Maine Humanities Council : Let's Talk About It, Full Series

Across Cultures & Continents: Literature of the South Asian Experience

A series developed for MHC by Professor Deepaka Marya of the University of Southern Maine.

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Bricklane by Monica Ali

Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

[back to the top]

After Frost: Poetry in New England

Explore the variety and vitality of the region's poetry, using Robert Frost as a touchstone. A specially created anthology begins with Frost's work and includes thirty more recent poets representing a diversity of cultural points of view.

[back to the top]

The American Revolutionary Generation

Explore the fascinating people, events, and ideas behind the American Revolution

The American Revolution: A History by Gordon S. Wood

Benjamin Franklin by Edmund S. Morgan

The Minutemen and their World by Robert Gross

Women of the Republic by Linda Kerber

Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution by John Ferling

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

The American Sporting Experience

How can sport serve as a metaphor for the American experience in shaping the individual, community, and the national identity? Facilitator and site choose 5 books for a series.

Uncommon Waters: Women Write About Fishing by Holly Morris

The Natural by Bernard Malamud

Laughing in the Hills by Bill Barich

My Old Man and the Sea: A Father and Son Sail Cape Horn by David Hays and Daniel Hays

Jesse Owen: An American Life by William Baker

A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe

Women on Hunting by Pam Houston

On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates

Friday Night Lights by H. G. Bissinger

In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle by Madeleine Blais

Winterdance by Gary Paulsen

[back to the top]

American Traditions/American Innovations: American Poetry of the Second Half of the Twentieth Century

We are pleased to offer this poetry series developed by former Maine Poet Laureate Baron Wormser in response to many requests for a follow up to our popular After Frost series!

Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry (J.D. McClatchy, editor)

Nineteenth-Century American Poet (Penguin Classics)

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Becoming American: Struggles, Successes, Symbols

The quest for ethnic identity.

Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya

Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin

An Orphan in History by Paul Cowan

The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Momaday

Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Behind the Headlines: An Introduction to the Middle East

This is a special Let’s Talk About It program developed in response to many requests we have received for a series focusing on the Middle East. The series was developed by Mahmud Faksh, a professor of political science and an expert on the Middle East at the University of Southern Maine.

The format will be a little different from our normal Let’s Talk About It programs. Groups will meet 3 times with a facilitator/scholar who specializes in the Middle East. The readings for both sessions will be from The Contemporary Middle East, edited by Karl Yambert, a new, accessible anthology of writings by leading scholars incorporating historical, cultural, and political perspectives of the region. To provide participants with background and context, each session will begin with a 45-minute presentation by the facilitator, followed by approximately an hour and a quarter of facilitated discussion and questions.

For more information, please see Special Programs.

[back to the top]

The Civil War: Biographies

An in-depth, personal view of life during the Civil War era.

My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass

With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln by Stephen Oates

Collected Black Women's Narratives ed. Anthony G. Barthelemy

Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate by Eli Evans

Portraits of American Women ed G.J. Barker-Benfield and Catherine Clinton

[back to the top]

The Civil War: Fiction

Beginning with the novel that was credited with causing the conflict, this series explores the drama of the Civil War and its aftermath.

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Civil Wars by Rosellen Brown

[back to the top]

Consider the Source: Old Tales Retold — I

The romantic paradigm: our culture's myths about romance and happy endings.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

Transformations by Anne Sexton

Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls

[back to the top]

Consider the Source: Old Tales Retold — II

The social function of myths: how a society uses its traditional stories to hold itself together.

Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston

Grendel by John Gardner

The Life and Loves of a She Devil by Faye Weldon

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Crossing Over: Works by Contemporary American Indian Writers

In these works, American Indian writers blend western writing techniques with oral tradition to mediate between two cultures. Libraries can select 5 titles.

Fools Crow by James Welch

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

Tracks by Louise Erdrich

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie, and the film Smoke Signals

The Sharpest Sight by Louis Owens

Song of Rita Joe: Autobiography of a Mi'Kmaq Poet by Rita Joe, Lynn Henry

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Defining Wilderness: Defining Maine

This series, developed for MHC by historian Candace Kanes, examines the Maine wilderness, how various people have experienced it and written about it, and how those accounts have influenced Maine and shaped its identity. It raises questions about what constitutes wilderness, the relationship between humans and the natural environment, about conservation and ecology, and not least about our personal relationship to the wilderness.

The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau.

