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Unearthed

Unearthed is a multiyear thematic initiative from Indiana Humanities that encourages Hoosiers to discover and discuss their relationships with the natural world. Through engaging speakers, a statewide read, a tour of the Smithsonian’s Water/Ways exhibit, Campfires treks, multiple film series, a podcast and more, Hoosiers has explored how we shape the environment and how the environment shapes us.

As we did with themes in the past (such as INseparable, Quantum Leap and Food for Thought), Unearthed digs into a range of humanities subjects—ethics, philosophy, history, literature and religion. We’ll provide our own ideas for programming (and often the funding to make it happen in your community), and we’ll work with organizations around the state to create even more engaging events and activities.

Together, we’ll use the humanities to better understand our actions and interactions. We’ll consider what our state’s environmental history might reveal about its landscape and its people today. We’ll get comfortable with the idea of living in the Anthropocene. And we’ll ask questions like, “Are we being good ancestors?”

We think there will be something for everyone along the way—whether your idea of a good time is going for a long walk in the woods or sitting down with a book.

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Program Highlights

Film

Liminal: Indiana at the Anthropocene

Liminal is a meditative aerial film that illustrates our state as a microcosm of this new planetary epoch. It captures features of this global phenomenon within the boundaries of our state, collapsing the global into the local.

Learn more
VIDEO

Dig deeper

This video series features authors, poets and humanists help frame the ideas behind Unearthed and provides a humanities lens to how we shape the environment and how it shapes us.

Watch this video
FILMS

Waterways Films

Local communities screened original short films created by Hoosier filmmakers exploring our relationship to water.

Now streaming
READING LIST

Unearthed Novel Conversations Collection

In honor of our Unearthed initiative, we’ve created a book collection for the Novel Conversations lending library.

Check it out

Program Details

Unearthed Film Tour

Indiana Humanities has supported the creation of eight new films documenting new perspectives on how Hoosiers today understand their connections to the natural world.

The films feature stories from across the state told by Hoosiers highlighting their unique relationships with the land we call Indiana. From the shores of Lake Michigan to the fields and farms of central Indiana, the Indiana Humanities Unearthed Film Series provides intimate looks into the lives of Indiana residents working, exploring, and caring for the land.

Find a screening

Environmental Humanities Speakers Bureau

Do you want to have conversations with your neighbors to explore and contemplate the Anthropocene, Indiana’s environmental history, climate change, environmental racism and other topics related to the Unearthed theme? Indiana Humanities has curated a speakers bureau of talks and workshops by Hoosier scholars and experts. From writing haiku inspired by our natural world to conversations about what it means for Hoosiers to be living on indigenous lands, the speakers provide a variety of points of entry to join the statewide conversation.

Please note: Applications are currently closed to host a speaker funded by Indiana Humanities. However, if you would still like to host a speaker, you can review the available talks in the catalog, contact your preferred speaker by email and arrange an event where you will pay them directly.

Host a speaker

Chew on This

Our season of Chew on This programs has wrapped up for 2024! See below for previous conversation topics.

Previous Chew on This topics:

Chew On This: What’s your Recipe for Community?

Food is fundamental to boh our lives and relationships. We organize our days around meals and relationships around gatherings that commemorate milestones. Whether these are the daily gatherings around the kitchen table, or the yearly traditions of holidays and celebrations, food is often the centerpiece of the day and what we serve matters. How does food connect you to community, family, and history? What food traditions do you and your community hold and why? How does food connect you to communities other than yours, building bridges at the table? Can food serve to build and maintain community?

Chew on This: What’s on Your Plate?

Do you know where your food comes from? When you look down at your plate, do you have a sense where things are grown, harvested, or processed? Recent research from the University of Minnesota shows that younger Americans are twice as likely to care about the origins of their food than earlier generations, but just 24 percent of adults in the United States have trust in information about where food is grown and how it’s produced. We’ve come to care more about what’s on our plate, but don’t often trust information about what we’re eating and where it comes from.

How does this desire to know more about what we’re eating intersect with decision-making around food? While most folks estimate that they make around 15 decisions about food a day, a 2006 study from Cornell University found that people make over 200 decisions about food daily. Far more frequently than we may realize, we think about food and make a choice to consume one thing and not another. So, what values go into food choices? Do you think about access, price, nutritional value, where or how it was grown, or who grew it? What are the impacts of our food choices on ourselves, families, communities, and environments?

Chew on This: Are We Being Good Ancestors?

Immunologist Jonas Salk, credited as inventor of the polio vaccine, was perhaps the first to articulate the question “Are We Being Good Ancestors?,” calling it the most important question we can ask ourselves. Knowing what we do about how current technologies and industries will change the environment long after we’re gone, Salk’s question raises a host of others. What will be humanity’s legacy? What do we owe to future generations? How do we make decisions today with consideration to the inhabitants of an unknown future?

On March 29, we asked the question “Are We Being Good Ancestors?” during a special Unearthed-themed Chew on This. In eight locations around the state where we shared a meal and fun, insightful conversation with other curious Hoosiers. Each table was led by an expert facilitator, someone to help us grapple with questions about humanity’s legacy and how to imagine an uncertain future.

