Maine Policy Review Winter/Spring 2015

Winter/Spring 2015 ¡ Vol. 24, No. 1 ¡ $15

Maine Policy Review Special Issue:

Humanities & Policy

Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

Maine Policy Review

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PUBLISHER MARGARET CHASE SMITH POLICY CENTER Laura Lindenfeld, Director

EDITORIAL STAFF

Maine Policy Review (ISSN 1064-2587) publishes

EDITOR

independent, peer-reviewed analyses of public policy issues relevant to Maine.

Ann Acheson Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

The journal is published two times per year by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. The material published within does not necessarily reflect the views of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.

MANAGING EDITOR Barbara Harrity Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

The majority of articles appearing in Maine Policy Review are written by Maine citizens, many of whom are readers of the journal. The journal encourages the submission of manuscripts concerning relevant public policy issues of the day or in response to articles already published in the journal. Prospective authors are urged to contact the journal at the address below for a copy of the guidelines for submission or see the journal’s Website, http://digitalcommons.library .umaine.edu/mpr/.

PRODUCTION Beth Goodnight Goodnight Design

DEVELOPMENT Eva McLaughlin Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center

COVER ILLUSTRATION Robert Shetterly

PRINTING Penmor Lithographics

For permission to quote and/or otherwise reproduce articles, please contact the journal at the address below.

Current and back issues of the journal are available at: digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/ The editorial staff of Maine Policy Review welcome your views about issues presented in this journal.

Please address your letter to the editor to:

Maine Policy Review

5784 York Complex, Bldg. #4 University of Maine Orono, ME 04469-5784

207-581-1567 • fax: 207-581-1266 http://mcspolicycenter.umaine.edu mpr@maine.edu

The University of Maine does not discriminate on the grounds of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, including transgender status and gender expression, national origin, citizenship status, age, disability, genetic information or veteran’s status in employment, education, and all other programs and activities. The following person has been designated to handle inquires regarding nondiscrimination policies: Director, Office of Equal Opportunity, 101 North Stevens Hall, 207-581-1226.

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THANKS TO… Major Sponsors

Margaret Chase Smith Foundation University of Maine Humanities Center Benefactors

Colby College Center for the Arts and Humanities Maine Humanities Council Contributors

John and Carol Gregory Merton G. Henry William Knowles

Samuel A. Ladd III and Nancy E. Ladd Peter Mills

Mark R. Shibles And anonymous Contributors

Hon. Peter Bowman David Hart

H. Paul McGuire Elizabeth Ward Saxl and Michael Saxl

David Vail And anonymous Friends

Friends

Volume Twenty-four of Maine Policy Review is funded, in part, by the supporters listed above. Tax-deductible contributions to the journal can be directed to the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at: 5784 York Complex, Bldg. 4, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5784.

Donations by credit card may be made through our secure website at digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr and clicking on “Donate.”

Information regarding corporate, foundation or individual support is available by contacting the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.

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Contents

Broadening the Gene Pool: The Value of the Humanities Future Success

by Michael Grillo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

TO OUR READERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Philosophy Across the Ages

by Kirsten Jacobson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY The Urgency of Democracy

35 37

Poetry Out Loud: Two Perspectives

by William D. Adams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Right of Independent Thought

Overview

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by Julie Richard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Halls Come Alive with the Sound of Poetry

by Jonathan F. Fanton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

by Susan Thibedeau . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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National History Day: Exploring the Past with Middle and High School Students

by John Taylor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

F E AT U R E S

PUBLIC HUMANITIES Power and Pleasure of Ideas: The Maine Humanities Council and the Public Humanities in Maine

The Fabulous Promise and Practical Need for the Humanities in the Twenty-First Century

by Liam Riordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

by Hayden Anderson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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HUMANITIES AND EDUCATION Walden, the Humanities, and the Classroom as Public Space

by Kristen Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Museum That Would Not Die: The Strange Persistence of the Maine State Museum

by Bernard P. Fishman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maine Museums

by Ronald G. Cantor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

by Patricia Counihan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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by Kerill O’Neill and Nate Rudy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Humanities beyond the Classroom: Blessed Be the Human Ties That Bind

by David Richards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Waterville Creates!: Greater than the Sum of Its Arts

What Are You Going to Do with That Major?

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Public Libraries: Essential Infrastructure for the Public Humanities

by Stephen Podgajny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Not a Big Stretch: Community College Humanities

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Contents

F E AT U R E S

Who Supports the Humanities in Maine?: The Benefits (and Challenges) of Volunteerism

MAINE’S QUALITY OF PLACE

by Libby Bischof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Why the Humanities Are Necessary to Public Policy, and How

The Other Maine Guides: How the Humanities Create Sense of Place and Enrich Tourism

by Anna Sims Bartel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

by Kreg T. Ettenger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“What Kind of Place Do We Want to Live In?” Place, the Humanities, and Public Policy in Maine

by Carol Nordstrom Toner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Regionalism and Contemporary Artists in Maine: Opportunities and Challenges

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Maine Sea Grant and the Humanities: Marine Science (and History and Art) for Maine People

by Catherine Schmitt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Power of Language in Changing a Community’s Story

by Linda Cross Godfrey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mapping the History of the State: The Historical Atlas of Maine

by Stephen J. Hornsby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Importance of the Humanities: Reflections from Leading Policymakers

by Linda Silka . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Common Good: Collaboration among Cultural Institutions in Maine

by Jessica Skwire Routhier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Digital Humanities and the Common Good

by Pamela Fletcher and Crystal Hall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

by Pauleena MacDougall and Katrina Wynn . . . . . . . . . .

The Maine Memory Network: Re-Imagining the Dynamics and Potential of Local History

by Stephen Bromage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Northeast Historic Film and the Documentation of Maine’s History

by Jim Henderson and Karan Sheldon . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Data Curation Needed to Avoid a Digital Dark Age

by Desirée Butterfield-Nagy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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MAINE IN THE GLOBAL AGE

WHAT SUPPORTS THE HUMANITIES?

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DIGITAL HUMANITIES

The Digital Humanities Imperative: An Archival Response

by George Kinghorn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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The Role of the Humanities in Rural Community Development

by Sheila Jans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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A Role for World Languages in Improving Maine’s Economic Climate

by Jane Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Muslims in Maine: Eid Mubarak!

by Reza Jalali . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Dear Readers,

heftier that the journal seems nk thi t gh mi ew vi Re aine Policy ve ever published.

Regular readers of M ond longest issue we ha sec the is it ct: rre co the making. During than usual, and they are has been two years in y” lic po d an s itie an um ssor of This special issue on “h r Liam Riordan, profe closely with guest edito ed rat ed full bo lla ow co is ve m ha Center. Lia that time, we of Maine Humanities ty rsi ive Un who the rs of tho or the 38 au history and direct ng and working with bli em ass for s, nk tha fro come m a credit, and our debt of rise the issue. Authors mp co t tha es icl art d an ays cials and state have contributed 34 ess ectives, from elected offi rsp pe d rie va er off t t utions tha and a host of non-profi large number of instit with varied missions, ls oo sch te s iva ay pr ess d ith an Sm agencies to public e two Margaret Chase e are honored to featur W . ns of the National tio iza air an ch s, org am ral cultu illiam D. Ad W : ies nit ma hu the in ders ) and Jonathan written by national lea dent of Colby College esi pr r me for d (an ies manit Endowment for the Hu Arts & Sciences.

American Academy of the of nt F. Fanton, preside and “policy” icle, the “humanities” art ry cto du ro int his tes in ing about As the guest editor no , we might read someth ost m e th At s. or av de g different en or about how fundin are often seen as very pport the humanities, su t no do nt or rta po do im ies These are how particular polic c sector is being cut. bli pu e th in o or ls als oo ue sch er, this iss for the humanities in of the articles. Howev r be m nu a in ed th ess addr ow can e topics and are certainly anities in our lives: H m hu e th of le ro e th ns rspective on lities as engaged citize provides a broader pe life and our responsibi of ty ali qu t r no ou th are s bo humanities enhance us that the humanitie ther these essays remind ge To y? iet soc day life and play ic rat oc in a dem but should infuse every gs, tin set ic m de aca ght in just subjects to be tau . ing ak m a role in policy m the University cant contribution fro nifi sig e th ge ed wl no ack ributions Finally, I would like to this issue, and the cont of sor on sp r ajo m a Center as s and the Maine of Maine Humanities e Arts and Humanitie th for g er nt Ce ge lle crucial role supportin from the Colby Co support has played a eir Th s. tor bo fac lla ne co be as a statewide Humanities Council e Memory Network, ain M e Th . ue iss at al th speci d many of the images the production of this Society, kindly provide l ica or ist H e ain M e ration led by th e journal. appear throughout th the importance of the s new insights about ide ov pr ue iss ed em th s intersect, and how We hope this policy and humanitie at th ys wa t can nifi humanities, the sig ions with one another. epening their connect de by d ine ga be to is much



Best,

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

My Creed . . .

is that public service must be more than doing a job efficiently and honestly.

It must be a complete dedication to the people and to the nation with full recognition that every human being is entitled to courtesy and consideration, that constructive criticism is not only to be expected but sought, that smears are not only to be expected but fought, that honor is to be earned but not bought.

Margaret Chase Smith

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay

The Urgency of Democracy

by William D. Adams

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aine is well known for producing impressive political leaders and for producing impressive women political leaders in particular. Senator Margaret Chase Smith is rightly remembered as the first of these in the contemporary era, anticipating and no doubt inspiring the impressive careers of Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Chellie Pingree, among others.

Senator Smith grew up in Skowhegan, where her father was the town barber. She attended Lincoln and Garfield elementary schools and Skowhegan High School. I don’t know what subjects Senator Smith learned at Lincoln and Garfield elementary schools or at Skowhegan High School, but considering her distinguished career it’s not too fanciful to imagine that they included healthy doses of civics, American political history, and the American constitutional tradition.

In Maine and across the country, these foundational concerns of primary and secondary education, along with many humanities subjects, are under increasing pressure. We are familiar with the reasons—fewer resources, the pressure of testing regimes and expectations, the introduction of new technologies, and misguided, if understandable, anxiety over career readiness, which continue to envelop many of our policy frameworks for assessing and reforming education.

The effects of this pressure are not surprising. According to statistics produced by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, in both 1994 and 2010 “a substantial majority” of school-age children in the United States “failed to demonstrate ‘proficiency’ in U.S. history.”1 Worse still, nearly 60 percent MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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of high school seniors graduating in those years failed to demonstrate even a basic knowledge of U.S. history. It’s some consolation, though not much, that the history proficiency of students in the fourth and eighth grades improved between 1994 and 2010, though the percentages of students with only a basic understanding remains depressingly low.

Student achievement in civics shows a somewhat more encouraging trend. In this realm, fourth and eighth graders showed improvement between 1998 and 2010. Still, less than 20 percent of all students in these grades demonstrated civics achievement levels of proficient or advanced. As was true of the National Assessment of Educational Progress assessments in other humanities subjects, strikingly lower levels were observed among older students, with only 64 percent of twelfth graders demonstrating a mid-level of basic achievement in 2010.

In what seems almost surely to be a related development, meaningful political participation in the United States continues to decline, and civic engagement of all kinds is increasingly fragile.

For evidence, we need look no further than the most recent general election. As the Washington Post reported (November 10, 2014): General election voter turnout for the 2014 midterms was the lowest it’s been in any election cycle since World War II, according to early projections by the United States Election Project.

Just 36.4 percent of the voting-eligible population cast ballots as of last Tuesday, continuing a steady decline in midterm voter participation that has spanned

several decades. The results are dismal, but not surprising— participation has been dropping since the 1964 election, when voter turnout was at nearly 49 percent.

It’s hard to imagine a robust democratic political culture without a citizenry that is at least proficient in U.S. history, the basic structure and workings of our political institutions, and in the founding principles and values of American democracy. And it’s hard to imagine proficiency in these areas without an abiding commitment to civic education in our schools, colleges, and universities.

But the democratic significance of the humanities goes well beyond the need to cultivate specifically civic and historical sensibilities. Democracy and democratic citizenship also require the ability to think critically and clearly about the central issues of shared concern, to imagine alternatives to standing arrangements, to entertain and advance the common good, and, perhaps most important of all, to feel empathy and respect for others. These capacities are in some important sense inherent to human nature, but they require the cultivation, reinforcement, and testing that lie at the heart of humanistic learning, exchange, and understanding.

Democracy flourishes alongside a robust sense of place. This may be especially true in Maine, where sense of place is such an important part of collective identity. With the help of the National Endowment for the Humanities, scholars from the University of Maine have recently given to the people of Maine a remarkable new asset related to place— 8

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

the Historical Atlas of Maine. Now a beautiful printed book, the Atlas is entering a planning phase to become a national model as an interactive digital resource. It will then serve as a resource for schools and individuals across the state and beyond.

Maine also has another wonderful humanities resource in the Maine Humanities Council (MHC), one of the most energetic and admired of the national system of state and territorial humanities councils supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The MHC is doing exemplary work around the state, providing resources and leadership to the statewide humanities network.

Over the years, Maine has also served as a mecca for creative writers and artists and now boasts an international reputation for its literary and artistic production. Our lives are richer and fuller as a result of such creativity in our backyard.

We’ve also experienced the power and impact of the cultural economy, which will be such an important part of Maine’s economic future.

The humanities matter in all of these ways. They provide richness, beauty, and wisdom in our lives, and they help our communities to flourish. But we need them especially because they provide the intellectual and emotional foundations for democratic life and citizenship. For Maine and the country as a whole, the urgency of the humanities is the urgency of democracy. -

William D. Adams is chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities where he has served since July 2014 and where he launched a new initiative, The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square, as a way to demonstrate the critical role humanities scholarship can play in public life. He was president of Colby College from 2000 until his retirement in 2014 and served previously as president at Bucknell University. At Colby, Adams led a multimillion dollar campaign that included expansion of the Colby College Museum of Art and support for several other humanities-based initiatives.

ENDNOTES 1. Humanities Indicators, a project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) U.S. history examination.

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Margaret Chase Smith surrounded by four children as she reads the story of “The Three Bears” on radio WGAY in Washington, D.C. in July 1940. (Courtesy of Margaret Chase Smith Library, Maine Memory Network Item 25972)

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The Margaret Chase Smith Essay

The Right of Independent Thought

by Jonathan F. Fanton

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n the remarkable 1950 “Declaration of Conscience” speech criticizing the House Un-American Activities Committee, Senator Margaret Chase Smith listed several basic tenets of the American character, including the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, and the right to protest. These are the rights one exercises in moments of crisis. But Senator Smith also offered a fourth right, the right of independent thought, which may guide our actions in good times and bad, whether or not our institutions are functioning in a way that we find beneficial or just.

The right of independent thought is not a simple proposition. It requires that Americans think critically, express themselves clearly, and pursue a broad education as a basis for making sound decisions. It is a right that depends on the information and skills we acquire by studying the humanities.

For the past two years, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS)— through its Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences—has been engaged in public discussions about the state of the humanities and social sciences in the United States, discussions that are directly relevant to the development of independent thought among Americans of all ages and backgrounds.

The commission has sponsored large and small public events and has been the subject of media coverage in print and online, on radio and television. All of these activities focused on the value of a broad, liberal arts education. In a speech delivered in Albany, New York, in 2013, commission-member David Souter, retired associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, declared that “what the humanities and social sciences MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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have to teach us is the variety of truth, the provisional nature of conclusions, the sources of illumination from people of other backgrounds and other perspectives, and the magic that can occur when they are combined.”

