Four University of Maine students have joined the McGillicuddy Humanities Center (MHC) this semester as research fellows: Delaney Burns, Elizabeth Dalton, Grace Royle, and Haley Santerre. This new cohort joins existing fellows Nolan Altvater, Hailey Cedor, Nola Prevost and Katherine Reardon, who will finish their research at the MHC in Spring, 2021.

Incoming fellow Delaney Burns is exploring the intersection of art and science.  Burns, a fourth-year student from Gorham, Maine, is double-majoring in Studio Art and Marketing with minors in Art History and Graphic Design. For her fellowship, Burns will create a series of large-scale wood block prints titled, “Pinus Iongaeva: Discovering Form and Value through Ancient Bristlecone Pine Trees.” She hopes to learn and share new printmaking techniques, understand more about Ancient Bristlecone Pine Trees, and their importance to the ecosystem, and explore their personal connection to her father, a 91���� Forestry graduate.

Elizabeth Dalton has begun her research into, “Analyzing the Harmful Effects of Historical Inaccuracies in Medieval History as Seen in Popular Culture.”  A third year History major from Lamoine, Maine, Dalton is minoring in Medieval and Renaissance Studies.  While recognizing the potential that binge-worthy shows and popular movies have to engage the public with history, Dalton’s project will investigate and describe the problematic ways in which accuracy is overlooked for the sake of entertainment. Her fellowship research will focus on depictions of the Medieval Age, as in Netflix’s The King.

Grace Royle is a third year Communication major and Legal Studies minor from Minot, Maine. Royle has begun work on a scholarly paper tentatively titled, “From Self-Help to Self-Harm: An Analysis of the Dangers that Fester in the Self-Help Industry.” She is particularly interested in exploring the hidden dangers of the industry, with self-proclaimed gurus practicing without certification, or sufficient qualifications or regulation. Her research will also look into the complicated psychology that comes into play, where people are being promised self-help but instead partaking in dangerous, self-harming activities.

Incoming fellow Haley Santerre asks, “Are the Gods to Blame?” Santerre is a third year Studio Art major and Art History minor from Portland, Maine. She is creating a series of six paintings that examine recent catastrophic events, such as the Coronavirus pandemic or Australian wildfires, through an historical and theological lens. By examining how ancient cultures, particularly those in Greece, would have responded, she hopes in turn to learn more about people’s beliefs today.  Haley is the inaugural Richard and Karin Anderson Undergraduate Fellow, whose generous donation funds the research of one fellow per year.

More information will be announced soon about a two-part showcase event in April featuring the research of the four fellows completing their research this spring. Future tribal educator Nolan Altvater has been doing his fellowship research on “Decolonizing Maine Education: Creating an Educational Resource to Improve the Implementation of The Wabanaki Studies Law.”  Fellow Hailey Cedor is completing research related to local involvement of Lithuanians in the Holocaust and how that currently informs national views and identity in relation to that horrific moment in time. Like many, Fellow Nola Prevost is interested in the historic use of fairy tales to represent societal issues or moral messages. She has been using fairy tale conventions and feminist scholarship to create her own modernized collection of fables. Lastly, Katherine Reardon is putting final edits on her work on, “Family Stories, The Truth, and How It Shape Us,” which examines family lore and storytelling within her own Irish family.

The MHC funds a rotating cohort of eight undergraduate fellows, providing $4,000 each per semester for two semesters to complete the research or creative projects of their choosing.  In addition to honing their research skills and building their academic networks, fellows serve as humanities ambassadors to their peers, the campus, and beyond. Many past MHC Fellows have stayed on at 91���� for graduate school.

Students interested in becoming a McGillicuddy Humanities Center undergraduate fellow have two deadlines to apply annually. Proposals to become a fall 2021 through spring 2022 fellow should be submitted by March 17, 2021. Research and creative work of all types across the humanities will be considered, from academic papers to art gallery shows, community workshops to educational video series. While the project has to be centered in the humanities, students from other disciplines are welcome to submit proposals for humanities-based projects. Students must be in their junior and/or senior year during the length of the two-semester fellowship term.

More information, including application instructions, proposal guidelines, and a rubric, are all available at umaine.edu/mhc/research/for-students/undergraduate-fellowship/ or by contacting the MHC’s Humanities Specialist Karen Sieber at karen.sieber@maine.edu.

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Figuring out new and creative ways to communicate the reality of climate change remains one of the great challenges facing policy-makers, scientists, and advocates.  This event brings together two artists with expertise in creating powerful images and visuals about climate science with a veteran science writer and editor to discuss how art can communicate directly and emotionally, and can engage the public, in ways that move beyond the scientific findings and data.

Join the McGillicuddy Humanities Center on Wednesday, March 10, 2021, at 7:30 p.m. to explore this topic further.  Email mhc@maine.edu to join, or register at: .

�Ѵǻ������ٴǰ���Laura Helmuth, Ph.D. is Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American. She is a science journalist with more than 20 years of experience covering all fields of health, science, technology, and the environment. Prior to joining Scientific American, she was the Science and Health Editor for The Washington Post and has held positions at National Geographic,��Slate,��Smithsonian, and Science. Helmuth was the President of the National Association of Science Writers from 2016 to 2018 and board member from 2012 to 2016.

�ʲ��Ա����������Jill Pelto is a climate scientist and artist based in Westbrook, Maine. Her work focuses on communicating human-environment connections. By incorporating scientific research and data into watercolor paintings, she weaves visual narratives that reveal the benefits and costs of human impacts on this planet. She’s conducted field research around the world, including the mountain glaciers of Washington and the Transantarctic Mountains. She recently created a custom data-art painting for the cover of TIME Magazine in July 2020. Her biography and a gallery of her work can be found at .

Panelist Deirdre Murphy decodes the interconnected patterns that exist in art and science through the lens of biological patterns and data visualization. Her research has led to artist residencies at Integral Molecular Biotech and Winterthur Museum. Her paintings, prints and public art have exhibited at the Philadelphia International Airport, Palm Springs Museum of Art, Zillman Art Museum, Biggs Museum of American Art, New Bedford Art Museum, and Tacoma Art Museum. Her biography and a gallery of her work can be found at .

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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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The 8th Annual Bangor Humanities Day on Feb. 1 will celebrate music, art, history, literature and other humanities disciplines at venues throughout downtown Bangor. The free public event is sponsored by the Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center at the University of Maine.

The day kicks off at Bangor Public Library at 10 a.m. with live music in the atrium by 91����’s premiere all-treble a cappella group Renaissance, currently celebrating their 20th anniversary . From 10:30 a.m.–11:30 a.m., students from Bangor area high schools will share posters on their humanities-based research in the library’s Crofutt Room.

At the Maine Discovery Museum at 10:30 a.m., Penobscot Tribal member Ann Pollard-Ranco will be leading a demonstration on traditional corn husk doll making. Participants will make corn husk dolls that they can take home.

In Bangor Public Library’s Minsky Lecture Hall, 91���� professor of philosophy Doug Allen will present a keynote lecture, “The Decline and Potential for the Renewal of the Humanities: Scientific Reductionism and Gandhi-informed Humanities Research.” Allen’s talk from 1–2 p.m. will address the current state of the humanities and how knowledge produced in these fields helps make better sense of the human experience in a changing world.

Stan Wells, a former director with Los Angeles theatre troupe The Groundlings, will lead a two-hour theater improv workshop for ages 12 and older from 2–4 p.m., also in Minsky Lecture Hall at the library.

Matt Bishop, curator of the Bangor Historical Society, will be offering a hands-on history event in the Crofutt Room of the library, also beginning at 2 p.m, featuring postcard images from Bangor’s past.

At 3 p.m. in the Crofutt Room, Shawn Laatsch from Emera Astronomy Center will be giving a talk on “Cultural Astronomy: Human Uses of the Sky.” His lecture will look at different ways in which all cultures have looked up at the night sky and have used it for navigation, measuring time, and agriculture among other uses. From Stonehenge and the Egyptian Pyramids, Aztecs to First Nations to Polynesians, and many more – find out how these groups used the sky as a tool for exploration and discovery.

From 4:30–6:30 p.m. at the University of Maine Museum of Art, there will be a reception and gallery tour, led by museum director and curator George Kinghorn. The catered reception and cash bar are made possible with the help of Basil Creek Catering.

Norumbega Collective 2.0 will host a poetry reading by local writers from 7-8 p.m. at the Bangor Arts Exchange, followed by a 9 p.m. performance by the local improv group “Unredacted,” led by Stan Wells. For mature audiences.

Bangor Humanities Day follows “2020 Visions: The Humanities at 91����,” a showcase of current research and creative projects in the humanities, Jan. 31 at Buchanan Alumni House. This event, also free and open to the public, celebrates humanities research and creative projects on campus.

For more information on either event or to request a reasonable accommodation, call 207.581.1848.

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The Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center invites community members, faculty and students to attend a showcase of current research and creative projects in the humanities. The event, “2020 Visions: The Humanities at 91����,” will be held on Friday, January 31, 2020 at the Buchanan Alumni House from 2-5 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

The afternoon will begin at 2:00 p.m. with a poster session and digital project display in the Andrews Leadership Hall of Buchanan Alumni House. Attendees have the opportunity to converse one-on-one with students and faculty across diverse fields in the humanities about their research. Heavy hors d’oeuvres will be served.

At 3:00 p.m. students from the Opera Workshop will perform in the McIntire Room, followed by brief remarks by Dean Emily Haddad from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Professor Margo Lukens, Director of the McGillicuddy Humanities Center.

The highlight of the event will be a research slideshow beginning at 3:30 p.m., where faculty from a variety of different humanities disciplines and university departments will present brief overviews of their recent research and creative projects.

The day’s events aim to highlight the diverse interdisciplinary expertise and interests of our academic faculty and staff involved in research and teaching on campus, and outward-facing humanities work. This afternoon will also familiarize the public with the roles of the McGillicuddy Humanities Center, from student fellowships and faculty grants to campus lectures, performances and community outreach.

The following day, Saturday, February 1, the McGillicuddy Humanities Center is also organizing Bangor Humanities Day, a city-wide celebration of local humanities initiatives off campus in the local area. A full schedule of Saturday’s events will be available on the MHC website soon.

More information about the Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center is available online or by emailing mhc@maine.edu.

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