The Wilderness from Chamberlain Farm: A Story of Hope for the American Wild by Dean Bennett

Fly Rod Crosby: the Woman Who Marketed Maine by A. Hunter and Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr.

Campfires Rekindled by George S. Kephart

We Took to the Woods by Louise Dickinson Rich

Defining Wilderness: Defining Maine, Collected Readings

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Detective Fiction in the 20th Century: A Notion of Evil

An exploration of evil through the lens of mystery writers of the past 100 years. (Libraries can select 5 titles)

The Inspector Barlach Mysteries: The Judge and His Hangman and Suspicion (Paperback) by Friedrich Durrenmatt (Author), Joel Agee (Translator)

Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayres

The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker

"A" is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

[back to the top]

Destruction or Redemption: Images of Romantic Love

One of the most universal and yet puzzling features of the human condition. (Libraries can select 5 titles)

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Morgan's Passing by Anne Tyler

A Mother and Two Daughters by Gail Godwin

Lolita by Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

More Information - pdf file (2,500Kb), courtesy, American Library Association

[back to the top]

Entering Nature: Contemporary Views of the Human Self in the Natural World

Contemporary writings that address in interesting and distinctive ways the affinities that unite and the distances that separate the human and the non-human.

The Tree by John Fowles

Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Ethnic Americans in Maine: Making a Life, Shaping an Identity

Literature from Maine's ethnic communities. (Libraries can select 5 titles)

Tales of Gluskap the Trickster

Song of Rita Joe; Autobiography of a Mi’Kmaq Poet by Rita Joe and Lynn Henry

Turnip Pie by Rebecca Cummings

Papa Martel by Gerard Robichaud

The Clear Blue Lobster-Water Country (Book Three) by Leo Connellan

The Girl Who Would Be Russian by Willis Johnson

Maine Speaks: An Anthology of Maine Literature

[back to the top]

Exploring Human Boundaries: Literary Perspectives on Health Care Providers and Their Patients

A disease or a sick person? Health care professionals do not always focus on what is most important to the patient and the patient's family. These classic 20th-century accounts of illness, death, and dying dramatically illuminate these complex issues.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Plague by Albert Camus

The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby

W;t by Margaret Edson

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Family and Self: Readings in Twentieth Century Japanese Fiction

The family is an important social unit in any society. In Japan, with its strong legacy of Confucian values and traditional emphasis of group over the individual, the family plays an exceptionally important role. The traditional Japanese family, called the ie, experienced significant transformations and challenges during the tumultuous years of the twentieth century. Growth of industry, movements of rural populations to industrial centers, legal reforms and the importation of Western ideas of individualism and the notion of “love marriages” undermined the authority of the family structure. This series explores five novels—two authored by women and three by men—each engaged with issues of both family and self in a changing Japan, but from widely differing perspectives.

The Waiting Years by Enchi Fumiko

The Makioka Sisters by Tanizaki Junichirô

The Setting Sun by Dazai Osamu

A Personal Matter by Nobel laureate Ôe Kenzaburô

Good-bye Tsugumi by Yoshimoto Banana

More Information - Word Doc (87Kb)

[back to the top]

Fear and Hope: Writing from the Great Depression of the 1930s

An exploration of the feelings of hope and uncertainty surrounding Great Depression.

Since Yesterday: the Nineteen-Thirties in America by Frederick Lewis Allen

The Disinherited by Jack Conroy

Tender is the Night by F.Scott Fitzgerald

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Uncle Tom's Children by Richard Wright

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today?

This series will examine one the most pivotal yet most neglected eras of United States history, one that began to define the parameters of the modern world in which we live. Rising out of the carnage of four years of civil war and a failed attempt both to reconstruct the South and reconcile race relations, Americans turned their attention during the last quarter of the nineteenth century from political debates over the nature of the nation and moral considerations of civil rights to economic projects of physical expansion and material wealth. The people of principle—of states rights versus federal union, of popular sovereignty versus free soil, of slave power versus abolition—became the people of progress—of railroad building, corporate trusts, street-car suburbs, and social and geographic mobility. In addition to industrialization, urbanization, and migration, the modernization of the United States brought with it the rise of a leisure class and a new therapeutic consumer culture.

The Devil and the White City by Erik Larson

The Gilded Age by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells

Poland Spring: A Tale of the Gilded Age by David Richards

More Information - Word Doc (87Kb)

[back to the top]

Going to Sea: A Variety of Voices

What is going to sea really like? We'll learn about it from a variety of viewpoints and genres.

