journalism Archives - Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center

Speaking to Citizens, Connecting with Audiences

Tue, 09 Nov 2021 21:00:00 +0000

How might politicians, pundits, journalists, scholars, and other social and cultural leaders best connect with the audiences they need to address?�� As part of its 2021-2022 Annual Symposium, the McGillicuddy Humanities Center is pleased to sponsor a panel exploring this question and the issues it raises.�� Bringing together a professional political communicator, a Maine-based journalist, and a professor of political philosophy, the panel will describe how skills learned from the humanities – such as how to conduct interviews and answer questions, how to speak and write clearly, and how to engage audiences in democratic processes – play a vital role in their work.

�Ѵǻ��ٴǰ�:��Robert A. Ballingall, ��Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Maine.��Professor Ballingall’s research interests lie��in classical political philosophy and its fraught relationship to modern – especially liberal democratic – political thought.�� Before coming to 91��, Professor Ballingall was Postdoctoral Fellow in the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard and Allan Bloom Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow for Research in Classical Political Thought at the University of Toronto, where he also took his PhD.�� Professor Ballingall’s new book,��The Reverent City: Plato’s Laws and the Politics of Ethical Authority, is under contract to the University of Pennsylvania Press.

�ʲ��Ա��:��Victoria Bonney, Director of Communications for Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-Maine).�� In 2017, Victoria Bonney was named��.�� Before that, Bonney spent more than a decade of service as a senior spokeswoman and communications strategist for government agencies, advocacy organizations, and political campaigns. She served as Communications Manager for Planned Parenthood’s New Hampshire Action Fund, and previously oversaw the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ outreach and public education strategy throughout New England during implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Panelist:is a New York Times bestselling historian, a Polk-Award winning journalist, and the author of six books.�� He is a contributing editor at Politico and the State and National Affairs Writer at the��Portland Press Herald��and��Maine Sunday Telegram, where he received a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. A longtime foreign correspondent of��The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle, and��The Chronicle of Higher Education, he has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and seven continents. Born in Waterville, he’s a graduate of Mt. Abram High School, Tufts University, and the University of Chicago, and a past Pew Fellow in International Journalism at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.His books are interdisciplinary in nature, informed by his liberal arts education, and include:��Ocean’s End��(on the environmental crisis in the world’s oceans),��The Republic of Pirates��(on Blackbeard’s notorious pirate gang);��The Lobster Coast��(a cultural history of coastal Maine); and three books on the nature of the United States and the deep background to the existential crises it faces:��American Nations, American Character, and, most recently,��Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood.

This panel is part of the McGillicuddy Humanities Center’s 2021-2022 Annual Symposium: “Humanities: Impact in Real Life”

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The Double Standard: Protest Coverage and Racial Bias

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 22:00:00 +0000

Mass media has a long arm, and a national influence over public opinion of social issues. When protests broke out across the country recently in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, newspapers were quick to try to show the ‘true’ nature of these demonstrations. However, in trying to show news consumers what they wanted to see, reporters got caught up trying to create angles and portrayals of protestors that escalated racial tensions.

McGillicuddy Humanities Center Fellow Leela Stockley will present her research on racial bias in the media in relation to recent Black Lives Matter protests on February 24 at 5 p.m. as part of Black History Month. Stockley, who is a journalist of color and the current editor-in-chief of the Maine Campus, will highlight not just the problematic language and images used in the press to depict protestors, but also how those biased reports affect marginalized communities. She will also provide advice for how journalists can report on social justice movements in the future in a more equitable manner, and how the public can identify racial bias in the media they consume. She will also discuss plans for an upcoming podcast on the subject of the same name.

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Telling the Story of Climate Change

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 00:30:00 +0000

This event, part of the MHC’s 2020-2021 Symposium on “The Story of Climate Change”��brings��together��people��from��different��professional��fields��tasked��with communicating��the impact of climate change to the public. The panel (which will be remote, ) features a veteran reporter, scientists working with Maine’s Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (DIFW), and is moderated by Dr. Katherine Glover from the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute.�� Panelists will discuss best practices for telling the story of climate change, and for helping the��public��understand environmental transformation on both a local and global scale.

Panelists:

is a veteran Bangor Daily News reporter who writes about how the Atlantic Ocean and the state’s iconic coastline help to shape the lives of coastal Maine residents and visitors.��Based , he writes about fisheries, marine-related topics, and covers eastern coastal Maine communities.

Dr. Amanda Cross is a wildlife biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and a member of .��She studies, teaches, and conducts public outreach about vernal pool ecology across Maine.

is a��Moose Biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.��In 2019, Kantar was awarded��at the 53rd North American Moose Conference held in Carrabassett Valley, Maine.

Moderator

is a Research Associate at the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute. Specializing in how interactions between hydroclimate, vegetation, and wildfire produce landscape change, and the sustainable��management of public lands, Dr. Glover will be teaching WGS 301/501: Women and Climate Change, in the spring, 2021 semester.

The panel will run 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., and it will be recorded.
Join via Zoom at:��

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