Maine Humanities Council

Patrick Rael, professor of history at Bowdoin College, discusses his latest book Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States, 1777-1865, which explores the Atlantic history of slavery to understand the exceptionally long period of time it took to end chattel bondage in America (you can read more about the project here). This talk took place in May, 2016, at Merrill Memorial Library.

Professor Rael is the author of numerous essays and books, including Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North, which earned Honorable Mention for the Frederick Douglass Prize from the Gilder Lerhman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.  He is also the editor of African-American Activism before the Civil War: The Freedom Struggle in the Antebellum North, and co-editor of Pamphlets of Protest: An Anthology of Early African-American Protest Literature. 

 

Isabel Alvarez-Borland, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities in the Department of Spanish at the College of the Holy Cross, examines of the role of language and identity in One Hundred Years of Solitude at Winter Weekend 2016.

Her books include Cuban-American Literature of Exile: From Person to Persona (1999) and Discontinuidad y ruptura en Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1982). She is also co-editor of Negotiating Identities in Cuban American Art and Literature (2009) and Identity, Memory, and Diaspora (2008). She is currently Associate Editor of Hispania and was Co-Director of the 2006 NEH Seminar for College Teachers: Negotiating Identities in Art, Literature and Philosophy: Cuban Americans and American Culture. She has published essays on Cuban and Latin American Literature in scholarly journals such as Hispanic Review, MLN, and Revista Iberoamericana.

Speaking at the Dorothy Schwartz Forum on Art, Science, and the Humanities on October 24, 2015,  Susanne Moser discusses the importance of hope in confronting climate change. Susanne’s work focuses on adaptation to climate change, vulnerability, resilience, climate change communication, social change, decision support and the interaction between scientists, policy-makers and the public. She is a geographer by training (Ph.D. 1997, Clark University) with an interests in how social science can inform society’s responses to this global challenge.

Speaking at the Dorothy Schwartz Forum on Art, Science, and the Humanities on October 24, 2015,  Thomas F. Tracy, Philipps Professor of Religious Studies at Bates College, discusses moral challenges in confronting climate change. Professor Tracy’s research focuses on issues in philosophy of religion and theology, and to a lesser degree, on topics in applied ethics, particularly medical ethics and the morality of warfare. His published work has dealt with philosophical questions raised by the classical conception of God in Western religions. He written on the problem of evil, on the concept of God as an agent who acts in the events of history, and on the relation between these classical issues in philosophical theology and contemporary developments in the natural sciences.

Matthew Pettway, Bates College, deconstructs the classic Latin American novel “100 Years of Solitude” through the lens of race at Winter Weekend on March 12, 2016.

Matthew Pettway completed his doctorate in Hispanic Cultural Studies at Michigan State University in June 2010. Dr. Pettway joined the faculty at Bates College in August of the same year where he serves as Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies and is affiliated with the African-American Studies program. Professor Pettway examines the African cultural archive within Cuban colonial literature; placing an emphasis on the dynamics of race, religion and ritual.

A speaker at Winter Weekend 2016, Allen Wells discusses “Interpreting the Past through the Prism of the Present:  The Banana Strike, La Violencia, and the Cuban Revolution’s Impact on García Márquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude”.  Allen Wells is the Roger Howell, Jr. Professor of History at Bowdoin College. His scholarship focuses on modern Mexican history, especially Yucatán, the history of commodities, and U.S.-Latin American relations.

Listen to the recording below.

Professor Ilan Stavans gave the keynote talk at our Winter Weekend program on March 11, 2016. He is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College where his teaching interests include popular culture in Hispanic America, world Jewish writers, and the cultural history of the Spanish language.

 

 

MHC Board Member Reza Jalali discusses the lives of Muslims in the U.S. and gives an overview of Islam, a faith practiced by many of our neighbors. This talk was recorded on December 16, 2015 at Portland Public Library. A Muslim scholar, educator, and writer, he is the coordinator of multicultural student affairs at the University... Read more

Gabriel Ferris, 13, of Waterville Junior High School, beat 21,713 national submissions to win first place in Level 2 of this year’s national Letters About Literature contest for his letter to Walter Isaacson, author of the biography Steve Jobs. Gabriel’s  letter poses a question highly relevant for modern culture: “Is excess a requirement for extreme success?... Read more

In this special “Humanities on Demand” we preview Winter Weekend 2016 with Allen Wells, Professor of History at Bowdoin College. Professor Wells discusses “The Writing of One Hundred Years of Solitude: Gabriel García Márquez, Colombia’s La Violencia, and the Cuban Revolution During the Cold War” This talk was recorded on October 2, 2015 at the Brunswick Inn Read more