"The Seafarer" 10th-century poem

"Youth" by Joseph Conrad

Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling

"Dauber" by John Masefield

The Log of the Skipper's Wife by James Balano

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Individual Rights and Community in America

Examines the tension between individual rights and demands of living within a community.

Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville

The Republic by Plato

Coriolanus by William Shakespeare

The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

The Journey Inward: Women's Autobiography

Insights from the quest for identity.

One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty

Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinor Pruitt Stewart

Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston

My Life by Isadora Duncan

Blackberry Winter by Margaret Mead

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

The Land of Norumbega: Maine in the Age of Exploration and Settlement

"Norumbega" was the name given to an area around Maine's Penobscot River by early explorers and cartogaphers. Like 'El Dorado", Norumbega was a place that drew explorers and adventurers.

Maine in the Age of Discovery: Christopher Levett's Voyage, 1623-1624.

The Indian Peoples of Eastern America by James Axtell

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

The Land of Norumbega (exhibition catalog)

[back to the top]

Landscapes of the Western Mind: Exploring the Frontier

Views of the American West — both real and imagined.

Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey

Dutchman's Flat by Louis L'Amour

Cogewea, the Half Blood: A Depiction of the Great Montana Cattle Range by Mourning Dove

This House of Sky by Ivan Doig

[back to the top]

Making a Difference: How Love And Duty Change Lives

This series was developed by Margery Irvine, writer and Professor of English at the University of Maine.

Mountains Beyond Mountains : The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, the Man Who Would Cure the World by by Tracy Kidder

Plainsong by Kent Haruf

The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri

The Late George Apley by J.P. Marquand

Truth and Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett

Lying Awake by Mark Salzman

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

This special series is supported by Thoughtful Giving: Philanthropy As Civic Engagement, a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For more information, please see Special Programs.

[back to the top]

Making a Living, Making a Life:Work and Its Rewards in a Changing America

An examination of work-related issues: women in the work force, a changing workplace, employment as identity, the puritan work ethic and the American Dream.

Growing Up by Russell Baker

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

The Professor's House by Willa Cather

Working by Studs Turkel

Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy

More Information - pdf file (1,700Kb), courtesy, American Library Association

[back to the top]

The Mirror of Maine: The Maine Community in Myth and Reality

These books explore community life in Maine. What defines community? What values have been associated with community life in Maine, and how many of these values still exist today? What are the confinements or darker realities that exist in Maine communities? (Libraries can select 5 titles)

A Maine Hamlet by Lura Beam

Wildfire Loose by Joyce Butler

Salem's Lot by Stephen King

Twelve Journeys in Maine by Wesley McNair

The Weir by Ruth Moore

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

Maine Speaks: An Anthology of Maine Literature

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Modern Times in Maine and America, 1890-1930

Views of life during the enormous changes that took place in the early twentieth century. The series can be introduced by the specially produced video, Modern Times in Maine and America, that combines interviews, early moving pictures, rare photographs and great music to give an engaging picture of a changing world.

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

As the Earth Turns by Gladys Hasty Carroll

[back to the top]

Not For Children Only

An adult perspective on childhood favorites old and new.

The Classic Fairy Tales by Iona and Peter Opie

Tatterhood by Ethel Johnston Phelps

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

Charlotte's Web by E. B. White

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor

I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

[back to the top]

Opening Windows: Women's Stories from Different Cultures

An exploration of storytelling traditions in novels by women from Japan, India, Africa, and the Caribbean.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga

Kehinde by Buchi Emecheta

The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

The Passage of Time, The Meaning of Change: Perspectives by Five Writers From Maine

Do change and the passage of time always lead to a rosy future?

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett

Collected Lyrics by Edna St. Vincent Millay

One Man's Meat by E. B. White

As We Are Now by May Sarton

The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Refreshing the Whodunit: Moving Beyond Christie and Doyle

Beginning with an introductory talk on the evolution of this genre from its origins with Edgar Allen Poe through classic writers and detectives/inquirers to the present, this Let’s Talk About It series provides new and experienced mystery and detective fans with an opportunity for in depth conversation about how this fiction has incorporated the contemporary world's globalism; dilemmas of race, gender, ethnicity and class; religious conflict; historical revision; and others.