Awareness of both the provisional nature of our judgments and the value of individual perspectives is essential to informed policy making. To create a healthy and happy society, we must continually seek to understand people from other backgrounds whose experiences might be different from our own.

We must understand our own cultural habits and biases lest we make hasty decisions that compound the problems that we seek to overcome. And we must find new ways to collaborate across social and cultural divides so that, together, we can discover and advance the common good.

This is how I understand Senator Smith’s insistence upon the right of independent thought. It is, as Justice Souter said, “the magic that can occur” when we pursue the humanities and social sciences in a way that is inclusive, self-critical, and open to new ideas and experiences.

The Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences responded to a bipartisan call from U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) and Mark Warner (D-Virginia), and Representatives Tom Petri (R-Wisconsin) and David Price (D-North Carolina), who asked for an examination of how the humanities and social sciences support American democracy and competitiveness.

Their letter invited the Academy to respond to the following question: What are the top ten actions that Congress, state govern

ments, universities, foundations, educators, individual benefactors, and others should take now to maintain national excellence in humanities and social scientific scholarship and education, and to achieve long-term national goals for our intellectual and economic well-being; for a stronger, more vibrant civil society; and for the success of cultural diplomacy in the 21st century?

Fundamental to this request was a belief that an educated nation makes better decisions at home and abroad, for individuals and for the larger community. It is a belief that I share, and I am grateful for the interest and forethought of the senators and members of Congress who called upon the academy to begin this work.

The commission responded with “The Heart of the Matter,” a report that outlines specific strategies for strengthening and improving humanistic and social scientific scholarship and education. Like the Congressional request that inspired it, “The Heart of the Matter” was drafted in a spirit of optimism about the role that these essential categories of thought and analysis have played and continue to play in American civic life.

As the commission stated in the report’s introduction: The nation’s founders understood that their experiment in republican government—a government bound by law and rooted in the consent of the governed— depends on citizens who can think critically, understand their own history, and give voice to their beliefs while respecting the 10

THE MARGARET CHASE SMITH ESSAY

views of others. These qualities are not born, but taught.

In other words, the commission understood its subject not as a set of disciplines or institutions—not a collection of campus centers or departments— but as the broader educational resources and the complete network of intersecting institutions that together shape the development of independent thought among Americans. Among its recommendations, the report calls for renewed support for primary and secondary school teachers; educational initiatives that prepare citizens for democratic participation; a greater emphasis on language learning and international education; and collaborations of humanists, social scientists, and natural scientists to address major global challenges such as the provision of clean air and water, energy, and health care.

Since the publication of “The Heart of the Matter” in 2013, the commission has initiated a wide range of public activity including a variety of efforts to reinvigorate humanities programming in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education; to develop new facilities and resources for scholars; and to increase funding for humanities programs at the local, state, and federal levels. The commission was pleased to assist in the successful efforts to create a new University of Maine Humanities Center (UMHC), and to participate in the second annual Maine Humanities Summit that examined the humanities and public policy in May 2014. Both of these initiatives exemplified the multi-institutional and multidisciplinary collaborations that the commission encourages, connecting scholars to the public in new and innovative ways.

As an expression of its own commitment to the ideals set forth by the commission—and its belief that public policy must be based on evidence—the AAAS also expanded its Humanities MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Indicators, a dynamic, online resource that gathers and disseminates statistical information about the state of the humanities in education, research, and public life.1 The project now supports a program of publications as well as an online forum for discussions about new and updated data and has become a trusted source of reliable information for policymakers and the media.

This work is not complete, nor will it ever be completed. Independent thought must be renewed continually and cultivated at every turn, or it becomes fixed ideology that cannot adapt to changing circumstances. In the “Declaration of Conscience,” Senator Smith enumerated the many perils of such ideology. But she also advanced the terms for its defeat—in the free and open dialogue that is the most important public benefit of a broad education attentive to the humanities and social sciences. ENDNOTE 1. http://www.humanitiesindicators.org/

Jonathan F. Fanton is president of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He served as interim director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College from 2009 to 2014; was president of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1999 to 2009; and was president of the New School for Social Research for 17 years. He is the author of Foundations and Civil Society, vols. I and II (2008), and The University and Civil Society, vols. I and II (1995, 2002). He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1999.

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THE HUMANITIES IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

The Fabulous Promise and Practical Need for the Humanities in the Twenty-First Century

by Liam Riordan, Guest Editor

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ontributors to this special issue of Maine Policy Review were asked to write original articles that would help readers to become more aware of a wide range of outstanding humanities programs in Maine and how public policy and the humanities relate to one another in the state. For some authors this was a clear and simple request, but it made most of them stop and think hard: these two important areas—public policy and the humanities—are too often considered as separate from one another. Where policy is primarily associated with local, state, and federal government, the humanities are mostly considered the domain of certain departments in colleges and universities. Although public policy and the humanities certainly don’t overlap completely, this MPR issue explores how much we have to gain from emphasizing the connections between the two realms and how much each can gain from deepening their engagement with one another.

In this overview article, I explore the relationship between the humanities and policy in general terms, identifying the recurring themes in the articles that follow. I contend that the humanities offer fabulous promise to enrich the quality of civic life in Maine (and across the nation) and that this promise is firmly rooted in how the humanities address our practical need for meaningful human experiences. This is particularly the case in a state where residents value collegial civic life and where individual and small-group action can have a direct impact, and because the quality of place that most of us cherish, and hope to pass on to our children, is deeply rooted in both the humanities and policy. To fulfill this promise, however, the humanities need to be supported by thoughtful public policy, and humanities professionals need to be more fully aware of what policy leaders need to craft better and more sustainable public programs.

A practical discussion of the humanities and their relationship with public policy necessarily begins with the basic question of what the term humanities means.

At their roots, the humanities grow from a need to understand what it means to be human. As the sidebar

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explores further, the humanities emphasize the qualitative dimensions of human experience. The humanities help us to uncover the distinctive attributes that make us unique in our individual values, our need for story telling, and our longing for collective purpose. As the screenwriter and filmmaker George Lucas has commented, “the sciences are the how, and the humanities are the why. Why are we here, why do we believe in the things that we believe in? I don’t think that you can have the how without the why.”1 The humanities tradition in the Western world has a deep historical connection with the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome and the revival of the classics during the Renaissance. In this meaning, the humanities hold an essential place in intellectual life and a foundational position in the academic disciplines of history, literature and poetry, philosophy, the study of languages, and creative expression of all sorts (visual, musical, and the performing arts). Yet, ultimately, the humanities bear most importantly upon public policy in the manner in which they enhance our everyday lives and our connections with one another. As our post-industrial society develops in ways that make big data increasingly accessible, our need to use that data effectively and to assess its quality and validity is ever more crucial. The imperatives of our digital present have only increased our urgent need to deploy the critical thinking skills honed by the humanities so that we more fully understand ourselves in relationship to one another. Herein lies both the fabulous promise of the humanities and also our practical need for them.

It has been my great pleasure to serve as the guest editor of this special humanities-themed issue of Maine Policy Review. Discussions about how we might shape this issue began at least as long ago as the spring of 2013, and the conversation emerged from my sense of crisis: the humanities were increasingly being described as a superfluous luxury that merited little priority based upon (supposedly) pragmatic bottom-line strategic thinking. Such ideas still circulate in some leading policy circles, perhaps most dramatically in Wisconsin, where 12

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the governor’s 2015 budget slashed funding for the public university system and also called for replacing “the search for truth” in the university’s mission with “meeting the state’s work-force needs.”2 The tragedy of this position is that public higher education in the United States has set a pioneering global standard precisely because it combines practical and technical education with a commitment to enduring ideals and foundational critical thinking and communication skills. To repurpose a familiar phrase from the MasterCard ad campaign that has now run for 17 years in 200 countries, “the humanities are priceless; for everything else there’s job training.” This is not to disparage job training, nor to dismiss the real need for education in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields, but in the rush to be practical, we must not lose sight of the enormous value and limitless potential for growth that the humanities offer to those who pursue a qualitative understanding of the human condition. As Steve Jobs has famously noted, “it’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—that it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.”3 We still need to defend the humanities, and they are still far too distant from public policy, but I am more hopeful now than I was two years ago when planning for this MPR issue began. I believe that the humanities’ essential role to advance the common good is becoming more widely recognized. Already in Maine, the pendulum of social development and policy commitments has begun a return arc from a harsh anti-humanities apogee toward a point of equilibrium. This pendulum swing partially reflects the gradually improving economy, as we slowly turn the corner on the consequences of the Great Recession.

My knowledge of the varied humanistic endeavors in Maine and their quality and positive impact grew exponentially as a result of planning and editing this issue, and my ability to be an effective guest editor was really made possible by my experiences as a member of the board of directors of the Maine Humanities Council (MHC), which I joined in 2010. Serving as a faculty member in the University of Maine’s Department of History since 1997, I was proud of my campus unit as the only Ph.D.-granting department in the humanities in the state of Maine. However, I also worried about the thinness of the commitment to the humanities in public higher education in Maine. The graduates of our MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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What Are the Humanities?

The humanities spring from the qualitative aspects of human experience. What are our values, and where do they come from? How can we share our understanding with one another and grow in the process? This emphasis gives the humanities vital significance for individual development and prosperous communities. As our post-industrial and information-age society continues to develop, the cognitive skills based in the humanities are more important for our future than ever.

In a scholarly setting, the humanities involve the study of history, literature and poetry, philosophy, and languages. Extended into our daily lives, the humanities are the empowering tools for insight, reflection, and experience that give our lives meaning.

The humanities embrace the visual and performing arts, and they are fundamental to how we communicate about our endeavors in any arena. The humanities must be nourished because they are essential for individual fulfillment, engaged citizenship, and the common good.

program play key roles in cultural organizations across the state, but our solo doctoral position with declining faculty numbers alarmed me.

Through my work for the MHC, I began to learn more about the humanities landscape in Maine from a perspective outside of the university, and I was confronted by two somewhat contradictory discoveries.

On the one hand, I learned about the truly extraordinary statewide programs of the MHC, the independent state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The small staff of the MHC provides an extraordinary model of how a nimble and lean organization can deliver enormous impact. In my five-year association with the MHC, it has undergone significant changes in staff and leadership that were marked by a near perfect blend of continuity with past achievements and embracing the changes necessary to remain a national leader among state NEH affiliates.

One example will have to suffice to convey how the MHC lives up to its ambitious vision statement—“Maine communities transformed by the power and pleasure of 13

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ideas.” This extraordinary moment arose while listening to presentations by members of a discussion group for women living in a halfway house as they exited the state prison system. Their shared discussions of books for emerging readers helped them to rebuild a sense of self, family, and community through the reflection and exchange encouraged by reading and facilitated discussions. The repeated testimony by these women about the impact of the MHC’s New Books, New Readers program on their lives was extraordinary, and in several cases it was extended through sharing their new books with their own young children. This was as profound an example of the pricelessness of the humanities, and the importance of face-to-face small group work, as I can imagine. For more about such transformative moments, I encourage you to read David Richards’ (2015) article that draws on his extraordinary experience guiding such discussion series in central and western Maine.

This MPR issue exemplifies the kind of community engagement that is central to maintaining and expanding the quality of the humanities in Maine.

At the same time that I was learning more about the public humanities through joining the MHC board, I also gained a new perspective on the University of Maine and its humanities resources. Now looking from the outside in, I saw the UMaine campus as a much more towering asset for the humanities in the state. The level of expertise among faculty and staff, the quality of the students, the resources of Fogler Library, the basic infrastructure of a historic campus with many modern and renovated spaces for learning and sharing—all of it broadly accessible to Maine residents as a result of the Morrill Land Grant Acts—make the university simply without peer in Maine. From my new vantage point, I now see a strong need for faculty like me who are privileged to work at UMaine to collaborate with the public to ensure that the humanities grow more central to the civic life of our state as a whole.

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Widespread agreement about this responsibility led faculty, administrators, staff, and students in UMaine’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 2010 to begin to explore ways to better coordinate the work done by 16 humanities-based departments and units on the Orono campus, which has resulted in the creation of the University of Maine Humanities Center (UMHC).

Supported by grant-based resources and private fundraising, the UMHC has a three-part mission: to support lifelong education, faculty and student research, and community engagement.

These missions clearly overlap. For example, the Historical Atlas of Maine (University of Maine Press, 2015) has established a new national standard for how text, historical artifacts and images, and contemporary maps can be combined to explain the past from the Ice Age through the end of the twentieth century. Led by historical geographer Stephen Hornsby and historian Richard Judd, a team of more than 30 scholars, including undergraduate and graduate students, has made an extraordinary research contribution (see Hornsby 2015).

Not only does the Atlas represent a stunning scholarly and teaching accomplishment, it built on a huge range of institutional partnerships, above all with the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine.

Major grant support from NEH, the Maine State Legislature, the University of Maine, the University of Maine System, the Bernard Osher Foundation, and four additional leading federal and private sources sustained the project for more a decade. The next phase is to begin to explore how the print Atlas can inform the creation of an interactive digital atlas with the same national-caliber research and innovation that the print version has achieved.

The work of the UMHC goes forward on many fronts and with many projects that can be followed on our website (http://umaine.edu/umhc/) and on our Facebook page. Not the least of these endeavors is the central role that the UMHC played in bringing this issue of the MPR to the public. This issue exemplifies the kind of community engagement that is central to maintaining and expanding the quality of the humanities in Maine. Where an older model of public service sometimes implied a hierarchical relationship between universities and the public, this issue of the journal highlights how the UMHC is transcending such boundaries to engage individuals, institutions, and communities across Maine as collaborative partners. The humanities offer their greatest promise not as pure 14

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knowledge dispensed, but as an engaged process of dialogue marked by flexibility and growth.

The deep human impulse to make meaning, to share it with others, to improve our understanding through such exchanges, and ultimately, to create a better future is the promise that the humanities extends to all of us and for which we have a strong collective need. The two keynote essays that open this special issue skillfully frame what’s at stake. As NEH Chairman William “Bro” Adams aptly notes, democratic citizenship requires an ability to think critically, exchange ideas, and imagine alternatives (2015). The humanities are essential to these activities, and while these skills are inherent to human nature, they also must be nurtured.

Jonathan Fanton, American Academy of Arts & Sciences president, makes a similar point in his essay when he quotes from the introduction to the “Heart of the Matter” report: the essential values of American civic life “are not born, but taught” (Fanton 2015).

Furthermore, the kind of teaching that we most need is not by the stern expert expounding certainties, but by sharing our “broader educational resources and the complete network of intersecting institutions that together shape the development of independent thought.” The independent thought that was the hallmark of Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s leadership is also the core asset that the humanities offer to public policy in twenty-first century Maine.

The 34 article and essays in this issue, written by 38 authors, reflect the range of humanities institutions that sustain independent thought in the state. Although we could have included many other valuable authors, topics, and institutions, what we have gathered in this issue showcases some of the most exciting developments in the humanities in the state, developments that can inform policymakers so they can better deploy the humanities to improve everyday lives. Twelve articles by faculty and staff from the University of Maine make a major contribution, and they are joined by authors from private colleges, other campuses in the University of Maine System, a high school teacher, and a community college president. Crucially, these perspectives from teaching institutions share space with authors from cultural organizations, libraries, state government, and the MHC. These rich points of view are perhaps most engaging at the moments when they cross boundaries with one another, share common concerns, and look to create our best possible future through respectful cooperation that doesn’t ignore MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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important differences of opinions in the complex and messy world of crafting policy.

