Banner photo: Father Gregory Boyle speaks Jan. 21 at the Salt Lake City Public Library for the McMurrin Lecture hosted by the Tanner Humanities Center. Photo credit: Trish Griffee.

For decades the Tanner Humanities Center has supported interdisciplinary research into culture, ideas and experiences that define what it means to be human by hosting scholars, conversations and public events at the University of Utah and elsewhere in Salt Lake City.

Now under new leadership, the center is stepping up its profile with ambitious programing this spring that is sure to spur countless conversations about the immense changes, for good or bad, the world is facing.

Coming up next month are U philosophy professor C. Thi Nguyen on Feb. 4 and journalist Cory Doctorow on Feb. 18, both appearing at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts as part of the Tanner Talks series.

Center director Scott Black took the helm in 2024, joining administrative director Beth James and associate director Robert Carson. “I think of myself as continuing the important legacy of the Center, and helping extend its reach and impact in as many new audiences as possible,” said Scott Black, a U English professor specializing in 18th century British literature.

This semester’s programing kicked off Wednesday with the inspirational Father Gregory Boyle who delivered the Sterling M. McMurrin Lecture on Religion and Culture. Fr. Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries of Los Angeles, the largest and most successful gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world.

The McMurrin endowed lecture series explores the role of religion in public life. “Father Boyle lives his religious calling as a Jesuit priest by reminding us that each person matters, without exception,” Black said. “Homeboy Industries succeeds by recognizing the fundamental dignity of everyone.”

“Religion is a very important part of our culture and at the center of the humanities,” Black said. “Next year, we’ll be hosting Christine Rosen, whose book, The Extinction of Experience, considers how our inner lives are affected by online mediation.”

The College of Humanities founded its Humanities Center 38 years ago as a platform for facilitating discussions across the humanities. It was later endowed through a naming gift from the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Family Foundation, named for the late Utah entrepreneur, philanthropist and philosophy professor, who believed in the central importance of the humanities for all. Since its endowment, the Center has been further supported by the O. C. Tanner Company.

Under Black’s leadership, the center has launched a podcast, “The Virtual Jewel Box,” named for the center’s seminar room, hosting guests with compelling views on the humanities, including U faculty, such as World Languages and Cultures professor Joseph Metz, distinguished History professor, Isabel Moreira, English professor Elizabeth Callaway. Metz will also be speaking about his new book, The Feeling of the Form Empathy and Aesthetics from Büchner to Rilke, in a Center event on March 31.

The center is also continuing its long-running partnership with National Theatre Live, an organization presenting British theatrical performances on cinema screens. The next screening, an adaptation of David Ireland’s humorous “The Fifth Step,” will be held Feb. 21 at the Broadway Centre Cinemas.

Also on tap is the annual Tanner Lecture on Human Values on March 24, featuring comparative archaeologist David Wengrow, who has written on the origins of inequality, hierarchy and social domination, and the archaeology of early states and civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Mesoamerica, and beyond. His lecture will address “the elementary forms of human freedom.”

Over the years, Tanner’s reach has expanded to include popular culture, artificial intelligence, and the environment. How digital experiences affect culture is a central theme in this spring’s programs as reflected in the talks to be given by Nguyen and Doctorow, whose latest books explore the often-corrosive impact of evolving technologies.

“We’re thinking about the effects of digital culture on people’s experience,” Black said. “In Cory Doctorow’s important new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It, he considers the intentional decay of the digital platforms we’re all bound to. This book is everywhere now, as more and more people are concerned about the state of the internet and the effects of monopolization, limits on the right to freely repair the things we own, and what many people feel is the general coarsening of our lives, culture, and politics.”

Nguyen’s new book, The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game, is also garnering international attention with its thesis that scoring frameworks are great in games, but in institutional settings they distort the definition of success into simplified metrics and rankings—things that capture, as Nguyen suggests, what’s easy to measure instead of what really matters.

“For Thi, games are an important part of life,” Black said. “At the same time, to gamify the world is a really bad idea, like running to get the steps in rather than to enjoy the pleasure of gracefully moving your body.”