Dance Hall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman

The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison

A Cold Day for Murder by Dana Stabenow

Murder at the Nightwood Bar by Katherine V. Forrest

Inspector Morimoto and the Japanese Cranes: A Detective Story Set in Japan by Timothy Hemion

The Beekeeper's Apprentice [alternate text, may be substituted for one of the above titles] by Laurie King

More Information - Word document (62Kb)

[back to the top]

Rebirth of a Nation: Nationalism and the Civil War

How did America first begin to define itself and develop into a nation-state?

Two Roads to Sumter by William & Bruce Catton

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Ordeal by Fire, Volume II: The Civil War by James M. McPherson

Reconstruction: After the Civil War by John Hope Franklin

The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries edited by C. Vann Woodward

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

So Near & So Far: An Exploration of Cuban Literature

Explore Cuban culture and history through the voices of talented Cuban authors. The writing in this series is lyrical, compelling, and poetic.

Biography of a Runaway Slave (Esteban Montejo) by Miguel Barnet

The Chase by Alejo Carpentier

In the Cold of the Malecon & Other Stories by Antonio Jose Ponte

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

Havana Red by Leonardo Padura Fuentes

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Telling the Truth: The Subject of Autobiography

A variety of twentieth-century autobiographies lead us to consider how we define "truth" and who is capable of telling it.

Memories of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy

The Duke of Deception by Geoffrey Wolff

The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives by Carolyn Kay Steedman

In My Mother's House by Kim Chernin

[back to the top]

Thoughtful Giving: Philanthropy as Civic Engagement

This series uses a lively selection of readings to approach a central and sometimes thorny issue in American society: philanthropy. Readings are drawn from a new anthology edited by Amy Kass entitled The Perfect Gift: the Philanthropic Imagination in Poetry and Prose and include short selections by Edith Wharton, O. Henry, Sarah Orne Jewett, C.S. Lewis, Aristotle, P.G. Wodehouse, George Eliot, Jane Addams, Rudyard Kipling, John O'Hara, His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, Woodrow Wilson, Shakespeare and Andrew Carnegie.

This special series is supported by Thoughtful Giving: Philanthropy As Civic Engagement, a project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

[back to the top]

The Way We Were, The Way We Are: Seasons in the Contemporary American Family

Parent-child relationships, changing sex roles and values in American family life. (Libraries can select 5 titles)

This House of Sky by Ivan Doig

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansbury

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

Ordinary People by Judith Guest

"The Stone Boy" by Gina Berriault,

"A&P" by John Updike, and "The Five-Forty-Eight" by John Cheever in Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories ed. Moffett & McElheny

During the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase

More Information - pdf file (2,400Kb), courtesy, American Library Association

[back to the top]

What America Reads: Myth Making in Popular Fiction

What best-sellers reveal about our national psyche.

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Shane by Jack Schaefer

From Here to Eternity by James Jones

A Tan and Sandy Silence by John D. MacDonald

More Information - pdf file (550Kb), courtesy, American Library Association

[back to the top]

What Are Our Kids Reading These Days?

The good news is that young adults are still reading, in school and at home. Their literature reflects the timeless theme of coming of age, but also reaches deeply into issues of culture and difference, of poverty and race, of human frailty and courage.

Two Old Women by Velma Wallis

Dogsong by Gary Paulsen

Holes by Louis Sachar

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli

Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Where Am I? The Individual & the Community

The viewpoints of people on the inside and the outside of communities depicted in these writings — whether in a small Maine town, a prison, Dublin, Newfoundland, Nigeria, or plague-stricken England — can contribute to our understanding of what is fundamental to our nature as human beings.

Choice I :

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Empire Falls by Richard Russo

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

Climbing the God Tree: A Novel in Stories by Jaimee Wriston Colbert

Choice II :

Doing Time: 25 Years of Prison Writing edited by Bell Gale Chevigny

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]

Yankees and Strangers: the New England Town from 1636-1992

An examination of the New England town in popular myth and the reality. What role did immigration and urbanization play in the idealization of the New American town? Are traditional town values a vital reality today, or only a nostalgic image? Both slides and reading available.

"Symbolic Landscapes: Some Idealizations of American Communities," by D.W. Meinig "Town Commons of New England, 1640-1840" by John D. Cushing "Another City Upon a Hill: Litchfield, Connecticut, and the Colonial Revival"

A New England Town: The First Hundred Years by Kenneth Lockridge

A New England Girlhood by Lucy Larcom

Amoskaeg: Life and Work In a New England Factory City by Tamara Hareven

"Happy Times in Mill City" by Ann Sullivan

Without a Farmhouse Near by Deborah Rawson

More Information - Printable

[back to the top]