The six thematic sections that follow group authors and topics in ways that allow each theme to be considered from multiple viewpoints. The opening section—”Humanities and Education”—includes discussion of programs in philosophy, poetry, and history for middle and high school students, poignant assessments of the meaning of the humanities for college students (and their teacher) and retirees, and the humanities’ unanticipated contributions to social understanding. One article considers the classic question faced by most humanities undergraduates—“What are you going to do with that major?”

There is indeed overlap between the essays in the first section and those in the second section—“Public Humanities”—for few teachers regard their classrooms as separate from the broader context in which they live and work. Given the MHC’s commitment to enhancing the public humanities in Maine since its creation in 1975, not surprisingly authors of three of the five articles in this section have played leadership roles in this organization. Yet if the MHC is a well-established leader in the field, its tenure pales next to what may be the most

The humanities offer their greatest promise not as pure knowledge dispensed, but as an engaged process of dialogue marked by flexibility and growth. beloved of all humanities institutions—the public library. These hubs for meaningful civic life come in all shapes and sizes in Maine. They provide the essential infrastructure for the humanities, through books, magazines, DVDs, and CDs, as places to access online databases, and as hosts for humanities activities of all kinds.

Libraries may be the most popular and most ubiquitous humanities organizations in Maine, but museums, archives, and historical societies also contribute enormously to the network of intersecting institutions that make the public humanities so dynamic in Maine.

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The exploration of the humanities in education and their thorough integration into public life beyond the classroom directly informs the next four sections of this issue, starting with six diverse articles in the section “Maine’s Quality of Place.” As globalization threatens to increase cultural homogenization, the unique connotations that Maine conjures are an increasingly valuable asset, and one that the humanities has helped create and will continue to nurture. The articles cover topics ranging from the need for a deeper understanding of the potential of cultural tourism, to the double-edged sword of being branded a “Maine artist,” to the place of the sea and its resources for Maine’s way of life, and each places the humanities at its analytic center.

Though the humanities are widespread and vigorous in Maine, they are also a fragile set of relationships that must be nourished if they are to continue to thrive. Four articles in the “What Supports the Humanities?” section take up this question from several perspectives: we hear from legislators and others with experience in state government, learn about the amazing tradition of collaboration among Maine’s cultural organizations, become more aware of the crucial role that volunteers play in advancing the humanities. Reversing the usual way that the relationship between public policy and the humanities is framed, the final article in this section probes how the humanities can better support policy.

The last two sections of the issue—“Digital Humanities” and “Maine in the Global Age”—look to the future, first with five articles about the digital humanities, an elusive and all-embracing term. Digital humanities nonetheless represents the most significant area of growth in the humanities in the past decade.

Authors include scholars, archivists, librarians, and leaders of cultural organizations who examine their specific location in the rapidly expanding digital humanities universe. Articles consider how to grapple with big data; how we preserve and maintain the technology of past eras (from celluloid to predigital audio recordings); and the innovative collaborations that lie at the heart of the Maine Memory Network’s pioneering use of the Internet as a tool for local history.

The “Maine in the Global Age” section closes the issue. The final article, on the growing presence of Muslims in Maine, assesses recent migration and new forms of cultural diversity. The other two articles remind us that the particular challenges of this new subject have deep roots and raise perennial questions about diversity, language, and living in a multicultural borderland. All MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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these qualities have shaped the reality of life in our region from the pre-colonial world of Native American differences, through an era of Protestant and Catholic religious, as well as English and French linguistic, and cultural differences. Understanding the full meaning of Maine’s relationship to globalization and unleashing the state’s fullest potential in this context can only be accomplished by examining the many ways that we have faced such challenges in the past. Assessing this record of human experience and grappling with successes, failures, and ambiguous and uncertain outcomes are among the most essential ways that the humanities and public policy need to learn from one another.

The original articles written for this special issue of the Maine Policy Review aspire to inform readers about the broad parameters of the humanities in Maine, to excite them about the rich work that is being done here, and to suggest that much still needs to be undertaken. Even more important, it is our collective hope that these articles inspire you, our readers, to renew your participation in the humanities, which is best done by sharing your curiosity, surprise, and wonder with others.

Engaging in open-ended and informed dialogue with one another remains a necessary practice for all of us to express our humanity and to create the kind of society in Maine that can make our unofficial state slogan, “the way life should be,” ring true. ENDNOTE 1. Quoted in “The Heart of the Matter” video, produced for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, online at https://vimeo.com/68662447 2. The attack on the humanities is a bipartisan affair that may have been initiated by governors like Scott Walker (R-Wisconsin), Rick Scott (R-Florida), and Patrick McCrory (R-North Carolina), but the idea that the humanities somehow detract from U.S. economic vitality has also been expounded by President Obama.

On developments in Wisconsin, see http://www .nytimes.com/2015/02/16/opinion/save-the-wisconsin -idea.html?_r=0. For a national overview, see https:// www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/01/31/obama -becomes-latest-politician-criticize-liberal-arts-discipline 3. Quoted in http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions /why-stem-wont-make-us-successful/2015/03/26 /5f4604f2-d2a5-11e4-ab77-9646eea6a4c7_story.html

REFERENCES Adams, William D. 2015. “The Urgency of Democracy.”

Maine Policy Review 24(1): 8–9

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Fanton, Jonathan F. 2015. “The Right of Independent Thought.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 10–11 Hornsby, Stephen. 2015. “Mapping the History of the State: The Historical Atlas of Maine.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 94 Richards, David. 2015. “Humanities beyond the Classroom: Blessed Be the Human Ties That Bind.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 66–68

Liam Riordan is professor of history and director of the University of Maine Humanities Center. Riordan was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Glasgow in 2012. He is a specialist on the American Revolution, having published Many Identities, One Nation: The American Revolution and Its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic (2007) and coedited The Loyal Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era (2012).

The Raymond H. Fogler Library, University of Maine. Fogler is the largest research library in the state.

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Humanities and Education

Humanities and Education

We are used to thinking about the humanities within an educational context—courses of study, college and university departments—but the articles in this section highlight intriguing ways the humanities are engaging students and developing their potential. Kristen Case describes the value of the kind of work done in the humanities, especially what happens within the physical space of the humanities classroom. Ronald Cantor discusses the sometimes-surprising role that humanities classes play in community college education.

Both these articles present strong arguments that humanities education should not just be reserved for the well-to-do. With years of experience in a university career center, Patricia Counihan outlines the value of the curiosity, flexibility, and open-mindedness that humanities majors develop through their coursework, which allows them to thrive in many careers. Michael Grillo wonders how we can hope to imagine our future, and more importantly address what it brings, if we do so using frameworks defined only by our present and most immediate needs. He argues that study of the humanities ensures our best chances of creative thought, cultural growth, and meaningful survival. The articles that close out this section describe interesting humanities outreach with high school and middle school students: a philosophy outreach program between the University of Maine philosophy department and Orono High School Students (Kirsten Jacobson), two perspectives on the national poetry recitation contest Poetry Out Loud (Julie Richard, Susan Thibedeau), and National History Day, a program that promotes historical research by students in grades six through twelve (John Taylor).

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Humanities and Education: THE CLASSROOM AS PUBLIC SPACE

Walden, the Humanities, and the Classroom as Public Space1

by Kristen Case

I want to begin by saying that this essay is not a “defense of the humanities.” I am not going to use this space to argue for the intrinsic value of the study of literature, philosophy, and related disciplines, although I happen to think the humanities are intrinsically valuable. I’m also not going to talk about the fact that employers want to hire humanities majors, that the humanities are valuable in an economic sense, although any number of recent articles and studies demonstrate that this is true.2 The reason I’m not going to make those arguments, the reason I’m not going to defend the humanities, is that I don’t really believe they are in peril.

The humanities are going to be just fine. Literature will keep getting written and read; people will continue to learn other languages, to ask questions and read books about ethics and experience and existence, and students will continue using what they learn in humanities classrooms in their post-college professional lives, as they always have. None of these things are really in danger.

What is in danger is public access to the kind of work done in the humanities, and especially, public access to the space of the humanities classroom. I want to use this essay not to defend but to describe the kinds of practices that take place in humanities classrooms, to think about how these practices are connected to the possibilities of our broader social life. I want to argue for the humanities classroom as a compromised, beleaguered, fragile, and ephemeral, but nonetheless vital space of actual freedom, and further, to suggest that the question of who gets to access this space is one that should be of concern to all of us. My interest in this question arises not only from my current position as an English professor at the University of Maine at Farmington, the liberal arts campus of the University of Maine system, but also from my own undergraduate experience at an elite private institution, a place where discussion-based humanities classes were considered the cornerstone of a liberal arts education, the value of which was, and still is, considered self-evident. This interest also emerges from conversations with my students, for whom the value of education is a live MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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concern, a question in which they have much at stake.

That I have had these conversations at all is a function of the kinds of relationships humanities classrooms and discussion-based teaching make possible. It is also, I think, a function of the fact that I regularly teach Thoreau’s Walden.

It might at first blush seem a stretch to invoke Thoreau, the failed schoolteacher and frustrated Harvard student, in an essay about the value of the humanities classroom in the public university. But I want to argue that the practices of the humanities classroom—the physical, discussion-based classroom—can be understood as an extension of the Walden experiment: an experiment constituted principally by the gesture of removal. I say removal and not withdrawal because Thoreau understood himself to be going somewhere, not just leaving Concord, and moreover because re-moval suggests the kind of continual mobility that caused Thoreau not only to move to Walden but also to move away from it, to become “a sojourner in civilized life again,” and to write a book for his neighbors. At the end of Walden, he writes: I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. (Thoreau, Walden, p. 579) The first definition of removal is “to take something away or off from the position occupied.” For Thoreau, the position occupied was a rapidly industrializing and expanding hub of mid-nineteenth century New England life and its urgent social pressures and economic demands.

But Walden was no remote wilderness, it was the woods on the edge of town, less than two miles from Concord center, and Thoreau retained regular contact with friends and family in the village during his entire two-year stay.

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Thoreau’s hypocrisy, was in fact central to his self-appointed task: “to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, in order to wake my neighbors up.” Neighbor is one of Walden’s keywords, continually used to describe residents of both the town and the woods, and its ubiquity in the text reminds us that Thoreau understood his task at Walden (and in Walden) to be, in the end, a social one: getting lost, as he writes, in order to find himself again and “to realize the infinite extent of his relations” (p. 459). It’s worth noting that Thoreau spent nearly four times as long on the Walden manuscript than he actually spent at the cabin—it went through eight drafts and almost ten years of writing and revising.

…Thoreau seeks everywhere to make us question how and what words mean.

Walden was for Thoreau a space apart: close to, but in important ways separate from, everyday village life and its habitual modes of both thought and being. The kinds of questions Thoreau went to Walden to ask could not be asked from the confines of village life because they concerned the very foundations of that life: When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. (p. 329) The great and difficult gift of Walden is its persistent, provocative, sometimes frankly irritating undermining of the power of habit.

“I know not the first letter of the alphabet,” Thoreau (p. 400) writes at the end of “Where I Lived and What I Lived For,” and the demand that he makes throughout Walden is that we, too, relearn to read, relearn, in particular, the meanings of words. Thoreau’s most characteristic stylistic gesture is the use of a word to signify the opposite of its conventional meaning: “I see young men, my townsmen,” he writes “whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms” (p. 326). The pressure here falls equally on the words misfortune and inherited, which in their MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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unexpected association, suddenly bring the whole system of values in which they are embedded into question.

Recognizing that our language is inextricable from our values, our assumptions, our economy, Thoreau seeks everywhere to make us question how and what words mean. “The greater part of what my neighbors call good,” he writes, “I believe in my soul to be bad” (p. 331).

Reading the way Thoreau wants us to read, allowing for the redefinition of even the simplest words and the modification of values that such redefinitions suggest, is strenuous work. Thoreau’s is the kind of writing “we have to stand on tiptoe to read” (p. 406). The style— particularly when compared to that of contemporaries like Emerson or Melville or Alcott—is direct, simple, seemingly straightforward. But Thoreau’s particular stylistic genius was to combine this simplicity of diction with subtle philosophical complexity, making the most common language seem, under the slightest pressure of attention, suddenly strange.

Consider this sentence, from the conclusion of Walden: “The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement” (p.

580). We begin with the idea of truth—but not a fixed, immortal truth like Plato’s forms, rather a volatile truth: a truth that is changeable, erratic, impossible to contain. This mercurial thing, the volatile truth, belongs to our words. It is the volatile truth of our words. Our words possess a kind of inner wildness that is their truth, and this wildness, when we are writing as Thoreau thinks we should, betrays—that is, reveals, discloses, but also, is disloyal to, breaks faith with—the inadequacy of the residual statement, that which remains after the essential thing is gone, the residue or husk. The residual statement (the material form of the sentence, printed on the page) thus exists in conflict with the volatile truth of our words (the wild essence of our meanings). But statement and words are also obviously inseparable: if the truth belongs to one it must also belong to the other. The double meaning of betray captures the way that words can both reveal and resist their own inadequacy, their failures to contain their own wild meanings. To read Walden with this sentence in mind is to imagine the physical text as a series of residual statements that must be reanimated, brought back to their volatile truths by a reader sufficiently awake to perform the task.

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of what we mean by our common words, by terms like value, labor, solitude, poverty, weakness, was not a private but a public question: a question for a nation to answer. About the largest technological innovation of his time, the railroad, Thoreau (p. 365) writes, “though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts ‘All aboard!’ when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over—and it will be called, and will be, ‘A melancholy accident.’” Here the word Thoreau asks us to reconsider is accident: it is only by our collective failure to reckon predictable costs that the casualties of the railroad can be written off as accidental.

The lazy repetition of the phrase, “a melancholy accident” in the wake of the death of a dozen railroad workers, reflects an acceptance of such things without thought, without choice. Thoreau sought to make such words strange to us, and in this act of estrangement, to prompt us to redefine ourselves as a culture.

It was Thoreau’s physical and spiritual removal to Walden Pond, a perspective he retained even after returning to the village, that enabled him to articulate a set of questions about individual and social life that we are still struggling to answer. This brings me to the public humanities classroom. Let’s say the literature classroom in the public university. Perhaps the one in which I taught this morning, 205 Roberts Learning Center, at the University of Maine at Farmington.

The architectural style is frankly Brutalist. Roberts has no oak seminar tables, no marble fireplaces like the one that graces the seminar room in Harvard’s Barker Center, home of its English department. The space itself is uninspiring—cinder block walls, florescent lights.

Because it’s Maine, the floors in winter are, in spite of the diligent efforts of the facilities department, pretty continually streaked with mud. The building is either insufferably hot or impossibly cold (sometimes at the same time!), and class is punctuated by the sound of logging trucks shifting gears as they climb the hill on the stretch of Route 4 that sometimes seems to cling to the building.

But it is, nevertheless, our space. During the 10 minutes before class while I ready my notes in my office across the hall, I hear the sounds of tables and chairs being dragged into a circle. I arrange the furniture this way on the first day of class; the students do it every day after that, without my asking. I have no idea if it’s the same person every time, or different people, but the room is ready when I walk in. Nothing in the physical atmosphere of the Roberts Learning Center commuMAINE POLICY REVIEW

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nicates to my students that what we’re doing is important, is valuable, is part of a venerated and venerable tradition.

