The Chicago Humanities Festival has announced its 2022 spring event, with in-person headliners including attorney and author Anita Hill, filmmaker John Waters, comedian Sarah Cooper, actress Selma Blair, deaf activist Nyle DiMarco and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
As people return to public spaces after isolating during the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s festival, which will run in May, will focus on the theme of “public.”
“This year, we’ll explore the theme public, by considering how our notions of public and private space have changed, asking who makes up our nation’s (and the world’s) various publics and how their voices are heard, and questioning our relationship to the use of the public commons,” said executive director Phillip Bahar in the announcement Tuesday.
May 7 and May 14 are the event’s two main “festival days” that will feature various thought-provoking conversations with cultural figures and social gathering opportunities for attendees. Other events include bus tours of the Southwest Side, musical performances and a trivia night. Some highlights from the schedule include:
May 1 and 15: Bus Tour of Chicago’s Southwest Side with Shermann “Dilla” Thomas
May 7: Lessons from the Edge: A Conversation with Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch
May 7: John Waters and the “Feel Bad” Romance
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May 7: Catching up with Sarah Cooper
May 7: Kwame Onwuachi: Recipes from a Young Black Chef
May 7: Believing Women: Anita Hill in Conversation
May 10: Kim Gordon and Sinéad Gleeson on Women in Music
May 14: Selma Blair on the Power of Telling Your Story
May 14: Nyle DiMarco: Deaf Utopia
May 14: Chuck Klosterman with Mark Bazer on the ’90s
May 14: ’90s Trivia Night! Hosted by Mark Bazer
May 15: Rebel Historian Kelly Lytle Hernández on U.S. Empire and the 1910 Mexican Revolution
May 18: Afro-Punk Creator James Spooner in Conversation with Live Musical Performances
May 22: Bonnie “Prince” Billy: Performance and Conversation
CHF Spring Festival 2022 runs May 1 -22 at various venues; tickets and full schedule are available from 10 a.m. Tuesday at chicagohumanities.org. Tickets for members go on sale Tuesday, for the public at 10 a.m. May 29.