Gloria Steinem, Trevor Noah & More Set for Chicago Humanities Festival Sets 2016 FallFest SPEED

This fall the Chicago Humanities Festival invites its fans to slow down during the 27th annual fall festival, Speed. CHF's flagship fall festival will feature nearly 100 programs between October 29 and November 12.

The line-up of confirmed presenters includes activist Gloria Steinem, Daily Show host Trevor Noah, Homegoing author Yaa Gyasi, architect Marshall Brown, and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.

Steinem's program on Thursday, October 13 at Northwestern University Law School's Thorne Auditorium will serve as an official festival kick-off as the United States races toward a presidential election unlike anything in its history. Friedman will deliver the Richard J. Franke Lecture in Economics as he headlines the Humanities Festival's annual benefit gala. His talk, on Monday, October 17, will focus on keeping pace in a dizzying age of acceleration.

"This fall, we will examine the headlong speed of daily life as well as the space of meditation and reflection, the politicians that urge us to hurry up and the artists that force us to slow down, all that ties us to timeless cycles as well as what changes the world in the blink of an eye," says Marilynn Thoma Artistic Director Jonathan Elmer.

"The theme of Speed is full of contradictions--that's why we like it!" Elmer says. "You can find commuters flipping through thousand page novels on the L, but they expect that book will arrive with same-day delivery," he says. "Our elaborately plotted television series are all dropped at once--so we can binge watch.

"At the same time, against the demands of a faster-paced, on-demand life," Elmer says, "people are willing to wait in line for slow food and hand-muddled cocktails that take forever to make."

Beyond the headliners, other programs will ask audience members to consider other phenomena of speed--from how we find dates, play games, or experience art, to how we develop policy in an age of immediacy, or "hear" gravitational waves across cosmic time.

"One symptom of our accelerated life is the expectation that every presentation offers a fix, a solution," says Executive Director Phillip Bahar. "The Chicago Humanities Festival is committed to the pursuit of public inquiry--we believe the best outcome of a festival is developing complex questions, not simple answers," he says.

In addition, CHF will continue its commitment to hosting programs in Chicago's neighborhoods with an evening in historic Bronzeville.

A complete line-up for the festival will be released on September 8 and available at chicagohumanities.org/speed with some additional names announced throughout the summer. Photos for the announced presenters are available in our press room.

Tickets to the 2016 Chicago Humanities Festival's two kick-off events featuring Gloria Steinem and Thomas Friedman go on sale to CHF Members on Tuesday, August 16 and to the general public on Tuesday, August 23. Tickets for the rest of the 2016 Chicago Humanities Festival go on sale to members Tuesday, September 20 and to the general public on Tuesday, September 27. Tickets are available by phone or online at tickets.chicagohumanities.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.