No names etched in marble greet them, as they greeted me when I entered Columbia’s Butler Library as an undergraduate. But the students seem to know anyway, even without those things, even with mud on the floor and cinderblock walls. They arrange the furniture, they take out their books. They drive from an hour away or trudge from their dorms, they come even though they worked a late shift at McDonalds or the snack bar, even though they’re going through a divorce; they come even if they didn’t understand the reading, and even if they can’t register for next semester’s classes because they haven’t been able to pay their most recent tuition bill.

They come even though their car is in the shop and they had to walk. They come even though their aunts and uncles and sometimes their parents ask why they’re wasting their time studying English.

That sound—the sound of the furniture being dragged across the floor, no doubt disturbing the class in the room below, making the professor raise her voice as she throws out parting words and the students shuffle for their coats and bags—that sound has become for me a sort of echo across time of the sound of Thoreau and his friends raising the little cabin in the Concord woods. (“No man was more honored in the character of his raisers than I,” he wrote; “They are destined, I trust, to assist in the raising of loftier structures one day” [p.

358].) It is the sound of a space being both claimed and prepared, made ready for an experience, a collective activity, that even without marble and oak and in spite of massive cultural and economic pressures pushing them in other directions, our students continue to show up for.

Today we are reading Walden, and a student is struggling with the sentence, “By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves will break through and steal” (p.

327). Caleb, whose father is a minister, tells us the old book is the Bible and refers us to Matthew 6:19–21, but this leaves us with the trickier first part of the sentence, and we take some time with it, sitting in silence, our books open, the sound of the trucks suddenly louder in the quiet, a few pages turning. Then a hand: Angela, who seldom speaks in class because she thinks she “isn’t good at English,” but whom I often notice leaning slightly forward in discussions as if participating silently in her head. She speaks quietly. “Seeming fate sounds like you think you’re doomed, but you’re really not,” she 21

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says. Another hand: “but why is fate commonly called necessity?” More silence, more trucks, more pages turning. Angela: “Okay, I’m probably wrong, this is probably wrong, but maybe it’s like, you say its necessity, but it really isn’t?” Some nodding as this gets absorbed by the room. Then another hand: John, a secondary education major who has been struggling with Thoreau, who resists the injunction to “Simplify!”, but for whom the sentence suddenly resonates.

He’s animated, excited—he feels but can’t quite express the idea. He spends a few seconds stammering, trying to get it out. We wait.

“It’s like, we say we need to do things, we need to go to class, or we need to buy something, or we need a new cell phone—but we don’t actually need to do any of those things. That’s why it’s only a seeming fate.

Nobody’s holding a gun to our head.”

This is met by nodding all around, both because the sentence now genuinely makes sense and also because there’s a shared feeling of silent appreciation for John and Angela, who did something hard, who risked public vulnerability for the sake of our common enterprise, our collective work. I can see in his face that John is absorbed by the idea he has just articulated: he’s thinking about what it would mean to exercise the freedom suggested by Thoreau’s redefinition of necessity.

It’s true. Nobody’s holding a gun to our head.

My favorite moments in the classroom are these, the moments in which students are both urgently compelled to speak and at a loss for words. I love these moments because they signal to me that the student has discovered not a new thought but a new way of thinking, something that so overturns her habits of thought that she cannot immediately say what it is she’s discovered. If a new thought is a new piece of furniture, this kind of crisis in thought is like discovering a room one hadn’t known was there (in the movies such hidden rooms, appropriately enough, always seem to be hidden behind bookcases). I value these moments not only for the intellectual growth that they signal, but also because each time a student comes to a new way of thinking she also learns to be less afraid of future revolutions in thought.

A few things to note about this experience. First, it happens live, in person, in the room. Shared space matters. Physical proximity matters. The silent nodding matters, the moments of silence, the expressions, the stammering, the moving of the furniture—they all matter. We need the protection of the space and the distance from external pressures afforded by it. We are, MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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fleetingly, but also regularly (twice or three times a week, in this familiarly imperfect space) a community. The care of the space demonstrated by the students moving the furniture each day is one manifestation of this; their willingness to risk articulating new thoughts is another.

I’d like to propose another historical analogue to this space, this one going a bit further back: Anne Hutchinson’s sitting room. In the mid-seventeenth century, Hutchinson, a midwife, nurse, and mother of 14, perceived that the Calvinist insistence on grace alone as the key to salvation, coupled with the Puritan understanding of the experience of grace as immediate and unmediated, undercut the spiritual authority of the all-male Boston ministers who also wielded political power in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The meetings she held in her Boston home were for her neighbors, at first only women, later both women and men, and their very structure, informal meetings for discussion, reflected the belief that grace—the immediate apprehension of divine truth—doesn’t observe class or gender or social hierarchies; it can happen to anyone, and carries its own authority. Understood as an immediate experience that could be known only to the individual to whom it had occurred, grace made personal experience a ground, indeed the ground, of divine knowledge.

In thinking about the humanities classroom as public space, I want to draw not only on Thoreau’s principle of removal, but also on the tradition of radical egalitarianism implicit in Hutchinson’s understanding of grace, which, in opposition to a doctrine of works, stressed the inward nature of the experience of the divine, an experience that, in Hutchinson’s view was unobtainable except as freely given by God, and that could neither be arrived at nor proven by good works.

I’m not a religious person, and even if I were I wouldn’t subscribe to the kind of view Hutchinson had of hell or predestination, to note just two of a long list of differences—but the parallels to what I’m talking about are significant. Hutchinson’s sitting room, like Thoreau’s cabin, can be understood as a space apart, a place for removal. And descriptions of grace are analogous to the kind of knowledge that is gained from discussion-based, in-person humanities classes. In the same way that grace could not be transmitted from minister to parishioner, but had to be directly apprehended, the kind of knowledge engendered by the humanities class is not conveyed from professor to student. This is the thing about grace—it’s not packagable. It’s not marketable. It is not content delivered. It is arrived at, often, like grace, in a 22

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flash, by the student engaged in the arduous, risky activity of synthesizing difficult new material with his or her own past experiences in the presence of other people doing the same thing. I can’t make my students have this experience; I can’t even say for sure in what the experience consists. Freedom isn’t merely the result of this classroom practice, it is part of its process, built in.

What will John do, what will Angela do with the possibilities that Walden has opened for them? I don’t know.

I can’t know. The meaning of the freedom of thought that can be opened in the separate space of the humanities classroom, is that it is free, that it is not determined in advance, not bound by the demands of the market or social expectation or even institutional authority. We do not escape those things when we enter the humanities classroom, but we can remove ourselves, for an hour or two, by collective agreement, from their power in our lives. We can be in another, freer space, a space in which this kind of grace can happen.

Hutchinson’s story doesn’t end happily—she was accused of heresy, denounced, and banished. But by the nineteenth century she was seen as a heroine, pictured

by Nathaniel Hawthorne and others as an example of principled resistance that had come to be understood as beneficial not only to the individual but to the community. This double movement of, on the one hand, removal or reliance on individual experience as the foundation of knowledge and, on the other, the return to social or community life, is central to Walden, which often vacillates between present and past, the solitary life at the pond and the more outwardly directed life of writing. Classrooms, too, can be places in which experience is built upon and transformed, and Thoreau seems to anticipate John Dewey’s experience-based pedagogical theory when he critiques his Harvard education: To my astonishment, I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation! — why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably. (p. 363) Thoreau’s critique of the classrooms of his day culminates with an observation about the aftermath of MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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education, the future it bequeaths: what happens, that is, when students leave college and move back into the community. I don’t think I’ve ever taught Walden and not had students respond emphatically to the way that last sentence resonates with their own experience—the one significant difference being that it is themselves, not their fathers, who are being run into debt. The conversation that day is about their own present and future realities: the jobs they’re working while in school, the kinds of choices they have to make (tuition or a root canal, tuition or car repairs, tuition or rent), their fears for the future, the kinds of compromises they’ve already made. It’s a hard conversation, sometimes an emotional one, and invariably one that raises for them the question Thoreau was asking: is it worth it?

This is a tough conversation for me to moderate.

For reasons both good and selfish, I want them to answer, “Yes.” I want them to believe in the value of the class, and of their education in general. But I can’t both encourage them to honestly question and at the same time hold my own answer as the final word. Here, much to my own discomfort, I represent the authority, the common wisdom, the institution to be questioned, and insofar as I believe that the value of the humanities classroom is precisely the opportunity it presents for this kind of questioning, I am impelled to stay quiet.

The collective verdict that has so far emerged from these classroom conversations has been a somewhat agonized yes. Sometimes someone says, “It is worth it because, even factoring in debt, with a BA I’ll earn more than I would without one.” But mostly the worth question is answered in non-quantifiable terms, in terms of books and discussions and ideas and a community that changed them. The affirmation is earnest, but somewhat ambivalent, because that inner sense of the invaluable quality of what they’re learning doesn’t erase the fact of debt or the anxiety it creates, an anxiety that creeps in even here, even into our place apart. The move back that is the necessary second half of the gesture of removal has become a more daunting, even fearful, prospect. And for good reason.

According to Noel Gallagher, the average amount of debt held by 2013 Maine college graduates is roughly $30,000 (Portland Press Herald, November 12, 2014). Many of the students in the deepest debt are graduates of public universities, first generation college students with little or no financial support from their parents entering an economy that is especially punishing to the young. This is no melancholy 23

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accident—it is a clear failure of the promise of public education, a promise that for several decades of the twentieth century corresponded to a reality. In response to a situation that no one can deny is a problem, one solution has been proposed: replace public liberal education with job training. Deliver this training as conveniently and efficiently as possible. Train students for the new economy.

I want to be clear that I’m not arguing that nothing other than funding needs to change. In light of the new economic reality for college graduates, professors and administrators have a responsibility to help students to think concretely about their futures. We have to wake up to this responsibility and take it seriously. But these conversations, too, demand proximity, demand trust and time, demand imagination and openness. We owe it to our students to help them to navigate their return to the world outside the classroom. We owe it to them to help them to find jobs. But we owe them more than that. And to forget our larger responsibility to preserve public access to spaces in which thinking and questioning can happen isn’t just to cheat public university students, it is to shortchange our culture as a whole.

Institutions like the Maine Humanities Council and our public libraries do what they can to foster public conversations about literature, history, and philosophy—this is essential work, and we need institutions like these. We need museums and concerts and reading groups and lectures that are open to the public. But we also need public classrooms.

The humanities aren’t dying, they’re just becoming a luxury good, a high-end commodity, and this is a problem, not just for those of us who work in public universities but for all of us.

Twenty-five years ago, state appropriations covered about 70 percent of the University of Maine System’s education budget. That number has dropped to about 40 percent, according to the most generous estimates (Bangor Daily News, September 22, 2014). While declining enrollments in the University of Maine System MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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are certainly a significant part of the currently bleak financial picture, they are not the whole picture: it might be more accurate to describe the present crisis as one of investment, rather than one of enrollment. Maine is not unique; the defunding of the University of Maine System is part of a nationwide decline in state support for public higher education that has been acute in the last few years. In 2000, state support exceeded tuition revenue in 47 states. That number is now down to 26 states (Huelsman 2014). As we’ve seen at the University of Southern Maine and elsewhere, the humanities have been disproportionately targeted, and visions of a streamlined, career-oriented public university, with a business model like that of McDonalds or Netflix, have been put forth as an alternative to in-person, discussion-based liberal education. The new model calls for faster, cheaper, more efficient content-delivery.

Last year, North Carolina Governor Patrick McCrory, threatening cuts to the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus at Chapel Hill said this: “If you want to take gender studies that’s fine, go to a private school and take it” (Kiley 2013). To my mind, this is a more revealing statement than the more typical wholesale dismissal of the liberal arts and humanities that one sometimes hears. What McCrory says is, gender studies are fine, the humanities are fine—for people who can afford to pay. This is the gravest threat, and indeed is already more than a threat. The humanities aren’t dying, they’re just becoming a luxury good, a high-end commodity, and this is a problem, not just for those of us who work in public universities but for all of us.

If in the context of today’s climate the idea that humanities classrooms and the liberal arts in general are a vital public good seems an extreme position, this was not always the case. It was, until a few decades ago, a matter of public consensus. Issued a few years after the GI Bill altered the social and economic landscape of the United States for the better by radically increasing college accessibility, the 1947 Truman Report declared: “It is a commonplace of the democratic faith that education is indispensable to the maintenance and growth of freedom of thought, faith, enterprise, and association.”3 To affirm the social value of access to public higher education, to liberal education, was a commonplace; it was a belief held across the political spectrum that democracy requires true freedom of thought and that freedom of thought can be engendered by a liberal education.

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The discourse around the crisis in public higher education sometimes makes the current situation seem inevitable, impossible to solve, as if high student debt and the elimination of public humanities classrooms are simply new realities to which we must adjust. This widespread acceptance of this “seeming fate, commonly called necessity” demonstrates the need for a removal, a vision from outside the assumptions of the present moment, of the culture as it is right now.

The story of decreased access to college and particularly to live, in-person humanities teaching is part of the larger story of the concentration of money and power in America in the past few decades, and it will take all of our collective will and intellectual power to begin to solve the problems that story presents. We need economists and policymakers to help solve them. But we also need, desperately, the collective ability to imagine a better future, to ask, as Thoreau teaches us to, what words like necessary and public and democracy really mean. This is a practical need. We cannot make a better future if the few spaces in our society dedicated to the hard work of imaginative thinking and radical questioning become luxury commodities.

The kinds of upheavals in thought that can take place in a space apart don’t merely expand the individual’s sense of the possible, they expand our collective power and enhance our collective future. This power, I want to suggest, is a public good that deserves not just protection but promotion, and the spaces in which this kind of thinking is not only made possible but made publicly accessible are increasingly rare.

President Obama’s recent proposal to provide qualifying students with two-years of tuition-free community college represents an important shift in this conversation, a shift I believe anyone concerned with issues of access, debt, and their impact on our democracy should welcome, even if we question the proposal’s limited scope and its potential impact on four-year public institutions. A more far-reaching state-federal matching proposal that covers four-year colleges has been outlined by the public policy think tank Demos (Huelsman 2014). Are these proposals cost free? No, but they are possible.

Tax cuts for the wealthy passed in 2011 in Maine have diminished state revenues by an estimated $200 million dollars (Bangor Daily News, February 16, 2014). Imagine what $200 million—or even a fraction of that amount—could do to expand access to liberal education. The humanities are becoming a luxury for MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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the rich, not by necessity, but by our collective choice to do nothing about it.

In “Economy,” Thoreau writes, “There is only one way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one center” (p. 331).

The truth is, I don’t have the answer to the problem I’ve addressed here. But one of my students might.

Let’s give her, let’s give them all, some time to think about it. ENDNOTES 1. This essay is adapted from a lecture given at the Center for Global Humanities at the University of New England on November 7, 2014.

2. A quick summary of many of these arguments and findings can be found here: http://www.businessinsider .com/11-reasons-to-major-in-the-humanities-2013-6 3. The text of “The President’s Commission Higher Education for Democracy, 1947” can be found here: http://courses.education.illinois.edu/eol474/sp98 /truman.html

REFERENCES Huelsman, Mark. 2014. “The Affordable College Compact.”

