Ozturk documentary “Down to Nothing,” this presentation provides the complete account of this unrivaled expedition to Burma—stories of hardship and hilarity, bear hunters and Buddhist monks, fear, failure and freedom.
