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ABOUT SDHC

The South Dakota Humanities Council (SDHC) is dedicated to strengthening communities across the state by connecting people with ideas, stories, and conversations that deepen our understanding of history, culture, and civic life. Since its founding, SDHC has worked to make the humanities accessible to people in every corner of South Dakota, from small rural towns to larger communities, by supporting programs that encourage learning, dialogue, and reflection. 

Our work is grounded in the guiding principle of the National Endowment for the Humanities: “Democracy demands wisdom.” We believe a healthy democracy depends on informed citizens who understand the past, appreciate different perspectives, and engage thoughtfully with the issues that shape our communities. Because of this belief, SDHC is committed to ensuring that the humanities are accessible to everyone. Nearly all of our programs are offered free of charge, removing barriers and allowing South Dakotans of all ages and backgrounds to participate. 

Each year, the Council supports humanities programming across the state through grants and statewide initiatives. We partner with libraries, schools, museums, historical societies, and community organizations to bring speakers, discussions, reading programs, and cultural events to local communities. Signature programs such as One Book South Dakota encourage residents across the state to read and discuss a single book together, while Young Readers helps foster a love of reading by providing books to third graders throughout South Dakota. 

Through these programs and partnerships, the South Dakota Humanities Council helps preserve and share the stories that shape our state while creating opportunities for meaningful conversations about who we are and where we are going. By bringing people together to explore ideas and experiences, SDHC works to build a more informed, thoughtful, and connected South Dakota. 

The vision of the South Dakota Humanities Council is to lead statewide advocacy for the humanities, working with other partners to foster literary and civic engagement.

The mission of the South Dakota Humanities Council is to celebrate literature, promote civil conversation, and tell the stories that define our state.

The seed-in-its-shell emblem is the creation of industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss, who undertook on his own to provide the National Endowment for the Humanities with a symbol of its work. Dreyfuss, recipient of a small endowment planning grant for a dictionary of symbols, finds that languages created with symbols are proliferating and are an important part of the contemporary world.

In explanation of his design for the humanities, he wrote, “The thing that kept coming back to mind was the fact that you are an organization that plants a seed – which grows and grows and grows.”

What Are The Humanities?
The humanities mean different things to different people. But we are fond of the completeness of this definition from the National Endowment on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965:

“The term ‘humanities’ includes, but is not limited to, the study and interpretation of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.”

We also think this video from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is very helpful when it comes to understanding the humanities: