Incoming fellow Luke Miller, a history major from Tewksbury, Massachusetts, will spend the next academic year exploring, “How Government Policy Affects the Homeless Population In Maine: From Vietnam to Today.” Miller will study state and local policies and data on homelessness, and conduct interviews within the homeless population and those who serve them, to better understand how needs could be better addressed. While comparing data and policies from across the state, his research will focus on Bangor in particular. Miller will be advised by Dr. Brian Pitman from the Department of Sociology.

Sabrina Paetow, a Sociology major from Topsham, Maine, will spend her fellowship analyzing “Rhetoric in the Age of Trump: Presidential Discourse on the COVID-19 Pandemic,” which is tied to her Honors thesis of the same title. Paetow, who will be advised by Dr. Amy Fried from the Department of Political Science, hopes to understand how this particular public health crisis has been framed across the pandemic, and how Trump’s rhetoric affected public perception and discourse on the topic.

Also joining the new cohort will be Stephanie Tillotson from Cumberland Foreside, Maine, who is majoring in Spanish with a minor in Legal Studies. Tillotson is the first student from the Department of Modern Languages and Classics to be awarded a McGillicuddy Humanities Center Fellowship. For her proposed project, “Making Foreign Language Education Accessible through Spanish Animation,” she aims to create a plan and prototype for a mini series of animated, Spanish learning videos featuring the adventures of a dog named Moxie, inspired by her own dog. Tillotson’s research will be advised by Dr. Katie Quick from the Honors College.

Lastly, nursing student Heather Webb of Bangor, Maine, will be writing a series of interconnected personal reflective essays titled, “When Teacher Becomes Pupil: Writing My Way Through Career Transition.” Webb, who worked as an English teacher for many years, is making a career transition into the field of nursing. Her essays will explore the nature of teaching and learning through her experiences going back to school in an unfamiliar field. Nilda Cravens, MSN, RN, will be advising the project. Webb is the first nontraditional student, and first Nursing student, to be awarded a MHC student fellowship.

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, on March 17 and October 17. Research and creative work of all types across the humanities will be considered, from academic papers and art gallery shows, to community workshops or films. 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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The McGillicuddy Humanities Center’s new “Hidden 91����” tour aims to highlight key people, moments and places in campus history that often go overlooked, including the experiences of the first students of color, early efforts to create inclusive student groups like Wilde Stein, or moments of unrest.

Overseeing the student project is the MHC’s humanities specialist Karen Sieber, who comes from a background in public history and the digital humanities, working with cultural institutions and classrooms to build interactive digital maps, timelines, and archives of local history. In the fall of 2020, Professor of History Liam Riordan reached out looking for community partners to act as “clients” for his Public History course. “I saw this as the perfect opportunity to engage students with universal topics like local memory, representation, and the complexity of U.S. history,” Sieber said.

Sieber recently discovered an on campus in 1919, in which Boston brothers Samuel and Roger Courtney were tarred and feathered, and was looking for an opportunity to engage students with other forgotten stories like this on campus. Her extended work to uncover hidden details and documentation about the Red Summer of 1919 has been featured by the American Historical Association, National Council on Public History, the National Archives, and The Conversation among others.

Using digital public history and mapping methods, she has been working with history students Luke Miller and Elizabeth Dalton, in collaboration with archivists at Fogler Library, to research and curate a tour featuring a dozen lesser-known stories within campus history.

Both students stayed on with the project after the class ended in December of 2020 to see the prototype expand into reality. Miller explored the stories behind the first Black student on campus, as well as World War II soldiers from the Class of ‘44. Dalton, who is also a McGillicuddy Humanities Center Fellow, has been researching student employment and financial aid during the Great Depression, and numerous stories of remarkable women in campus history. Sieber, too, has added her own research on the Courtney Brothers incident, as well as a tour stop featuring the efforts of Dr. Ted Mitchell to establish the Native American Studies program and the Wabanaki Center on campus.

The team is building the tour in Clio, a website and app that will allow users to take the tour in person or virtually, with options to add additional resources, historic photographs and an audio tour. Dalton has also created an Instagram page to highlight some of the individual stories, which can be found at @hidden_umaine. The tour has the potential to expand in the future through additional classroom collaborations across a number of fields.

The “Hidden 91����” tour will be debuted on Monday, April 5, at 7 p.m. at a live Zoom event with the creators. The event is free and open to the public. 

Following the event a link to the tour on the Clio app will be found at: /mhc/hiddenhistory/.

Contact karen.sieber@maine.edu with questions.

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Are you an undergraduate student at 91���� studying art, music, history, performing arts, English, journalism, communications, new media, philosophy, languages or other humanities fields?

Would you like to earn $4,000 per semester for two consecutive semesters working on your own independent research or creative project?

The McGillicuddy Humanities Center is holding an information session and pizza party for students interested in learning more about this unique opportunity. Join us on Thursday, March 5, from 5-6 p.m. in the Totman Room of Memorial Union to learn more about the fellowships and application process from MHC staff and current and former fellows.

More information about the fellowships, including proposal guidelines and rubrics, can be found at: /mhc/grants-scholarships/for-students/the-clement-and-linda-mcgillicuddy-humanities-center-undergraduate-fellowship/

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