Demos (September 16). http://www.demos.org /publication/affordable-college-compact/ Kiley, Kevin. 2013. “Another Liberal Arts Critic,” Inside Higher Ed. http://www.insidehighered.com /news/2013/01/30/north-carolina-governor-joins-chorus -republicans-critical-liberal-arts Thoreau, Henry David. (1854) 1985. “Walden.” A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; Walden; The Maine Woods; Cape Cod. Literary Classics of the United States, New York.

Kristen Case teaches courses in American Literature at the University of Maine at Farmington.

She is the author of American Pragmatism and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (2011). Her poetry

book, Little Arias, is forthcoming in 2015 from New Issues Press. She is the editor of The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies and coeditor of Thoreau at Two-Hundred: Essays and Reassessments, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

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Humanities and Education: COMMUNITY COLLEGE HUMANITIES

Not a Big Stretch: Community College Humanities

by Ronald G. Cantor

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he October 21, 2012, “Maine/New England” section of the Maine Sunday Telegram carried the following headline: “It’s a big stretch, but brothers pull off modern dance.” Two brothers had enrolled in a three-credit modern dance class at Southern Maine Community College (SMCC), “where stereotypes go up in sweat.” Their story was considered a newsworthy example of young men defying expectations and overcoming inhibitions to indulge the artistic. One brother was majoring in automotive technology with an emphasis in electronics while the other had yet to declare a major. Both understood a reality overlooked by many: college expands horizons, and therefore it can’t be approached narrowly.

The newspaper story also suggested that it’s a big stretch for a community college curriculum to include a dance class. Yet for years, thousands of SMCC students had been fulfilling degree requirements in programs ranging from precision manufacturing and nursing to business management and criminal justice, in part by completing classes in painting, literature, philosophy, music, art history, and other humanities disciplines— modern dance was just the latest step. Community colleges are expected to emphasize technical and trades courses. Many people are surprised to learn that thousands of community college students in Maine, and millions across the United States, enroll in liberal arts disciplines.

Some complete course requirements in the humanities and social sciences as part of their career-oriented or technical majors. Other students give many reasons for selecting majors in the arts, sciences, social sciences, or humanities. Community colleges provide low-cost access to degrees and certificates in all disciplines and also offer noncredit training and educational opportunities. Many graduates transfer to bachelor’s programs, while many others enter the workforce directly. In Maine and several other states community colleges evolved from vocational-technical institutes that once offered courses in construction and accounting, but not in subjects such as history or religion. In the twenty-first

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century, however, community college students have more options and employers face new demands.

Our changing, category-defying economy has transformed soft skills, such as communication, creativity, and teamwork, into essential workplace skills.

Studying the humanities helps people to make useful conceptual and practical breakthroughs. And a variety of factors lead more than half of America’s college students to begin at a community college. Employers applaud that for a huge proportion of students, community college has become college, broad and nonexclusive.

Maine historically lagged the nation in percentage of college graduates at every level, but Maine’s percentage of college graduates is now close to the national average.

However, it still lags the rest of the New England states.

For economic and other reasons we need to catch up.

If community colleges did not offer programs in the humanities and social sciences, thousands of low-income students in Maine and millions across the United States would find their options severely curtailed. A few fortunate students would receive scholarships to expensive institutions, while the majority of their peers would find that their only affordable option was a technical or trades program. Careers in welding, dental hygiene, or heavy-equipment operation are rewarding and honorable regardless of a student’s socioeconomic roots, but they are not the best choices for all students. Channeling people toward selected categories of job preparation based on their socioeconomic situation is contrary to American values. Talent, inclination, ambition, and market forces all have roles to play.

A student paying (and perhaps borrowing) $60,000 a year for college can earn a degree in engineering, music, or social work. Should a student paying $3,500 a year for community college not have similar choices? The millions of Americans who can afford no college other than a community college must be free to work toward their aspirations.

Years ago few machinists, foresters, technicians, bookkeepers, welders, fire fighters, medical assistants, or police officers had attended college. Most of today’s jobs 26

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either require some form of postsecondary education or applicants with postsecondary credentials are far more likely to succeed in them. The difference between bluecollar and white-collar is no longer education. To borrow a phrase from Vice President Biden, community colleges do not distinguish between those who take a shower before work and those who take a shower after work. Rich or poor, philosophy major or plumbing major, today’s community colleges prepare diverse people for success in a changing future. They expand options— they do not restrict them.

REALITIES AND OPPORTUNITIES

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ublic universities and private colleges offer numerous curricular options. Community colleges continue to invest heavily in technical and trades programs, and the numbers of students in these programs have increased.

So too have the numbers of students attending community colleges as a first and affordable step to attaining a wide range of education and career goals. It is not curriculum or program offerings that distinguish a community college from other institutions of higher learning; the chief distinguishing factor is the students served. And if community college students do not have the curricular choices available to students at more expensive institutions, America’s problems associated with income inequality, the skills gap, and student-loan debt would worsen.

Community colleges enroll large numbers of students who, a generation or two ago, would not have attended college. A significant portion of these students excel academically and go on to successful careers and lives. Community college students are often the first in their families to attend college and, on average, their family incomes are low. Many of them arrive at college ill prepared academically. With relatively few aspirational role models or supports, they lack realistic expectations of what it takes to succeed in college or a career.

Whether 18 or 48 years old, they often lead complicated lives full of financial, personal, and family challenges that effectively relegate their studies to low priority. Yet they come to college to improve life for themselves, their families, and their communities.

As confirmed by study after study, higher education continues to increase the likelihood of substantially higher lifetime earnings (see, for example, Dadgar and Timble 2014). With rock-bottom tuition and fees, averaging half the cost of public universities and less than 10

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percent the cost of many private institutions, community colleges make higher education affordable and minimize student debt. Some states are reducing community college tuition to zero and President Obama is paving the way for more states to follow suit. Already, in 48 states students who otherwise could not attend college find that with a federal Pell Grant (that does not need to be repaid), they can cover the full cost of tuition and fees at a community college. Other institutions package financial aid to minimize loans, and a few even operate on a need-blind basis, guaranteeing that an accepted applicant can attend regardless of ability to pay.

Only community colleges accept all applicants with high school or general equivalency diplomas and set tuition and fees so low.

BENEFITS OF CURRICULAR BREADTH

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t many community colleges, the humanities are not separate from the trades, but woven into them to ensure that students are prepared for the challenges of the new workplace. Furthermore, the skills and knowledge acquired by mastering technical lessons in the occupations and trades make their own contributions to the humanities in terms of precise thought, creativity, alternative constructs, synthesis, and more.

For graduates who choose to pursue bachelor’s degrees, community college courses in the humanities and social sciences provide the requisite foundations for transfer while saving tuition dollars.

At many community colleges, the humanities are not separate from the trades, but woven into them.…

When small-business owners and human-resources professionals representing large corporations identify what they seek in new hires, their emphasis is rarely on technical skills. Instead, their frequent message to community colleges is this: teach students to be proficient in the basics of the specific industry (culinary arts, information technology, carpentry, criminal justice).

After they’re hired, we (the employers) will train them in 27

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the technical side of our business. Most of all, employers plead with colleges to send them graduates who can communicate clearly and persuasively in multiple modalities, who can think critically and work well with diverse others to solve problems, and who have developed senses of proportion sufficient to establish priorities and negotiate ambiguous environments. The humanities are key to the educational outcomes that employers demand most.

Of course education is not always general, and different institutions pursue different missions.

Workforce development is at the heart of the community college mission. These institutions mobilize, in dozens of ways, to develop the economy and close the skills gap. It is often posited that community colleges build economy-boosting skills more and better than any other sector of the education community—or any other entity in society. Community colleges are nimble and entrepreneurial. They understand that the purpose of college is to expand horizons and that their mission cannot be fulfilled narrowly. They focus on workforce preparation, but not like a laser. A better analogy would be many lasers with many foci, strategically and intermittently mixed with search lights and floodlights to achieve depth and breadth of learning. Regardless of major, all graduates need broad and adaptable skills.

At Southern Maine Community College our mission is to empower students to respond to a changing world. The more the world changes— the more we experience shifts in economics, technology, demographics, and culture—the less sense it makes to train narrowly for particular jobs in industries that are less and less likely to be recognizable, or even exist, in a few short years. Skills must be learned and developed in contexts suited to flexibility and change. Horizons must be expanded. That’s education, be it at a research university, a private liberal arts college, or a community college.

Courses that do not require expensive facilities, equipment, or faculty ratios (e.g., humanities, social sciences, business) provide institutions with vital financial support to offset cost-intensive technical and trades courses. In this era of rising costs and flat funding, colleges are able to maintain investments in technical and trades programs, and to offer the same low tuition rate for students enrolled in them, due in no small part to the net revenue generated by courses that are less expensive to offer, such as those in the humanities.

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technical and trades programs that are still the backbone of community colleges.

BLURRED ROLES AND OVERLAPPING CATEGORIES

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ome students begin as liberal arts majors (perhaps because they are undecided) and then change to technical or career-oriented majors. Others complete a solid base of general education or liberal arts courses at a community college with plans to transfer to another college or university. Still others graduate with a community college degree in a humanities, social sciences, or natural sciences discipline because it will best prepare them for successful employment and more in the changing future. Noteworthy are the many students who complete degrees in such technical-trades fields as carpentry, welding, horticulture, architectural design, and computer graphics—and then go on to careers in which they produce works of great aesthetic value that are purchased at premium prices (fine cabinetry, metal sculpture, elaborate gardens and structures, animated video). Also noteworthy are the many community college students who enroll in art, philosophy, and communication classes as they prepare for careers in the blossoming creative economy in Maine and elsewhere.

There was once a day when it all seemed clear and tidy. Four-year colleges and universities were all about the arts and sciences—some also offered degrees in professions such as engineering, education, journalism, law, or medicine. Separately, there were vocational and technical training institutes, and a few of these were called colleges. Today the lines have blurred. (And here we’re not even discussing online degrees, virtual universities, for-profit/private-sector colleges, dual-enrollment, massive open online courses [MOOCS], badges, or charter schools.) It is no longer useful to distinguish between two-year institutions and four-year institutions for reasons beyond the extended time it takes students to graduate. Community colleges in 20 states offer bachelor’s degrees. Several of Maine’s universities, both public and private, offer associate degrees.

Maine’s community colleges offer a wide range of associate degrees and certificates. They do not offer bachelor degrees and have no plans to do so. Beyond credit-bearing courses that lead to associate degrees and certificates, they serve hundreds of employers and thousands of employees every year through noncredit, 28

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customized training that ranges from communication and supervision skills to highly technical topics.

Noncredit offerings also include workshops and classes in languages, art history, acting, dance, and other topics in the humanities.

HISTORY, POLITICS, AND IDEOLOGY

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n ancient times and the Middle Ages the liberal arts were defined to include the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy). By the ninth century, the liberal arts had found their complement in the form of the mechanical arts, including agriculture, architecture, metallurgy, cooking, weaving, and trade. Little imagination is needed to trace today’s diverse curricula to these solid, balanced roots in the Western tradition. Both then and now some people gravitate toward the mechanical arts and others gravitate toward the liberal arts—sometimes with ideological vehemence. Colleges and universities, as well as employers and larger societies, have typically bridged the divide by valuing both mechanical and liberal learning.

Elected officials and other opinion leaders are not shy about proposing programs and interventions to create incentives for certain types of skills or studies over others, to decrease student debt, and otherwise to attempt to manipulate the complex world of higher education to achieve specific outcomes. Now more than ever before, prospective students and their families question the value of taking on debt to finance a college education when lucrative job offers do not await every graduate. Such doubt often rests on the age-old debate between those who believe that the main (or only) purpose of education is employment, and those who believe in education to make a life as well as a living (or a life worth living). While reasonable people disagree, nearly all colleges and universities are committed to enhancing the lives of their graduates and communities in terms of careers as well as in other important ways.

Some champion community colleges narrowly as economic engines by demanding that they return to their technical-vocational roots and leave the humanities and social sciences to be addressed elsewhere, if at all. It is not uncommon to hear the refrain “we’ve gone too far—not every kid needs to go to college.” Furthermore, we live in an era where reduced state appropriations, challenging demographics, and changing societal values lead to demands even for public universities to reduce or

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abandon the humanities in favor of narrow focus on the economy and its workforce. Some consider this rational policy while others see it as destructive heresy. The debate rages and enrages while higher education institutions continue to serve students, employers, and communities.

STEAMED ABOUT STEM

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oday the humanities are in danger of neglect, if not under attack, as policymakers emphasize STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines on a scale not seen since the reaction to Sputnik a half-century ago. Without a doubt, science, technology, engineering, and math are vital for our economy and our future, but is it realistic to believe that policies and incentives could transform many of those inclined toward the arts and humanities into successful scientists, engineers, or technicians? Even if this were possible and even if thousands of additional scientists, engineers, and technicians yielded a more robust economy, the pendulum would soon swing back and people would crave parallel advances in literature, theatre, music, theology, and other humanistic perspectives that give meaning to the human condition.

Some champion community colleges narrowly as economic engines by demanding that they return to their technical-vocational roots.…

To right the balance it has become popular to advocate for the addition of art to the STEM fields, producing the cleverly expanded acronym STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math).

Anyone who appreciates and values the humanities would surely cry foul as the rich world of humanities disciplines is condensed to art. Education cannot be reduced to STEM or STEAM. College expands horizons, and to approach it narrowly or superficially is to curtail some of higher education’s most substantial positive impacts. Even curricula in the professions and trades must rest on solid foundations in the natural sciences, humanities, arts, and social sciences.

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MULTIPLE AND CONGRUENT AIMS

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very college or university pursues its distinct mission in its own way. A dominant curricular emphasis does not preclude other curricular strengths or objectives.

The name of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) implies a clear emphasis, yet its website proudly proclaims: “MIT covers more than just science and technology,” and “The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century—whether the focus is cancer, energy, economics or literature” (http:// web.mit.edu/). Accordingly, MIT includes a School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. A preeminent institute of technology’s focus on literature sets a fine example for community colleges with technical-vocational roots.

Another model for curricular breadth and balance, as well as American ideals, is the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862 that provided for each state: “at least one college where the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies and including military tactics, to teach such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the States may respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life” (Morrill Act of 1862.)

A multi-tiered approach to higher education will best serve Maine, the nation, and the world in the twenty-first century. All colleges and universities must graduate generalists as well as specialists by emphasizing solid foundations along with narrow areas of expertise. Success in a changing world requires flexible minds to envision new possibilities—both technical and creative. Although some people believe that manufacturers need skilled machinists and that the sole purpose of community colleges is to meet such needs, other people, including many who make hiring and supervisory decisions, recognize an urgent need for machinists and the rest of the workforce to be more broadly prepared. The humanities are essential as we prepare all students for “the several pursuits and professions in life.” Today’s community colleges are all about the modern equivalents of “liberal and practical education of the industrial classes.”

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DOWNEAST PRACTICALITY

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n Maine we value hard work, our rich and beautiful environment, and innovative self-reliance. We appreciate the arts and the fact that so many people from away value Maine. Education for its own sake is not necessarily high on our list. If Missouri is the “show-me” state, Mainers say “show me how it’s useful.”

