From the time humans began to live in communities myths and legends have sought to explain the universe and teach social values. “Arizona Legends, Myths, and Folklore” presents stories from Hopi, Navajo, Apache, and Tohono O’odham cultures as well as Hispanic, Euro-American and others. You will learn about Navajo constellations, Spider Woman, Hopi katsinas, the […]
Using storytelling, historical artifacts and songs, this presentation will depict the ingenuity and resiliency used by those involved in the Underground Railroad to help over 100,000 enslaved people escape to freedom between 1810 and 1850. We’ll then fast forward to the Jim Crow era and explore the Overground Railroad created by the Green Book which […]
Turquoise has a long standing tradition amongst Native cultures of the Southwest, holding special significance and profound meanings to specific individual tribes. Even before the more contemporary tradition of combining silver with turquoise, cultures throughout the southwest used turquoise in necklaces, earrings, mosaics, fetishes, medicine pouches, and made bracelets of basketry stems lacquered with piñon […]
Francisco Garcés, a Franciscan friar, arrived in what is now Arizona in 1768. Assigned to the church at San Xavier del Bac south of present-day Tucson, he traveled widely throughout Arizona and California, charting overland routes that later travelers would follow. Near where Garcés would meet his death in 1781, an American soldier named Joseph […]
In a narrative and musical portrait of working-class music, Dr. Craváth explores its roots and rhythms in our state. From Hopi basket songs, the Yavapai acorn gathering songs, to the cotton fields of Chandler and the crooked streets of Jerome, songs were companions to the immigrants who explored and built our state. Through performance and […]
Dia de Los Muertos is a highly celebrated and significant holiday held throughout Mexico, Latin America and the Southwest. It is a day when homage is paid with prayers, offerings of food and the building of altars to those who have gone before us. Join Zarco and his unique masked characters as they celebrate Día […]
Día de los Muertos is a highly celebrated and significant holiday held throughout Mexico, Latin America and the Southwest. It is a day when homage is paid with prayers, offerings of food and the building of altars to those who have gone before us. Join Zarco and his unique masked characters as they celebrate Día de […]
Along the US-Mexico border lies a remote expanse of the Coronado National Forest in Southern Arizona known as the Atascosa Highlands. An important biological and cultural corridor between Mexico and the United States, the Atascosas take up less than 1% of Arizona’s overall landmass, but host one-quarter of the state’s flora, including species which are […]
In addition to an entertaining, visual display of the communities, towns and settlements that contributed to the early growth of the state, this presentation also focuses on respect for these diminishing historic resources. Most of the photographs represent a comprehensive exploration of Arizona ghost towns made by Mr. Mark in the 1960’s and 1970’s. This […]
It has been said that “Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting.” This is especially true of water politics in the American Southwest, a region defined by its lack of water. The massive 20th century federal investments into dam systems controlled the great rivers of the West, allowing cities like Phoenix to “bloom like […]
Address:
1242 N. Central Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85004
Phone:
(602) 257-0335
TTY users please call 7-1-1
Email:
info@azhumanities.org
Mission:
Arizona Humanities builds a just and civil society by creating opportunities to explore our shared human experiences through discussion, learning and reflection.
