Maine Humanities Council
Home of the Harriet P. Henry Center for the Book

 

February 19 and March 25, 2009 ~~~ Portland

Thin Blue Lines is part of Portland’s Arts & Equity Initiative, a national pilot project supported by the arts nonprofit Terra Moto, Inc. The project brings local poets and photographers together with Portland police officers and detectives to create poems and photographs that increase the department’s, municipal government’s and public’s knowledge and appreciation of the work the police do. Included in the project is a series of three facilitated discussions about law enforcement and police/public relations based on readings of local contemporary poetry. Among the participants will be professors, poets, city employees, elected politicians, and the police officer-poets who contributed to the Portland Police Department 2009 Calendar. To learn more about these events or to obtain a copy of the 2009 calendar, please visit www.artsandequity.us/pcal.htm.

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February 20-22 ~~~ Camden, Rockland, Belfast, and Portland

The Camden Conference is a year-long forum for the exchange of ideas on key global issues, focused each February on a three-day event at the Camden Opera House and selected satellite locations. The 22nd annual conference, in February 2009, will explore Global Leadership and the U.S. Role in World Affairs. This year, outreach to over 1,000 participants in the conference and related events will include a special focus on Greater Portland, where the Camden Conference collaborates with the World Affairs Council. Community events planned throughout the Midcoast area include a talk on “Expectations for the Incoming Administration” by Seth Singleton, Professor of International Relations at UMaine (February 3 at the Belfast Free Library, 6:30 p.m.) and the annual Camden Conference Energy Symposium (April 4 at the Hutchinson Center, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.) A full schedule, along with selected lectures and panel discussions from past conferences via streaming audio and video, is available at www.camdenconference.org.

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February 23, 2009 ~~~ Portland

Claudette Colvin, an unsung Civil Rights hero who—just nine months before Rosa Parks—refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger, is the subject of a new book by award-winning Maine author Phillip Hoose. This month, Colvin visits Portland to launch the biography, Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice. During her visit, she will meet with King Middle School students who have read and discussed advanced copies of Hoose’s book in a book club and shared their understanding of courage in a series of posters (created with help from MECA students) that will be displayed in METRO buses. Colvin and Hoose appear together at the Glickman Library, USM, on February 23 at 6:30. The bus exhibit opens on the following day. For more information, please contact Kelley McDaniel, King Middle School librarian, at (207) 874-8140.

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March 12, 2009 ~~~ Bangor/Portland

Liam Riordan, Associate Professor of History at the University of Maine, studies the American Revolution from an Atlantic perspective that transcends national boundaries and focuses on Loyalism, one of the most understudied topics in the field. Through a series of seven events, Professor Riordan will share his expertise with teachers, scholars, and history enthusiasts. Evening lectures, free and open to the public, are scheduled for February 5 at the Bangor Public Library (now past), March 12 at the Hutchinson Center, and April 9 at the Maine Historical Society. Each lecture will be followed by a day-long teacher workshop in the same location, which will help teachers understand how to use primary sources, the Maine Memory Network, and the HBO miniseries on John Adams to teach Loyalism in Maine. Finally, a three-day conference in June, sponsored by the Canadian American Center at the University of Maine and the University of New Brunswick, will result in new scholarship on Loyalism and the Revolutionary Atlantic World. For more information or to register for any of these events, please contact Professor Riordan, (207) 581-1913 or riordan@umit.maine.edu.

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March 13, 19, and 21; April 25, 2009 ~~~ Portland

The Victoria Mansion was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts to participate in the “Big Read” program, which brings communities together around a single book; in this case, Edith Wharton’s novel The Age of Innocence was chosen for its capacity to illuminate the Gilded Age of the Victorian period while also helping readers to reflect on contemporary lifestyles and social mores. The kick-off to the program will take place at the Mansion on March 13. Book discussions are planned for March and April, 2009. In addition, a panel of faculty from the University of Southern Maine will present interdisciplinary approaches to teaching The Age of Innocence to teachers and education students on March 19. A festive presentation of late Victorian dress, dance, and music—featuring “Victorian Lady” Kandie Carle—will be held at the Portland Museum of Art on March 21. Finally, a more general keynote presentation by scholar Carol Singley will be held at the Portland Public Library, the Mansion’s Big Read partner, on April 25. For more details, please call (207) 772-4841 or visit www.victoriamansion.org.

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March 21-28, 2009 ~~~ Portland, Waterville, and Lewiston

The theme of the 2009 Maine Jewish Film Festival is “The Diaspora Experience: What it Means to be From Away.” Approximately one-third of the festival films will highlight this theme by portraying the experiences of Jewish people who are South American, African, Iranian, and Iraqi. Films will include Leaving Paradise, a documentary on the Jewish community of Kingston, Jamaica, and Where Are You Going, Moshé? a Canadian/Moroccan comedy set against the backdrop of the Jewish exodus of 1963. In addition to the traditional Portland-area venues, films will be screened in Waterville and Lewiston. The 2009 festival runs March 21-28; for a complete schedule, please visit www.mjff.org.

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April 3, 2009 - May 30, 2009 ~~~ Saco

A special exhibition at the Saco Museum will feature work from New England Wax, an association of artists who work in encaustic (a beeswax-based painting medium). Juried by Katherine French, Director of the Danforth Museum in Framingham, Massachusetts, the exhibition will offer the opportunity for local and regional artists to exhibit their work together and exchange ideas. Programming will include a lecture by Kim Bernard about the history of this ancient medium, as well as art-making activities and school tours. Connections will be made to nineteenth century waxworks in the Saco Museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition opens on April 3, 2009, and runs through May 30. For more information, please call (207) 283-3861 or visit www.dyerlibrarysacomuseum.org.

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May 3, 2009 ~~~ New Gloucester

The Merriconeag Waldorf School will host its second annual poetry competition for public and private high school students in Cumberland, Androscoggin, and Sagadahoc counties at its new campus in New Gloucester. On May 3, 2009, twenty students whose original poems are recognized by poet Betsy Sholl will read their work and participate in a seminar on poetry as a tool for social change. For details, please contact David Sloan at (207) 688-8989 or dmsloan@gwi.net.

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Through June 14, 2009 ~~~ Bar Harbor

The first test of the new textile display cases at the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, purchased with support from a Humanities Infrastructure grant, comes with the exhibit Twisted Path: Contemporary Native American Artists Walking in Two Worlds, for which the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and American Art in Indianapolis has loaned a coat made by Mi’kmaq artist Teresa Marshall. This exhibit, along with future exhibits that take advantage of the new textile display cases, will particularly enhance the Abbe’s contribution to Native American studies in Maine schools. To learn more, please call (207) 388-3519 or visit www.abbemuseum.org.

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October 22, 2009 ~~~ Portland

Joan Hedrick, the 1995 Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, will speak at the University of Southern Maine on October 22, 2009. Her lecture, “Writing a Woman’s Life,” will explore the challenges and choices (often shaped by gender) involved in writing biography. The topic is intended to appeal to the general public as well as scholars writing about Ellen Harmon White, co-founder of the Seventh-Day Adventists, who will convene for a working conference in Portland, October 22-25. Hedrick teaches at Trinity College in Connecticut. For more information about her lecture or the Ellen Harmon White conference, please contact the American & New England Studies program at USM, (207) 780-4920.

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