You can let the planned appearances of musician Elvis Costello and well-known comics Patton Oswalt and Aasif Mandvi fool you into thinking the 2015 Chicago Humanities Festival might be leaning toward pop culture this year.
Don’t. The annual fall think-a-thon marks the beginning of its second quarter-century with a schedule that feels especially meaty. On a festival theme of “Citizens,” speaker after speaker will address such topics as race relations in the wake of Ferguson and the indiscriminate data mining of the National Security Agency.
The schedule, announced Tuesday afternoon, also includes a first-ever Pilsen Day to spotlight that Chicago neighborhood.
“I can’t really remember a time when the issue of who counts as a citizen was more front and center: Who gets to marry? Who gets to vote?” said festival artistic director Jonathan Elmer. “If you’re a fellow American and are shot by a fellow American, whether it’s a cop or a lunatic, these are issues that are very much in the public consciousness now.”
So Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of a celebrated magazine article calling for reparations for slavery, will talk about his new book. The Australian philosopher Peter Singer, author of “Animal Liberation,” a seminal animal-rights book, will give a talk, as will the novelist Salman Rushdie.
CHF audiences will get a chance to hear from the poet Claudia Rankine, whose collection titled “Citizen” “uncovers an insidious racism hidden in the every day,” according to the CHF event listing. The feminist author Roxane Gay will speak about her career, and gay rights advocate Evan Wolfson will talk about the struggles and stunning victories on the road to legal gay marriage.
Journalist Jon Ronson, author of “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed,” will address the vigilante justice that has come to define Internet citizenship. And those examples are just the tip of a 130-event iceberg.
“I love how much material there is,” said Elmer, in his first year as artistic director. But while he said he sees perhaps more cohesion around the festival theme this year than in years past, Elmer acknowledged that “at some point we just sort of say, ‘If we could get Elvis Costello, let’s get Elvis Costello.'”
Costello is touring to promote his memoir, “Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink.” Also in the arts, a CHF concert at Old Town School of Folk Music will pay tribute to the American musical ethnographer Alan Lomax.
The novelist Chang-rae Lee will speak as the winner of the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award for Fiction. And the festival will present the North American debut of “Escuela,” a new play by the Chilean playwright Guillermo Calderon.
The festival, in its 26th year, is continuing its recent move to group events geographically to make it easier for people to attend a series of them.
And it is adding a new place to the ones where its puts on a day of programming. Joining Evanston and Hyde Park this year will be the Pilsen neighorhood, with programming including speakers on issues such as immigration (including Dream Act activist Gaby Pacheco), a food tour of the neighborhood, and a musical party in Pilsen’s recently renovated Thalia Hall.
“We’re really trying to make the neighborhood itself part of the program,” Elmer said.
Another new venue for 2015 is the National Hellenic Museum, where the scholar Martha Nussbaum “will talk about what is still useful from ancient models” of citizenship, said Elmer, on a program that will also discuss contemporary Greece and the European Union.
Tickets to the fall lineup, which runs from Oct. 24 to Nov. 8, go on sale Sept. 8 to CHF members and Sept. 14 to the public. Full listings and more details are at chicagohumanities.org.
Twitter @StevenKJohnson