The humanities bring useful perspective. So does humor, as demonstrated by an anecdote involving a quintessential New England poet: “After a dinner party Robert Frost and other guests went out onto the veranda to watch the sunset. ‘Oh, Mr. Frost, isn’t it a lovely sunset?’ exclaimed a young woman. ‘I never discuss business after dinner,’ responded Frost” (Fadiman and Bernard 1965). Frost’s poetry paid his bills. Yet about poetry he warned: “Never do it to pay a bill—‘cause you probably won’t” (Clarke 1963).

Such are the quandaries of making a life while making a living. The humanities enrich our world while inspiring insights that help us to achieve practical goals.

Breadth and depth of perspective make it possible for skills to become useful and meaningful. These are worthy, essential aims for a community college or any other institution of higher learning. It’s not a big stretch.

REFERENCES

Clarke, Shirley. 1963. “Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World.” Documentary film directed by Robert Hughes. WGBH-TV, Boston.

Dadgar, Mina, and Madeline Joy Timble. 2014. “Labor Market Returns to Sub-Baccalaureate Credentials: How Much Does a Community College Degree or Certificate Pay?” Journal of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. DOI: 10.3102/0162373714553814 Fadiman, Clifton, and André Bernard, eds. 1985. Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes, revised edition. Little, Brown and Company, New York.

Ronald G. Cantor is president of Southern Maine Community College. He earned a Ph.D. from Syracuse University in cultural foundations of education with an emphasis in history. His career is dedicated to partnerships for community and individual progress.

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Humanities and Education: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THAT MAJOR?

What Are You Going to Do with That Major?

by Patricia Counihan

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his is probably the most frequent question students majoring in a humanities field or thinking about majoring in one hear from their parents, relatives, friends, or anyone they meet if the conversation veers toward their college experience and their future.

The short answer is: “The sky is the limit!” The longer answer will vary according to each student’s combination of interests, skills, experiences and knowledge. Along with that answer comes an important point: according to a recent report issued by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the long-term benefits of a humanities degree are excellent (Humphreys and Kelly 2014). In fact, individuals with B.A. degrees during their peak earning years “annually earn more than professional or pre-professional majors” and for the 40 percent of liberal arts majors who get advanced degrees, they “boost their annual earnings by nearly $20,000.”1 The challenge for humanities majors is to understand that they are multitalented and that, unlike specific majors such as engineering or forestry where the major translates to a specific occupational field upon graduation, a bachelor of arts degree can give students the skills and abilities to succeed in careers in a wide variety of work settings. Humanities majors possess the curiosity, the flexibility, and the open-mindedness that allows them to thrive over time.

All colleges and universities have career centers with professional staff committed to providing career counseling for students to help them to identify their talents and interests and develop strategies to make a successful transition from college to career. At the University of Maine, the career center not only provides career counseling and testing, it encourages humanities majors to acquire experience by engaging in volunteer work, service-learning, student activities, part-time jobs, internships, and study abroad. For example, the UMaine History Department offers internships for course credit (for more information, see the department’s website: http://umaine.edu/history/undergraduate). These experiences can help students decide about things they enjoy and are passionate about. Also, students are encouraged to seek opportunities to acquire specialized skills such as learning a second (or third!) language, adapting to other

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cultures through service opportunities or study abroad, and learning technical skills such as new media design, business and technical writing, language translation, computer languages, statistical analysis, or teaching English as a second language.

Consider this: a vast number of employers who recruit and hire college graduates state that they do not care what the graduate’s major is; what they care about are the knowledges, skills, and abilities that applicants possess.

The employers provide the specialized training for the job.

The key characteristics they seek are the ability and willingness to learn and enthusiasm for the work.

Humanities majors possess transferable skills in abundance, skills that are highly valued by employers in a variety of settings. Top transferable skills valued by employers include analysis, communication, cultural literacy and foreign language proficiency, emotional intelligence, leadership, managing qualitative information, planning and organizing, research, and systemic thinking.

A survey of employers who regularly attend the UMaine Career Fair each year shows that over 25 percent are interested in interviewing and hiring humanities majors. These employers range from the business sector to the nonprofit sector, to the government sector and the education sector, to the military, both enlisted and civilian jobs.

A 2013 survey of employers conducted by Hart Research Associates (2013) finds that 95 percent of employers give hiring preference to college graduates with skills that enable them to innovate in the workplace, and 93 percent of those surveyed favored a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly and solve complex problems, over a candidate’s undergraduate major. In addition, 80 percent of employers agreed that, regardless of major, all college students should acquire broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences. Employer priorities emerging to the top of the list (regardless of major) are listed in the sidebar on the following page.

What do the following jobs have in common?

Outreach advocate, family crisis services; online marketing strategist; paralegal, Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project; staff assistant, U.S. House of Representatives; operations specialist, U.S. Navy; development coordinator, U.S. 31

Humanities and Education: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THAT MAJOR?

EMPLOYER PRIORITIES Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World • Broad knowledge in the liberal arts and sciences • Global issues and knowledge about societies and cultures outside the United States • Knowledge about science and technology Intellectual and Practical Skills • Critical thinking and analytic reasoning • Complex problem solving • Written and oral communication • Information literacy • Innovation and creativity • Teamwork skills in diverse groups • Quantitative reasoning Personal and Social Responsibility • Problem solving in diverse settings • Ethical issues/public debates important in their field • Civic knowledge, skills, and judgment essential for contributing to the community and to our democratic society • Ethical decision making Integrative and Applied Learning • Direct experiences with community problem solving • Applied knowledge in real-world settings

Diplomacy Center at Foreign Affairs Museum Council; environment management fellowship coordinator. These are all jobs that recent UMaine humanities graduates obtained after graduation.

Hannah Hudson (2012 graduate of UMaine) is working as a research associate at the Cohen Group in Washington, D.C. Hannah has this to say about the value of her humanities degree: MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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For me, a degree in the humanities has prepared me to think critically, and perhaps more importantly, react critically, to situations that I encounter at work. My experience within both my international affairs coursework and the Honors College has given me a unique awareness of the human component of situations when addressing a problem for a client. Often, my response needs to consider all of the stakeholders and how decisions or suggestion will be interpreted and perceived. My classes in the humanities allowed me to explore the various origins of cultures, philosophies and histories that can influence these complicated issues.

Additionally, a more concrete example would be the emphasis put on writing during my coursework. Writing papers, even just descriptive essays, allows you to perfect the way you form a sentence and articulate a thought. Being able to communicate effectively in the work place is crucial. On the simplest level, coworkers notice and appreciate when your emails are crafted professionally.

A common mantra repeated by job seekers is “It’s not what you know, it’s whom you know.” One way that humanities students bridge their academic learning with the real world is by working with their college career centers to connect with alumni. For example, at UMaine, alumni and friends have volunteered to be mentors for students through the Maine Mentor Program. Students using this program can establish contacts, gain career advice, and become connected to individuals who are willing and eager to assist University of Maine students with their career decision making to successfully transition to the work world upon graduation. A review of Maine Mentor profiles reveal that there are humanities graduates working in the fields of travel and tourism, diversity training for nonprofits, university fundraising and development, financial analysis for corporations, environmental law, library administration, international education and many others. As one Maine Mentor commented recently, “UMaine students generally have the skills and abilities to be successful, they just need that confidence boost that they are completely capable of doing the job.”

There is a great resource, “What Can I Do With This Major?” (http://whatcanidowiththismajor.com /major/) where students can select their major or their

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Humanities and Education: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THAT MAJOR?

What to Do with an English Major • Writing/Editing (creative writing/journalism/freelance) • Technical Communication (technical writing and editing, science and medical writing, grant and proposal writing, software and hardware documentation, information technology writing, human-computer interface design, corporate communications and training, mechanical communication) • Publishing (editing, advertising, sales, circulation, production, publicity, marketing, promotion, administration) • Education (teaching, administration, higher education administration, information/ library science, non-classroom teaching, English as a second language, research, tutoring) • Advertising (creative services, account management, media, account planning, production) • Public Relations (media relations, social media, account management, fund raising, research) • Law (prosecution, contractual, corporate, nonprofit or public interest, government, mediation, lobbying) • Business (management, customer service, sales and marketing, human resources, insurance, claims, underwriting)

intended major and learn about numerous options available to them that draw upon their academic training in the humanities. An example is provided in the sidebar.

This resource also suggests specific strategies for becoming marketable for each career option.

Strategies for becoming marketable for business positions, for example, include acquiring a business minor; gaining relevant experience through part-time jobs, internships, or volunteer work; securing leadership roles in campus organizations and student professional associations; seeking experience as a financial officer or treasurer of a campus organization; and developing strong analytical and computer skills.

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Lisa Dezso, a UMaine senior with a double major in English and communications, is happy with her double major. “I picked English because it is what I enjoy and love and I added on my communications major to develop practical skills such as interpersonal and public speaking skills.” As a result of her coursework, Lisa says that she is now a much better writer, is more open to different viewpoints, and is better able to think analytically. Lisa has discovered that she needs to pay attention to her passions and interests and find a way to turn them into an employable hobby. In Lisa’s case, she has a passion for music and she is now in the process of applying to graduate school to become an expressive arts therapist.

Graduate and professional school specialization is another excellent option for humanities graduates.

According to Humanities Indicators website, a project of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (http://www .humanitiesindicators.org/), humanities majors do well on admissions tests for professional schools including the MCAT (Medical School Admission Test) the GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) and the LSAT (Law School Admission Test). Here at UMaine, on average 20 percent of students go directly on to graduate or professional school upon graduation, and many humanities graduates choose to continue their education by specializing in a career field at the graduate level.

Since learning how to learn is one of the transferable soft skills that humanities students acquire, it is no surprise that humanities graduates succeed in graduate and professional school and go on to establish themselves in many professional careers that require a graduate degree.

All in all, a major in the humanities is a wise choice for students who seek to have a solid base for a variety of careers. Combining a humanities degree with experiences and a unique skill set related to their interests and passions allows undergraduates to be competitive when it is time for them to be hired or accepted into graduate or professional school upon graduation, and it gives individuals the foundation for long-term career success. ENDNOTE 1. The press release is available at https://www.aacu.org /press/press-releases/new-report-documents-liberal -arts-disciplines-prepare-graduates-long-term

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Humanities and Education: WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH THAT MAJOR?

REFERENCES Hart Research Associates. 2013. It Takes More Than a Major: Employer Priorities for College Learning and Student Success. Hart Research Associates, Washington, DC. http://aacu.org/sites/default/files/files/LEAP/2013 _EmployerSurvey.pdf Humphreys, Deborah, and Patrick Kelly. 2014. How Liberal Arts & Sciences Majors Fare in Employment: A Report on Earnings and Long-term Career Paths. Association of American Colleges and Universities, Washington, DC.

Patricia Counihan is the director of the University of Maine Career Center, overseeing all programs and services offered by the office. She is the instructor for the course INT 196, Academic and Career Exploration Internship. She is a national certified counselor, a distance credentialed counselor, and a certified school counselor in the state of Maine.

University of Maine Commencement, 2012 (photo courtesy University of Maine)

Student, University of Maine (photo courtesy of University of Maine) MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Humanities and Education: BROADENING THE GENE POOL

Broadening the Gene Pool: The Value of the Humanities Future Success

by Michael Grillo

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rom the Early Medieval period until the late nineteenth century, the Roman Pantheon presented a true marvel—no other ancient monument underscored the impossibility of these later cultures building anything that could rival it. Although historians from the Renaissance onwards have treated the collapse of the Roman Empire as the cause of this loss of classical knowledge, a more subtle understanding points to an aspect significant to many public discussions today: how societies jettison knowledge deemed not immediately relevant, often irretrievably losing important human insights along the way.

The magical spatiality and technological splendors of the Pantheon made it such a commanding inspiration to Renaissance, Baroque, and modern societies that they sought to reclaim the material and conceptual knowledge that made its creation possible. While the late nineteenth century began to understand reinforced concrete, the integral role of geometry in minimizing material weight while maximizing strength, and the sequential processes of a coordinated, continuous pour, much other past knowledge remains obscured. In some cases dedicated research recovered surprising details, such as the use of ceramics as a reinforcing core material in classical buildings. Other aspects, however, remain elusive to us such as the design processes, the explorations of material capacities, the specifics of the labor that built it, the relationship between its over-arching philosophical principles and its more specific religious functions, and its broader social reception as imperial temple-site in the Ancient era, all of which may remain permanently lost.

The familiar appreciation of the humanities typically focuses on the lessons they offer us, usually those that help explain how the present came to be and how we might understand it. While certainly an important focus, this perspective overemphasizes ideas of the past that have survived because of their immediate relevance to each ensuing generation. We honor Virgil because of Dante, and him because of his significance to Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Byron, Browning, Yeats, and Eliot. But

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what did Dante offer his own time that we may have overlooked because it was not immediately relevant to later poets, historians, and philosophers? Valuing his writing for what later generations embraced closes off a greater richness that his contemporaries would have seen as the significant breadth of his contributions.

Studying what Dante and his contemporaries offered their own time, separate from what we trace back of ourselves to their era, opens up windows into thencommon conversations of the era shaped by otherwise lost oral traditions. Close linguistic readings of Dante and his contemporaries give evidence of faintly glimmering, otherwise forgotten, conversations whose loss impoverishes any understandings of the foundations of the Renaissance and the broader cultural traditions that drew from them.

As a complement, then, to asking how the humanities help us to understand our own culture and times, could we ask instead: How do they open up alternatives to our understanding the world, alternatives at times so at odds to our era that they seem impossible to comprehend? When we consider the writings of medieval and Renaissance mystics, their fixed devotion to the Christian deity might only serve a small segment of our era’s populations; however, the intensity of their focus, with its reiterative, contemplative means of thinking, offers such an alien way of living in the world that in our insuperable difficulty in understanding it, we would likely treat it as a form of psychosis! Rather than labeling medieval mysticism as an oddity, we need instead to consider it as a radically alien intellectual discipline, one that can open realms of consideration otherwise unimaginable through more familiar means.

In a postmodern world honoring the importance of cultural diversity and relativism, we need to recognize how we can expand our intellectual scopes by including the rich wealth of historical cultures in our studies.

What defined sensible living in the world of the Sumerians of Ur is so differed from our own sensibilities that we must struggle to have any of it seem rational.

Yet, once we do, we gain insights into the incredible 35

Humanities and Education: BROADENING THE GENE POOL

plasticity of our species, which opens up for us understandings of how little of what we eagerly accept as normal actually is so. After all, human beings have spent most of our history living as nomads, with only the past several thousand years (a relatively short span of human existence) experimenting in settled living. Likewise, many effective models of human settlement, in their differences from current practices, tax our imaginations as to their ability to have functioned sustainably.

Those aspects of the humanities that persist for a long time typically originated for purposes other than for what we now value them. As an art historian, one of the aspects of culture that most fascinates me lies in how rarely intent plays out in the manner originally envisioned by artists. Researching late Italian medieval painting, I look for aspects of the works that mark some of the original drivers for each work’s innovations that later generations have embraced for other reasons. For example, artists/artisans shifted from expensive, permanent mosaics, to fresco, a cheaper, less resilient material, reserving mosaic for displays of private or state wealth in public spectacle. Of course, had not the guild republics and mendicant orders demanded many relatively inexpensive paintings, fresco would not have gained the traction that made it the medium of choice as its application revealed a greater capacity of for realism. Because this realism served both religious and secular purposes, fresco became the dominant medium of the Renaissance.

Later generations typically believe fresco’s capacity for realism led to its widespread use, but given the failures of some of its most adventurous applications, its potential as an effective medium for realism would not have carried it alone.

