Betsy K. McCreight Lecture in the Humanities

On Thursday, October 19, 2023, the West Virginia Humanities Council will present the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. This year’s distinguished speaker is author, journalist, and tech humanist Cory Doctorow. Doctorow, a 2020 inductee into the Canadian Science Fiction Hall of Fame, is the author of over two dozen books. His new finance crime technothriller Red Team Blues releases in April 2023; and a new work of nonfiction, The Internet Con, will release in September 2023.

As trends in American education and social life are dictated increasingly by constant connectivity, machine learning, and “artificial intelligence,” the push is felt more and more in rural communities to “catch up”—or be left further behind socially and economically. But what are the best ways for technology to serve West Virginia? Are there other roadmaps to navigate these pressures as a community? Doctorow’s lecture will offer new perspectives on how we got to this point, and the importance of the humanities in tackling a digital future.

The 2023 McCreight Lecture will be held at the University of Charleston's Geary Auditorium, and will include an audience Q&A. The lecture will be followed by a book signing and refreshments. Admission to the lecture and signing are free and open to the public. Stay tuned to this page for future McCreight Lecture announcements!

The Board of Directors of the West Virginia Humanities Council established the annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities to honor the leadership of Betsy Keadle McCreight, who died in 1985. McCreight was a founding board member, serving the Council as treasurer, vice president, and president. She believed that the humanities were at the heart of a democratic society, a necessary source of wisdom and vision.

Presented each October, the McCreight Lecture affords West Virginians the opportunity to hear nationally respected scholars and public intellectuals on a variety of humanities topics. McCreight Lecturers have included Ken Burns, Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph Ellis, Sylvia Nasar, Henry Louis Gates, Elaine Pagels, Gordon Wood, James McPherson, Edmund Morris and Annette Gordon-Reed.