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.

RESCHEDULED DUE TO POWER OUTAGE:

Join us on Tuesday, April 6 at 7 p.m. for a virtual tour of hidden campus history. Free and open to the public.

The MHC’s humanities specialist Karen Sieber is overseeing the project, which stems from work students started in Professor of History Liam Riordan’s fall of 2020 Public History class.  Using digital public history and mapping methods, Sieber 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.

Miller will highlight 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, will discuss her research into 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.

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

��DzԳٲ�������karen.sieber@maine.edu with questions.

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The McGillicuddy Humanities Center is sponsoring a two-night research showcase event, “The Stories We Tell,” featuring the research and creative work of our four graduating undergraduate student fellows. While each student has been working independently, their collective research this past year all happened to center around stories that people tell from generation to generation. The showcase will take place on Wednesday, April 21, and Thursday, April 22, from 7-8:30 p.m. on both nights. . Passcode  899432 if prompted. Email questions to mhc@maine.edu.

PRESENTATION SCHEDULE

Wednesday, April 21, 7-8:30 PM, FELLOWS KATHERINE REARDON AND NOLA PREVOST

Katherine Reardon, “What It Was and What I Know: Attempts at Family History”

Senior English major Katherine Reardon will be reading her creative work discussing family histories and storytelling through the lens of her own Irish family. Reardon was inspired to do this work while studying abroad in her family’s native Ireland. Combining the oral histories and family lore she grew up with sometimes contradictory archival records, Reardon examines where the truth fits in with these stories, and whether or not it is important if a family story is true. She will also discuss her personal reflective process, and locating herself within these stories.

Nola Prevost, “All The Girls In The Woods: Feminist Fairy Tales for the Modern World”

Nola Prevost will present selections from her original collection of feminist fairy tales, All The Girls In The Woods. Prevost, a senior English major and a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor, will explore the ability of the fairy tale genre to create and disseminate knowledge and values, and how this can be useful for social justice activism. She will also discuss the impact of inclusive and diverse representation in stories on women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community.

Thursday, April 22, 7-8:30 PM, FELLOWS HAILEY CEDOR AND NOLAN ALTVATER

Hailey Cedor, “Local Involvement, Memory and Denial: the Complexities of the Holocaust in Lithuania”

Senior History major Hailey Cedor will present part of her Honors thesis research about local involvement and memory of Lithuanians in relation to the Holocaust. The complex relationship of current Lithuanians with past atrocities shows the difficulties of acknowledging and reconciling difficult history, and the dangers of that ignorance. In Lithuania, the country’s complicated past has left ample room for self-victimization and denial that favors the public memory of non-Jewish Lithuanians, leaving the small Jewish community that survived the Holocaust to be continually marginalized. Cedor has worked with Holocaust material since the fall of 2018, and this past experience sparked an interest in Lithuania’s relationship to the Holocaust.

Nolan Altvater, “Wabanaki Tools of Diplomacy: Storying Protocols as Political Will”

Using Indigenous research methodologies, senior fellow Nolan Altvater’s project aims to center the needs and voices of Wabanaki communities to inform education policy in the State of Maine. Altvater, a Passamaquoddy citizen and future Tribal educator, addresses the current barriers of implementation of the Wabanaki Studies Law (LD 291) and presents how Wabanaki diplomacy can lead the way to address these issues and serve as political will toward decolonization and antiracist conviction in Maine education. In addition, it explores the concepts and protocols of wampum and its later form of Indigenous writing and how Wabanaki people have used traditional intellect to use these tools for empowerment to resist colonialism. Altvater is also a board member of Wabanaki Reach.

Click here for more information on the McGillicuddy Humanities Center fellowship program, or email mhc@maine.edu with questions.

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