2024 Cleveland Humanities Festival: AWE

CLEVELAND—This March through May, the 2024 Cleveland Humanities Festival (CHF) will consider AWE, a complex emotional and cognitive state that can be triggered by a variety of experiences. AWE will be explored through art, literature, music and more at 40-plus free public events throughout Northeast Ohio.

Marking its ninth year, the 2024 CHF will feature a diverse lineup of speakers and performers, including a lectures, a workshop with an historian specializing in the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other mind and behavioral sciences, a staged reading of original creative works on the topic of awe as it relates to the solar eclipse, a panel focused on the development of awe in children and youth, and readings and conversation with an Emmy-award winning poet.

“Awe marks our lives in personal and public ways. Attention to the complexity of this little understood profound emotion may contain keys to our collective flourishing,” said Michele Tracy Berger, director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities.

Led by the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University, the festival involves more than 20 diverse institutions and represents one of the most inclusive and wide-ranging cultural collaborations in a region known for its arts and humanities excellence.

“Everyone is invited to join in as we explore this profound topic,” said Berger, the Eric and Jane Nord Family Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve. “Through the various performances, lectures, workshops, and events, we seek to inspire new questions and ignite a spirit of curiosity. Together, we will delve into how human cultures have embraced, celebrated, ritualized, and given meaning to this emotion.”

Most of the CHF’s programs are free, although some require online registration. Key events include:

The Political Ecology of Awe

When Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 “for having given a well-founded hope—the green revolution,” the world learned about the battle against world hunger. The prize was an epic mistake. The Green Revolution laid the foundations for a system of chemical agriculture that has set humanity on a path of destruction. The good news: other ways of growing food offer a pathway to sustainability. Peasants in India are leading the way, and in this lecture author, filmmaker, and academic Raj Patel will share data offering reasons for wonder within the web of life. Monday, March 25, Case Western Reserve University Tinkham Veale University Center Ballroom A.

Psychedelics in an Age of Freud and Pharmacology: What Happened Before, What is Happenning Now, Why it Matters

In the 1940s, drug company Sandoz sponsored a study of LSD that came to the conclusion that LSD was a drug making normal people temporarily schizophrenic. Sandoz decided to promote LSD as a research drug for experimental investigations of schizophrenia. But the company also suggested that the psychoanalysts also take another look at LSD, noting evidence that it could be therapeutic. This event tracks the contradictions and ambiguities structuring mid-20th-century clinical conversations about the meaning and uses of psychedelics. A lofty goal: To identify legacies from an earlier era and highlight the ways they shape current efforts and conversations. Friday, March 29, Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center.

The Gift of Darkness

During an eclipse, the moon obscures the sun, casting the earth in darkness but revealing new insights in the process. The poems, monologues, and short dramatic pieces that make up this performance will reflect on the eclipse, awe, and what can be revealed, both literally and metaphorically, in darkness. The words in reading are crafted by local writers and performed by professional actors under the direction of poet, playwright, and former Literary Cleveland Executive Director Christine Howey. Individually, the voices of the writers bring to life light and darkness, humor and horror, love and loss, the heavens and the earth. Saturday April 6, Cleveland Public Library

What Makes You Go “Wow!” – A Conversation Exploring the Development of Awe in Children and Youth

Experiencing awe and wonder adds meaning and joy to life. How do we develop the capacity to feel awe, and how do we help children and adolescents experience this wonderful event in daily life? This panel will highlight ways to develop this capacity through reading, music, nature, and creative endeavors such as pretend play. Join us as we discuss the benefit of adding more "awe" into our lives.

Wednesday, April 17, Case Western Reserve University.

Word Magic, Inspiration, and Awe: Readings and Conversation with Kwame Alexander

Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, publisher, Emmy®-award winning producer, and #1 New York Times bestselling author of 39 books, including Why Fathers Cry at Night, An American Story, The Door of No Return, Becoming Muhammad Ali (co-authored with James Patterson), Rebound, which was shortlisted for the prestigious UK Carnegie Medal, and The Undefeated, the National Book Award nominee, Newberry Honor, and Caldecott Medal-winning picture book illustrated by Kadir Nelson. This event will include readings by Alexander, as well as conversation with Michele Tracy Berger, Eric and Jane Nord Family Professor and Director of the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. Tuesday, April 23, Linsalata Alumni Center, CWRU

Browse all events for the 2024 Cleveland Humanities Festival: AWE.

About the Cleveland Humanities Festival

Over its first half-decade, through hundreds of events, the festival has grown into a widely-collaborative spate of events celebrating the great cultural institutions of the city of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.

Last year’s festival explored wellness; 2022: discourse; 2021: identity; 2020: truth; 2019: nature; 2018: health; 2017’s events tackled the topic of immigration and the inaugural event, in 2016, examined the impacts of war.

Founded in 1996 at Case Western Reserve with a gift from Eric and Jane Nord, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities supports research and creative endeavors and hosts humanities events around the region.

The 2024 festival is co-sponsored by:

● 48th Cleveland International Film Festival;

● Cleveland History Center;

● Cleveland Institute of Art;

● Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque;

● Cleveland Museum of Art;

● Cleveland Play House;

● Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center;

● The Cleveland Orchestra:

● Cleveland Public Library;

● Cleveland Review of Books;

● Cleveland State University;

● Cuyahoga County Public Library;

● Dittrick Museum of Medical History, CWRU;

● ENCORE Chamber Music Institute;

● John Carroll University

● Kelvin Smith Library, CWRU

● Literary Cleveland;

● Rocky River Public Library;

● Schubert Center for Child Studies, CWRU;

● Think Forum, CWRU