Betsy K. McCreight Lecture in the Humanities
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.
Admission to the McCreight Lectures are free and open to the public. Stay tuned to this site for information about the 2024 lecture!
Last year's lecture
On Thursday, October 19, 2023, the West Virginia Humanities Council presented the 41st annual McCreight Lecture in the Humanities. Last year’s distinguished speaker was 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 finance crime technothriller Red Team Blues was released in April 2023; and a new work of nonfiction, The Internet Con, was released in September 2023.
