Women often are on the front lines of climate change impacts, yet are uniquely poised to reshape our institutions towards resilience and gender equity. Women are increasingly in leadership roles, innovating sustainable approaches to scarcity, and building community around local solutions.

Join us on select Thursdays at 2 p.m. throughout the semester to hear perspectives from women working to reshape their discipline and community with innovative media, decolonization strategies, renewable energy programs, and activism. Organized by Dr. Katie Glover from the Climate Change Institute, and the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, through a McGillicuddy Humanities Center faculty grant. Part of the MHC’s 2020-2021 symposium on “The Story of Climate Change.” Free and open to the public with registration.��

Register once and you’ll be sent a confirmation and link to join all five events in the series.

FEBRUARY 18: Ecofeminism in the Urban Landscape

Dylan O’Hara, PhD student, Dept. of History, University of Maine

O’Hara’s research focuses on urban development in the mid twentieth century United States and leftist activist movements. Her lecture on “Ecofeminism and the Urban Landscape” will focus on the social and political power dynamics of urban renewal in the 1960s.

MARCH 4: Indigenous Ways of Knowing

Dr. Bonnie Newsom, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Maine

Newsom is an Indigenous archaeologist interested in the pre-contact lifeways of Maine’s Native peoples. Through her research, she seeks to humanize people in the past by exploring concepts of identity, style, social boundaries, and human agency. This talk will focus on Indigenous ways of knowing as it relates to climate change.

MARCH 18: Indigenous science is activism

Sara Tenamoeata Kahanamoku, PhD student, Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley

Kahanamoku is��a��Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) and��Maʻohi (Tahitian) scientist from Haleʻiwa, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. Like many others in their family, Sara was raised in the ocean, and it is this relationship that drives their scholarship and activism. Kahanamoku is currently a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley (Huichin Ohlone), with a research focus on the impacts of the climate crisis on California’s ocean ecosystems during the 19th and 20th centuries. Kahanamoku’s applied work focuses on the pono (equitable, relational) co-production of climate-related research and policy.��

MARCH 25: Podcasts as Method

Dr. Kelsey Emard, Dept. of Geography, Oregon State University

Emard��is a human-environment geographer and member of the Instructional Faculty in Geography at Oregon State University. Her current research examines shifting agricultural land uses and livelihoods driven by amenity development in rural areas, plant health/disease, and climate change. She is interested in creative feminist methods involving podcasting to analyze and understand often overlooked visceral data.��

APRIL 8: Local Solutions to Climate Crises

Youth activists Ruby Mahoney and Ayano Ishimura, A Climate to Thrive on Mount Desert Island

Mahoney is a junior at Mount Desert Island High School and a prominent member of their ECO Team. Eager to make the world around her a better place, she’s worked with various local and national political and environmental justice organizations, including Sunrise Movement and A Climate To Thrive. She volunteered for the re-election campaign of junior senator and co-writer of the Green New Deal, Ed Markey-MA) in 2020 and plans to continue working as an organizer and activist.��

Ayano Ishimura is a passionate and active environmental advocate and visual artist. She is currently a Senior at Mount Desert Island High School in Bar Harbor Maine and is the Co-President of her school’s ECO Team. She has worked on a variety of projects such as declaring a Climate Emergency in her town and expanding solar energy statewide, to strive towards climate justice in Maine. She takes inspiration from nature and fellow youth members to find creative and collaborative solutions to the climate crisis.

The post Women and Climate Change Speaker Series appeared first on Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center.

On Thursday, November 12, the McGillicuddy Humanities Center will be sponsoring a panel on “The Humanities as Activism in Chicago.” This session of the Socialist and Marxist Studies Series will feature three��remarkable panelists whose work��at the intersection of the humanities and activism has garnered national attention: Tonika Johnson, Kevin Coval, and Nicole Marroquin. Free and open to the public. Join at 12:30p.m. EST at:

Karen Sieber, humanities specialist at the MHC, proposed the panel to series facilitators Professor Doug Allen and lecturer Michael Swacha, seeing the pivot to a virtual format this semester as the perfect opportunity to bring in voices from beyond Maine. Sieber, who will moderate the panel,��is currently��doing research on what she calls “tactical humanities,” or using the humanities in strategic outside-of-the-box ways to draw attention to urgent issues. The three humanists she selected for the panel are individuals she knows from her time working as a public historian in Chicago that she feels embody this activist spirit. ��“There is an immediacy to their work. I wanted to highlight the way in which these artists use their craft to draw attention to issues that are at once local and universal. The outreach work that Tonika, Kevin and Nicole each do with youth in their community can serve as a model elsewhere about the power of the humanities to engage tomorrow’s leaders. ”

Kevin Coval is an Emmy-nominated, award-winning poet & author of Everything Must Go: The Life & Death of an American Neighborhood, A People’s History of Chicago & over ten other full-length collections, anthologies & chapbooks. He is a founding editor of The BreakBeat Poets imprint on Haymarket Books. Coval is��Creative Director of the MacArthur Award-winning cultural organization, , ��and a founder of , the world’s largest youth poetry festival, now in more than 19 cities across North America. He’s shared the stage with The Migos & Nelson Mandela & his work has been feature on The Daily Show, Poetry Magazine, The Chicago Tribune,��CNN.com, and four seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam.��Coval was the recipient of the 2018 Studs Terkel Award.

Tonika Johnson��is a visual artist, photographer, and community activist from Chicago’s South side Englewood neighborhood. Her����project examines the long history of redlining and segregation in the city. Johnson works to address inaccurate negative perceptions about the South and West sides of Chicago, and open a dialogue about institutional racism and segregation.��She is co-founder of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood (R.A.G.E.) and lead co-founder of Englewood Arts Collective. In��2017, Johnson was named a��Chicagoan of the Year, and in 2019, she was named one of Field Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago. She was recently appointed as a member of the Cultural Advisory Council of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events by the Chicago City Council.��

Nicole Marroquin��is an interdisciplinary artist who’s practice includes art making, collaboration, research and cultural production with youth and in communities. She has exhibited locally and internationally, including the Museo Nacional de Culturas Populares in Mexico City and the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. She is a member of the feminist collective Multiuso, and a former Joan Mitchell Fellow at the Center for Racial Justice Innovation. Marroquin is the��creator of Chicago Raza Research Consortium, a grassroots effort to map, gather, and present Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano, Latinx, and Raza history in Chicago. She is at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For more information on the Socialist and Marxist Studies Series click here.

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