Visiting professor Erin J. Kappeler (Tulane University) will be speaking in Hill Auditorium in Barrows Hall on Wednesday, March 4, at 3PM.

Kappeler will explore key texts by the modernist poet and activist Mary Austin, who helped to invent Native American poetry as a field, to show that the concept of free verse was a tool of settler cultural domination as much as it was a democratization of poetic language or a formal innovation. This history of free verse translations of Native American oral expressions opens pressing questions about the ethics of translation and about legacies of settler colonial appropriations of Native American cultural materials in contemporary English departments.

Part of the McGillicuddy Humanities Center’s symposium on “Society, Colonization, and Decolonization.” The event is free and open to the public.

The post Visiting Professor Erin J. Kappeler’s lecture on “Mary Austin’s Time Machine: Modernist Poetics and Settler Time” appeared first on Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center.

Darren Ranco, Chair of Native American Programs and Associate Professor of Anthropology, will be giving this year’s Maine Heritage Lecture on “Protecting Wabanaki Basketmaking Traditions Threatened by an Invasive Pest: Addressing “Wicked Problems” Through Collaborative Research.”

Wabanaki (Micmac, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy, and Penobscot) tribal basketmaking traditions use brown ash trees as their primary source material. This resource is threatened by the Emerald Ash Borer, an invasive pest from China first found in North American near Detroit in 2002, which has spread to over 35 states and provinces and killed millions of ash trees. It was discovered in Maine in 2018 for the first time. In this talk, Dr. Darren Ranco will discuss his nine-year research project to work with tribal basketmakers and other key stakeholders to prepare for the arrival of this pest in Maine. He will discuss how his team used both sustainability science and indigenous research methods to do research that was inclusive, relevant, impactful, and culturally appropriate for the research partners. He will emphasize the ways that Wabanaki basketmakers and indigenous researchers use indigenous forms of diplomacy to assert sovereignty and influence state and federal resource to this invasive pest.

The lecture will be held Friday, October 25, from 4:00-5:00 pm in Bodwell Lounge, Collins Center for the Arts. Prior to the lecture, from 3:00-4:00 pm there will be a reception in the CCA’s Hudson Museum. Both events are free and open to the public. Sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

The Maine Heritage Lecture showcases research and creative work about the state of Maine, with particular emphasis on Maine’s sense of place, history, diverse cultures, society, and policy.

The post 2019 Maine Heritage Lecture by Darren Ranco, “Protecting Wabanaki Basketmaking Traditions Threatened by an Invasive Pest” appeared first on Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center.