Likewise, later generations assumed that the apparent realism promoted by the compositional system of perspective was the reason for its creation. As several scholars, including me, examining the origins of perspective have made clear, however, this mode of vision initially came about to emphasize the narrative voice in an era when it served as the most publicly accessible entry point to the allegorical meanings of images. In each of these cases, the vestigial function remains operative, but it becomes obscured by the new capacities that later generations find useful. Perspective still gives images narrative and hierarchic order, even as it presents its illusion of realism through modern technologies such as photography, film, and video.

Other times, however, the old impetus for a surviving idea becomes sealed off—an evolutionary MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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dead-end. Yet, if re-excavated, it can serve new purpose, contributing to the broad catalogue of knowledge we need if we wish to have the fullest scope of possibilities to address new challenges. Turning to evolutionary biology, we need to keep in mind that just as the most diverse gene pool best ensures the survival of a species, so too will supporting research in the most diverse realms of thought enable the humanities to contribute most substantially to our ability to face the unforeseeables of the future. The proven fallibility of human endeavor and intention across time demands that we avoid a narrow, near-sighted calculus to define value and purpose in how we understand the human condition.

In an era in which visual language has resurfaced as a dominant means of communication, past cultures can offer us much in understanding the shift away from written texts. Study in fields such as history of art might seem irrelevant to our world if we see them as solely serving their own disciplines, but if we reconsider their contributions, their potential to address directly a broad range of applications becomes possible. Predicting the future has always been a fool’s errand, but so too is preparing for possible futures by focusing only on select realms of learning. An impoverished knowledge pool that is only maintained on the basis of foreseeable needs will assuredly become intellectually impoverished, debilitated, and doomed to failure. How can we hope to imagine our future, and more importantly address what it brings, if we do so using frameworks defined only by our present and most immediate needs? With their deep history, curiosity, and expansive breadth of imagination, the humanities uniquely ensure our best chances of creative thought, cultural growth, and meaningful survival. -

Michael Gillo is chair of the Department of Art and director of the Medieval-Renaissance studies and film-video minors at the University of Maine. He is the author of Symbolic Structures: The Role of Composition in Signaling Meaning in Italian Late Medieval Painting (1997).

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Humanities and Education: PHILOSOPHY ACROSS THE AGES

Philosophy Across the Ages

by Kirsten Jacobson

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or the past six years, I have extended the reach and impact of my work as a philosopher at the University of Maine by creating an outreach program called Philosophy Across the Ages (PAA). PAA connects undergraduate students with Orono High School (OHS) students (and when possible, with retirement community members from Dirigo Pines Retirement Community) through exciting biweekly seminar-style discussions of philosophical texts from ancient to contemporary times. All participants come to the program voluntarily and are united by the simple but compelling desire to discuss serious questions of philosophy and to examine their relevance to our everyday lives. My interest in holding these cross-generational discussions reflect my convictions that (1) questions of philosophy belong neither to people of a certain age nor to people of a certain profession, but rather to us all; and (2) these questions are most fruitfully discussed in a cosmopolitan context and toward cosmopolitan ends—that is, in a context that invites us beyond what is familiar to us and in which we are challenged to recognize that the diversity of ideas is a reflection of a reality that will forever need to be interpreted and responded to anew. The core of this project builds on my primary commitment as a teacher: to continually ask questions of myself and others about the nature of human experience so that we might become increasingly adept at reflecting and responding to the reality of our situation.

This spring semester, for example, PAA participants were interested in exploring questions pertaining to the nature of sexuality and gender. In conversation with philosophical authors ranging from Sigmund Freud to Simone de Beauvoir, from Iris Marion Young to John Russon, students have raised and discussed vital and timely questions including “Is one’s gender a natural phenomenon, a cultural construction, or a mixture of these?”; “How is our sexuality shaped by our familial upbringing, our current cultural influences, and by the existential demands of human subjectivity?”; and “What ethical responsibilities do we have surrounding sexual intimacy, gender identification, and differential treatment of persons of different gender?” What impresses me most about the conversations that have arisen

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through such questions is the students’ clear commitment to working on these issues because they indeed matter to their lives. (The Orono school district has been at the epicenter of a legal and political debate over transgender bathroom accommodations, so our discussions of gender and sexuality carry a definite gravity for OHS students.) The students participating in PAA are not satisfied with easy or ready-made answers; they have significant questions and in some cases quandaries in their own lives that demand that they work on how to think about and respond well to such issues.

In response to these and other existential questions and demands, I have aspired to craft through Philosophy Across the Ages an inspiring arena for thinking about significant issues that are integral to the participants’ lives. These issues can range from the ethical to the epistemological, the metaphysical to the political, the aesthetic to the phenomenological. While such topics may seem obscure when given these titles, they are in fact the meat of meaning in our lives. One student who came to the program in response to a friend’s encouragement noted her own initial reluctance to discuss what at first seemed to her to be irrelevant philosophic problems: I admit that I had some reservations about getting involved with [PAA]. Philosophy seemed an aggravatingly idle and abstract pastime, the type of thing wealthy men had invented to fill their days. However, I have found it to be a delightful exercise. I’m getting to know my own mind better, and I feel parts of my mind expanding and connecting to one another.…I always come home from sessions invigorated. This sort of thing is sadly lacking in public education.

This student discovered the importance of having an open and thought-inspiring arena in which to consider and question those essential activities in which we must engage as human beings. We must, for example, decide how to act when confronted by a racist, sexist, or otherwise prejudiced comment or practice; we have significant choices to make whenever we are called upon to cast a vote or to speak up or not in a political forum; we are constantly taking a stand on how we understand

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Humanities and Education: PHILOSOPHY ACROSS THE AGES

and value ourselves and those around us whenever we engage with other people—whether casually or intimately; we shape the character of our surrounding environment through our support or lack thereof for the arts, nature preserves, and the stores we patronize. One student in the program found the key connection between philosophy and his own academic and professional interests in pursuing a future in the sciences: At its most basic, philosophy is about questioning your environment. It is this one thing that leads to just about everything people have. This is also of particular interest to me because I want to be a scientist. Without a philosophical way of thinking, a scientist is nothing more than a walking textbook, only able to repeat facts about the world given a specific query. It takes a philosophical way of thinking to truly understand and be able to figure new things out in science. And that’s the kind of scientist I want to be.

While we can easily plow through our education, our professional lives, or any of the existential actions I have noted, to do any of these or other essential human activities well, we must think carefully about them. And given that our circumstances are always changing, we must do this thinking over and over again; we must continually work at establishing and reaffirming how things count for us. Purposeful living needs to be a daily activity. To this end, the texts we read in my courses and through PAA are those that engage students’ real-life concerns, such as the nature of fairness and justice, personal and social responsibilities, the demands of freedom and choice, the nature of embodiment, sexuality and gender, the role of family and interpersonal relations in our development as individuals, psychological health and its roots. Many of these issues are simply not talked about, or at least not openly, with young people.

While these points may seem obvious, the rush of life’s demands and our own habits make it easy to act first and think later (even if our profession is a philosopher).

Philosophy Across the Ages provides a site for a diverse group of thinkers to work with one another on finding their own place and responsibilities within the world of meaning. And as the observation of one high school PAA participant suggests, it seems that these conversations have nourished some of this important work: PAA could not have introduced itself to me at a better time. I was 15, in the most critical point

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in my struggle to identify myself.…My pursuit of philosophy reorganized my world, peeled off layers, and gave me the skills to see them.…I feel as if only now have I started really using my mind, and I find it hard to imagine what it was like before I started PAA.…Thanks to this program I feel every minute freer, wiser, and happier.

This student’s sense of the role that participating in Philosophy Across the Ages has played in his life is a great example of the importance of the humanities not just belonging exclusively to formal studies or conferences, or reserved for display in museums or recital halls, or even for moments of inward-turning self-reflection.

The humanities are practices of action, of deciding upon and making commitments within our everyday lives. If these practices have been developed into fields for study and private or social reflection, it is because they arise from the issues, questions, and activities of our very real and very demanding human lives. In their rich articulation in arenas ranging from English to history, philosophy to sociology, art to anthropology and beyond, the humanities provide us with both the grounding and the unsettling experiences that bring us humanely together in the activity of pursuing an examined life. In other words, they provide us with the experiences that that prompt us to think, talk, and ultimately act upon the situations of human life and the questions of how we ought to live it. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A portion of this article is excerpted from a fuller discussion of this project; see Jacobson, Kirsten. 2012. “The Beginnings of Philosophy: On Teaching Metaphysics.”

Philosophy and Education: Introducing Philosophy to Young People, ed. Jana Mohr Lone and Roberta Israeloff, 125–136. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, UK.

Kirsten Jacobson is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Maine. She specializes in nineteenth and twentieth century continental philosophy and the philosophy of art. In 2015 she received two teaching awards from UMaine: the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences outstanding faculty in teaching/advising award and the presidential outstanding teaching award.

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Humanities and Education: POETRY OUT LOUD

Poetry Out Loud: Two Perspectives Overview

by Julie Richard

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oetry Out Loud is a national poetry recitation contest begun by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation in 2006. The Maine Arts Commission administers the program in partnership with both of these national organizations for the state of Maine. Poetry Out Loud encourages students to learn about great poetry through memorization and recitation. Students master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and learn about literary heritage through their participation in Poetry Out Loud.

After successful pilot programs in Washington, D.C., and Chicago, Poetry Out Loud was launched in high schools nationwide in the spring of 2006 and has grown to involve millions of students across the country. All 50 states and the U.S. territories of Guam and Puerto Rico participate in the contest.

Poetry Out Loud follows a pyramid structure that starts at the classroom level. Winners advance to a school-wide competition, then to a regional final, held in 2015 in Maine at the City Theater in Biddeford and at Hampden Academy in Hampden. Five winners from each of the regional finals advanced to the state final held at the Waterville Opera House in Waterville, Maine. The state Poetry Out Loud champion receives $200 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to compete for the national championship. The state winner’s school receives $500 for the purchase of poetry books. The first runner-up in each state receives $100, with $200 for the school library. A total of $50,000 in awards and school stipends is awarded annually at the national finals.

It is estimated that more than 50,000 high school students have competed in Poetry Out Loud in Maine since its inception, one of the highest participation rates in the country. In 2015, 53 schools and more than 10,000 students participated in the contest, which sets a new record for the total number of schools and students taking part in the state.

Each year, Maine’s Poet Laureate Wesley McNair offers training for teachers and students through the Maine Arts Commission. This training greatly assists

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both students and teachers in learning how to properly deliver a poem.

Students select poems from a list provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, which includes both classic and contemporary works. Each student must prepare three poems for competition. Students repeat those poems at each level of the contest, and they are judged on the difficulty of the poems they choose, as well as physical presence, voice and articulation, dramatic appropriateness, evidence of understanding, overall performance, and accuracy.

Participation in Poetry Out Loud has inspired students to pursue further studies in theater and creative writing and has instilled in each of them an appreciation for poetry they would not otherwise experience. -

Julie Richard has been executive director of the Maine Arts Commission since 2012 and has held similar positions with regional arts councils in Arizona and South Carolina. She has authored several articles on arts policy and arts education and was a feature columnist for the Arizona Republic from 2004 to 2007.

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Humanities and Education: POETRY OUT LOUD

The Halls Come Alive with the Sound of Poetry

by Susan Thibedeau

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ow in its eighth year at Bangor (Maine) High School (BHS), Poetry Out Loud has become a mainstay in English classes. As this program has expanded at BHS, more and more English teachers have joined in, meaning that virtually every high school student participates in this national recitation project that encourages students to memorize and perform a poem. According to English teacher David Barnett, “Poetry Out Loud allows every kid to play and have fun with poetry.” Abby McCarthy, BHS senior, explains what makes Poetry Out Loud so special: “When you see a stranger open up on stage like that, and really express his/her true self, it’s really amazing. When you see someone perform their own unique twist on a poem or deliver some phrase in a way you never thought to interpret it, it’s really powerful.”

Each year, a December day is devoted to the schoolwide competition when more than 70 Bangor High School students recite a poem in the school’s auditorium to an audience of their peers and teachers. One winner is chosen to go on to the regional competition, but the build-up prior to that final choice reveals how much poetry permeates BHS. “I love overhearing students in the halls talking about which poem they are going to do, or reciting a few lines to each other,” says Emilie Throckmorton, a cosponsor of the program. She continues: “Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins believed that students should be given opportunities to read and appreciate poetry without always being forced to analyze it. That is exactly what happens in the month preceding Poetry Out Loud and on the performance day itself. Students enjoy the words, the sounds, the rhythms, and the feeling of poems, and cheer each other on for their performances.”

The skills required to perform in front of approximately 200 people are true life-long skills. Participating in Poetry Out Loud not only builds memorization and public speaking skills, but also opens students to another level of understanding and meaning in poetry.

Stephanie Hendrix, English teacher, elaborates, “Poetry Out Loud gives kids a chance to make a personal connection to a poem. They embody the poem; they become the poem.”

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Yet, despite the development of thinking and speaking skills dear to any teacher’s heart, perhaps the best part of Poetry Out Loud is the element of surprise.

You never know who’s going to do an amazing job. Every year one of the quieter students in a class wows both classmates and teachers with a stellar performance. And classmates learn about each other through the poems each chooses. As English teacher Jane Venturelli describes, “this program gives quiet kids a chance to show what’s inside of them.” According to Megan Ward, BHS senior, “my favorite part is watching different people find their voice. I like seeing other people find who they are behind a microphone, and sometimes they transform completely.”

Fazeel Hashmi, BHS 2015 champion and one of the top five state finalists, summarizes how Poetry Out Loud is meaningful to him: “Poetry is a universal language capable of relaying emotions that withstand the test of time.” A program that inspires students to experience and enjoy poetry and performance, Poetry Out Loud is here to stay. -

Susan Thibedeau, a high school English teacher, cochairs the Bangor High School English Department and is the co-coordinator of BHS’s Poetry Out Loud program. She loves all forms of the written word.

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Humanities and Education: NATIONAL HISTORY DAY

National History Day: Exploring the Past with Middle and High School Students

by John Taylor

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ational History Day (NHD) is a highly regarded academic program that promotes historical research by students in grades six through twelve. Through the encouragement of their teachers and parents, and the all-encompassing annual theme selected by NHD, students choose historical topics that interest them. These budding historians are expected to conduct extensive primary and secondary research about their chosen topic.

By combining creativity and scholarship, they present their historical research in the form of papers, exhibits, performances, websites, or documentaries as an individual or in a group on regional, state, and national levels.

National History Day began in 1974 as a small contest hosted by the History Department at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. The department decided to create a contest devoted to history that was modeled on a science fair. It quickly spread throughout the Midwest and became an international event. By the mid-1990s it became a national nonprofit organization headquartered near Washington, D.C. National History Day now coordinates year-round programs culminating in a weeklong national contest at the University of Maryland in College Park.

My initial involvement with NHD occurred in 2005 during my first year in graduate school. After spending the day looking at the projects and interviewing students about their research, I was highly impressed with what they could accomplish. Maybe more important, I was thrilled about their level of enthusiasm for history. I realized that NHD accomplishes its key goals. In addition to introducing young adults to the importance of historical research and knowledge, NHD also helps students to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, hone their research and reading proficiency, and practice oral and written communication with knowledgeable people working within the field of history.