How to Survive the Future

How to Survive the Future is a podcast created by Alex Chambers and Allison Quantz in partnership with Indiana Humanities. Listening parties will be hosted for each of the five episodes.

Listen and learn more here

Campfires

Indiana Humanities has been hosting Campfires across Indiana since 2016 and will continue to invite Hoosiers to explore the connections between literature, nature and the future of Indiana in conjunction with Unearthed.

Learn more and sign up

 

 

 

INconversation

Indiana Humanities’ INconversation engages an intimate group in interesting and insightful conversations with some of the nation’s most intriguing thought-leaders. This highly participatory question-and-answer style discussion involves the thought leader, a moderator and the audience. INconversation is a signature program of Indiana Humanities.

Our Unearthed INconversation programs have wrapped! See below for our previous conversations.

 

 

Liminal Film Tour

Indiana Humanities hosted a multi-city film tour for the brand new film, Liminal: Indiana in the Anthropocene.

Liminal is a meditative aerial film that illustrates our state as a microcosm of this new planetary epoch. It captures features of this global phenomenon within the boundaries of our state, collapsing the global into the local.

Learn more and watch the trailer

Explore These Five Guiding Questions

Question #1

How do we shape our environment, and how does our environment shape us?

Question #2

What does Hoosier environmental history reveal about Indiana’s landscape and its people today?

Question #3

How can the humanities help us understand our relationship with the natural world?

Question #4

How does our understanding of nature affect our actions toward the environment?

Question #5

How is environmental change impacting our understanding of humanity’s legacy? Are we being good ancestors?

Learn more

Why we chose this theme

Senior Program Manager Megan Telligman shares why we chose Unearthed as our next thematic initiative and why the environmental humanities are important for our current moment.

Read more

Previous Unearthed Programs

INCONVERSATION

Indiana Humanities’ INconversation engages an intimate group in interesting and insightful conversations with some of the nation’s most intriguing thought-leaders. This highly participatory question-and-answer style discussion involves the thought leader, a moderator and the audience. INconversation is a signature program of Indiana Humanities.

Previous INconversations

June 29, 2022: INconversation with Vann R. Newkirk II (Watch the Video)

July 12, 2023: INconversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer

July 17, 2024: INconversation – Follow that Food

August 16, 2024: INconversation – We are the Future of Food

October 28, 2024: INconversation – Farming is All in the Family

Waterways Films

In 2022, Indiana Humanities hosted a 10-city film tour featuring six short documentary films about Indiana’s waterways. From improving the health of the Blue River to support the hellbender salamander habitat to the fading art of net making, the films explore issues of access and conservation, as well as the unique cultures that spring up around Indiana’s waterways. You can now watch all six films on our website.

Learn more

Water/Ways

Indiana Humanities sponsored a tour of the Smithsonian’s Water/Ways exhibit during the first year of the Unearthed theme.

Eleven communities hosted the exhibit for six weeks each and received extensive training, funding and other resources from the expert staffs of the Smithsonian and Indiana Humanities. Each of the hosts also curated a unique section of the exhibit that explores their community’s relationship to water.

As part of the Indiana tour, Water/Ways visited the following communities during 2021 and 2022.

North Webster Public Library (North Webster): June 26, 2021–August 7, 2021

La Porte County Soil and Water Conservation District / La Porte County Public Library (Rolling Prairie): August 14, 2021–September 26, 2021

University of Southern Indiana/Historic New Harmony (New Harmony): October 2, 2021–November 14, 2021

Riverscape/Wabash River Development and Beautification, Inc. (West Terre Haute): November 20, 2021–December 30, 2021

Jefferson County Public Library (Madison): January 8, 2022–February 20, 2022

Cope Environmental Center (Centerville): February 26, 2022–April 10, 2022

Cedar Lake Historical Association (Cedar Lake): April 15, 2022-May 22, 2022

Carnegie Public Library of Steuben County (Angola): May 28, 2022-July 17, 2022

Culver Union Township Public Library (Culver): July 23, 2022-September 4, 2022

Switzerland County Tourism Office (Vevay): September 10, 2022-October 23, 2022

Benton County Soil & Water Conservation / Otterbein Public Library (Benton Co.): October 29, 2022-December 11, 2022

 

Learn more

Statewide Read

Indiana Humanities’ One State / One Story program invited Hoosiers to engage deeply with a book as part of a statewide conversation tied to the themes of Unearthed. We awarded grants to host a community read of World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil selection to organizations around the state.

Learn more

Questions?

Contact Megan Telligman, Senior Program Manager:
mtelligman@indianahumanities.org | 317.616.9409

Explore our other programs

Water/Ways

program

The Smithsonian’s Water/Ways exhibition is ready to make a splash in Indiana! The exhibit dives into water—an essential component of life on our planet, environmentally, culturally, and historically.

Learn more

Campfires

program

Our Campfires program pairs nature and literature to spark conversations about Indiana’s future.

Learn more
All programs