In 2014 a collaborative effort among the University of Maine, Margaret Chase Smith Library, Maine Humanities Council, and the Maine Historical Society formed to strengthen the state program. Our first year MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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exceeded our expectations. In April 2014, roughly 250 Maine students from 26 schools participated in the state competition. The competition included volunteers from around the state serving as judges and staff to create a successful event that, according to one parent, is a focal point of the school year.

Our delegation of 47 then attended the national contest. Competing against students from all 50 states, three territories, and four other countries, Noah Binette, a freshman at Noble High School in North Berwick, came in first place in the Senior Individual Exhibit category. His exhibit, “Malaga Island: The Community That Maine Erased,” focused on 45 mixed race residents who were evicted from their homes in 1912. Fueled by economics, racism, and eugenics, the state forced the relocation of the inhabitants to the mainland, while also committing eight people to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded. Years after the community was erased, descendants remained silent due to the stigmas related to mixed race and mentally handicapped people.

As the Maine NHD state coordinator, I had the privilege to travel to Maryland and spend the week with students, teachers, and parents from Maine. More than 2,000 students participated in the national contest, the largest number in the history of the 40-year event.

This program is a success because it empowers students to pursue the topic that most interests them and urges young historians to seek their own answers through research in the rich tapestry of local, state, and national museums, libraries, and archives. The skills and experiences fostered by NHD will help its students to reach future successes in life. -

John Taylor currently serves as the state coordinator for National History Day in Maine, and is the museum assistant at the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan, Maine.

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Public Humanities

Public Humanities

For a relatively small, rural, and poor state, Maine has a rich array of public humanities resources. This section focuses on the public humanities and highlights many such programs in Maine in which people come together for shared experience. The Maine Humanities Council (MHC), a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress Center for the Book, is at the forefront of public humanities programming in the state, as Hayden Anderson describes in the first article, offering programs such as New Books, New Readers, Literature & Medicine, and the Veterans Book Group.

Stephen Podgajny discusses the role public libraries play in the public humanities as centers for programs and as repositories of texts and other resources.

Bernard Fishman fills the reader in on the strange persistence of the Maine State Museum, the only state museum in New England supported in large part by state appropriations. Kerill O’Neill and Nate Rudy present for the reader Waterville’s innovative arts and humanities partnership—Waterville Creates!—which was created to highlight the artistic, creative, and cultural energies that enhance and strengthen the city.

In the final article of the section, David Richards tells the story of his involvement with MHC’s New Books, New Readers and Let’s Talk About It programs and a writing program for inmates at the Somerset County Jail and the important role the programs have played in the lives of the participants.

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Power and Pleasure of Ideas: The Maine Humanities Council and the Public Humanities in Maine

by Hayden Anderson

For 40 years I have been trying to find the words for what it was like coming back from Vietnam, but I could never do it. This book gives me the words.

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f you are looking for evidence that the humanities can make a real difference in the lives of real people, you need look no further than the participants in the Maine Humanities Council’s Veterans Book Group (VBG).

Throughout the autumn of 2014, participants in this new program met weekly to read and discuss Homer’s Odyssey. The group was cosponsored by the Portland Vet Center and facilitated by a professor of classics from the University of Southern Maine.

Program participants—all combat veterans— worked their way through the 2,800-year-old poem, perhaps the ultimate story of a warrior returning home.

The story’s resonance with veterans living in Maine today was profound. Group members reported that Homer’s epic told their story, that his words gave voice to their experience.

It’s just one example, but surely the VBG is emblematic of what the public humanities can do. No member of the group had extensive previous experience with Homer; the facilitator wasn’t there to deliver weekly lectures; there were no quizzes or papers. Rather, the group was designed to provide a context for veterans to engage directly with the text, share their thoughts and reactions with one another, and give voice to their common experience. What group members experienced was a terrific example of how a text can focus conversation, distill important aspects of human experience, and serve as a springboard to deep connection and communication.

Such is the work of the Maine Humanities Council (MHC). By providing public humanities programs and opportunities throughout the state, the MHC envisions the communities of Maine transformed by the power and pleasure of ideas. It’s no small vision, and it hints at the MHC’s conviction about the power of the humanities not just to bring delight and enrich individual lives,

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but also to help shape the ways we interact with one another in community and to inform public dialogue on our most important policy concerns.

An independent statewide nonprofit organization with its offices in Portland, the MHC has existed in its current form for nearly 40 years. For all that time, it has provided programming and grants throughout Maine to support the state’s cultural life and to encourage critical thinking and conversations across social, economic, and cultural boundaries.

As the state of Maine affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress Center for the Book, the MHC is at the forefront of public humanities programming in the state.

What is meant by the term public humanities can be difficult to delineate. As traditionally conceived, the humanities comprise disciplines such as history, philosophy, and literature, as well as the study of languages, cultures and religions, and the arts. This sort of taxonomy can be seen in the organization of university academic departments and course catalogs.

Outside the academic setting, it can be useful to think of the humanities more expansively, to understand the concept as capturing how we think about and interact with all the various ways we, as humans, create and share our stories, find meaning, and understand our place in the world. The work of the MHC can often be best understood as an effort to advance the humanities in this more expansive sense.

Though it may not be possible to enumerate the exhaustive list of necessary and sufficient conditions for an activity to be classified as part of the public humanities, there are some reliable markers for such programs as carried out by the MHC: • These activities take place outside the traditional academic context; they are not part of any formal course of study or academic program.

When public humanities programs take place on campuses, it can often be with the explicit purpose, in part, to disrupt the town/gown 43

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divide and build relationships between the campus and the broader community.

• They are communal. The public humanities involve people coming together for shared experience. In many cases, participants in public humanities programming will be interacting with one another for the first time. Here in Maine, program participants are often from the same community but may never have met one another before.

• They are text-based. Often the text will be a novel, poem, or short story. Sometimes it will be a work of nonfiction, a film, or a theatrical performance. What’s important is that there be an anchor for discussion that is shared by all participants. Having a text as the basis for discussion by a group can provide an entry point into topics that are difficult to talk about, and a wisely chosen text can focus discussion.

The public humanities involve people coming together for shared experience.

• They are led by an experienced scholar-facilitator who has both the specialized expertise to provide guidance and insight on the topic and the facilitation skills to encourage maximum participation and mutual respect among program participants.

The facilitator also plays the key role of keeping the group on topic, even while accepting and valuing everyone’s input. The twinned roles of the scholar and facilitator are equally essential for the public humanities.

• They are discussion focused. Even when the text is difficult and unfamiliar, discussion among program participants weighs equally with teaching or exposition by the facilitator. Whereas academic humanities courses often emphasize the teaching of various interpretations of the text, public humanities programming is focused more MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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on reactions of program participants and the discussion that grows out of these reactions.

The MHC is one of 55 state and territorial humanities councils created following the establishment of the NEH in 1965. The legislation establishing the NEH articulates the rationale for public support of the humanities, and it remains an important touchstone for how to understand the current relationship between the humanities and public policy.

Indeed, the role of the citizen in a well-functioning democracy is a central notion in the establishment of NEH. As stated in the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 (P.L. 89-209): “Democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens.”

Federal funding of the public humanities is intended to foster “mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups” and to “transmit the achievement and values of civilization from the past via the present to the future,” with the purpose nothing less than to “achieve an orderly continuation of free society.”1 In addition to this high purpose for the public practice of the humanities—the fostering of the values and beliefs that make democracy possible—two specific parts of the 1965 legislation are particularly timely today. First, public engagement with the humanities is intended “to make people of all backgrounds and wherever located masters of their technology and not its unthinking servants.” What was originally a Cold War era concern about the public’s relation to arsenals of nuclear weaponry capable of destroying the planet now resonates in new ways as individuals struggle to come to grips with communication forms and information technology that can often make us feel that we are involuntarily tethered to technology, and that privacy, liberty, and freedom are somehow weakened by our dependence on these pervasive technologies. Second, the nation has an interest in promoting the public humanities because, as the 1965 legislation states, “the world leadership which has come to the United States cannot rest solely upon superior power, wealth, and technology, but must be solidly founded upon worldwide respect and admiration for the Nation’s high qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit.” It is perhaps more true now than ever that we live in a global society, where our success depends upon being citizens of the world. For individuals and governments alike, cultural competence and a historically informed worldview are essential.

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To lay out the historical and philosophical underpinning of the public humanities is to sound high-flown.

It should not be a surprise, however, that in Maine public engagement with the humanities almost always happens on a small scale. Ours is a state where day-to-day engagement with the humanities is woven into the fabric of life. This engagement is an important part of what constitutes the strong sense of place that makes Maine so special (see Toner 2015). Go to any city or town in the state, and you’ll encounter history that’s alive, arts and culture thriving in unexpected places, neighbors debating with one another about what it means to live in and create community.

What does the work of the MHC look like? In a sense, it’s the most familiar thing in the world: neighbors gathering together to read and talk. But underlying this simple model are the deeply held beliefs that critical thinking and civil conversation are skills that need to be nurtured and exercised; that historical and cross-cultural perspectives are key if we are to solve our most difficult problems; that we as human beings are at our best when we are in regular contact with literature and philosophy and poetry.

It can feel paradoxical when you compare the scope of the MHC’s ambitions with the typical scale of our programs and grants. MHC programs are rarely big and splashy; there’s no grand gesture that will bring our vision to reality all at once. On the contrary, it’s our conviction that the public humanities in Maine are most powerful when they’re most intimate. A look at some of the MHC’s core programs makes this clear.

DIRECT PROGRAMS OF THE MAINE HUMANITIES COUNCIL New Books, New Readers New Books, New Readers is a theme-based, multi-session facilitated reading and discussion program designed for adults who are not regular readers. In many cases, participants are students in literacy or English language learner (ELL) programs. New Books, New Readers encourages participants to consider how books can play an important role in life, helping them to understand themselves in relation to their world and each other. The program uses high-quality children’s literature as texts, to ensure that the books are at a reading level appropriate for participants. Although the program features children’s books, the facilitated discussion is for adults.

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Themes for New Books, New Readers series include Becoming American, Carrying the Past, Courage, and Freedom. By taking part in the program, participants get the experience of talking about literature and using book discussion as a lens through which to get to know their neighbors and understand their own experience. For people who never thought they could be part of a book group, New Books, New Readers offers an entry point and encouragement to make reading a lifelong activity.

Last year the MHC partnered with literacy providers (adult education, Literacy Volunteers, family literacy programs, correctional institutions, and other organizations) in 15 communities, reaching close to 700 low-literacy adults, ELL students, and inmates at the state’s prisons and jails. Groups range in size from seven to twenty participants.

Literature & Medicine Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Healthcare is a multisession reading and discussion program for healthcare professionals. It is open to anyone working in the healthcare field, and groups often include nurses, administrators, physicians, lab techs, clergy, support staff, and others. Lit & Med participants meet together five times to read and discuss literature that raises issues they face in their work caring for patients. Participants report increased empathy for patients, broadened cultural understanding, sharpened communication skills, and reduced feelings of professional burnout.

One hospital employee who has participated in Lit & Med has told us, “The reflection and conversation that take place greatly enhance the level of cooperation, collaboration, and esprit de corps within our hospital family and our community at large. This in turn greatly improves the quality of care we provide to our patients and their families.” Lit & Med is one example of how the humanities have an important role to play even in areas seemingly far removed from the traditional humanities context. Through reading and facilitated discussions of literature and poetry portraying sickness, healing, death, and human relations, healthcare professionals are able to develop a richer understanding of their patients and colleagues.

A majority of the hospitals in the state of Maine have hosted at least one Lit & Med group. The program has also spread to 25 other states across the country. A key innovation in the program came several years ago 45

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when a program was started at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Togus in Chelsea. VA hospitals face unique challenges, including facilities and personnel stretched to their limits and a growing number of patients suffering from the results of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many physicians and staff at the VA are not themselves veterans, which makes the gap between patient and caregiver even greater. According to one VA Lit & Med participant, “I am convinced that the reading and discussion of these works has enhanced our staff’s empathy for the veterans we serve, and has reduced the potential of provider burn-out.” The program has been implemented at VA facilities in nearly a dozen states around the country.

…the humanities can play an important role in articulating the unique issues and concerns faced by veterans…

More recently, the MHC has looked beyond the healthcare setting to extend the reach and impact of Lit & Med. One significant example is an effort to bring this signature program to professionals who work in domestic violence prevention in the state of Maine. In partnership with the member agencies of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, the MHC has developed a two-part strategy to bring humanities programming to bear on this serious issue. First, the MHC worked with a social action theater group to develop a readers’ theater presentation of scenes from the Tennessee Williams classic, A Streetcar Named Desire. Staged with professional actors, the scenes led into a panel discussion featuring reactions to the performance by individuals who work in the domestic violence field, followed by a facilitated discussion among panel members and the audience. These public programs served to raise awareness of some of the most difficult issues around domestic violence, as well as to show how humanities programming can help provide a starting point for meaningful discussion.

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groups specially designed for professionals who work in the field. These groups bring together staff from domestic violence agencies and others who deal with domestic violence in their work—law enforcement, medicine, the courts, and others. Participants have reported increased empathy for the people they serve, deeper respect for colleagues and the work they do, and validation of the importance of their work. As one participant put it, “Having done this work for a long time, the readings and discussion helped to renew my commitment and remind me why I became interested in this work in the first place.”

Based on the long successful track record of the Lit & Med program and the positive reception it has received even outside the healthcare setting, in the spring of 2015 the MHC will introduce a version designed for hospice workers and others who work with end-of-life issues. Based on what is learned from this pilot program, the MHC hopes to expand its humanities-based hospice program across Maine.

Veterans Book Group The Veterans Book Group (VBG) is a special nationwide pilot program developed by the MHC and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Based on the MHC’s success working within the VA system, the NEH asked the MHC to develop a program to bring the humanities directly to veterans. In planning the pilot program, our hypothesis was that the humanities can play an important role in articulating the unique issues and concerns faced by veterans, fostering connection, reducing feelings of isolation, and providing a safe context in which to explore issues relating to military service. The VBG program is underway in 13 states across the United States.

Using material carefully selected with the direction of advisors from the veteran community, the VBG has three main goals: first, to provide a setting and context for veterans to connect with one another, build relationships, and share their experiences; second, to create opportunities for veterans to give voice to and reflect upon issues of particular interest or concern; and third, to provide materials that will allow veterans to see their own stories as part of a larger human experience that connects them with others across time and culture.

At the heart of the program are small groups of veterans who meet regularly over several months for facilitated reading and discussion. Other groups are underway throughout the United States, reading not 46

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just classic texts but also the contemporary fiction and poetry coming out of recent conflicts.

experts in foreign policy and the opportunity to explore these issues with the speakers and with one another.

General Audience Programs New Books, New Readers, Literature & Medicine, and the Veterans Book Group are MHC programs designed for special audiences. They are not open to the public but rather are intended to use the humanities to serve particular constituencies that share common needs or experiences. The other main type of programming provided by the MHC embraces a general audience and is offered to all. In many cases, programs are offered in partnership with local libraries throughout the state and are almost always free of charge.

The longest-standing program of the MHC is the library-based Let’s Talk About It. Offered in partnership with the Maine State Library, Let’s Talk About It brings facilitated reading and discussion groups free of charge to 30 libraries throughout the state each year. Community members sign up at the local library, and the group comes together for five sessions to discuss what they have read. All books are delivered to the local library for loan to program participants.

The readings—and the group discussions—can lead to unexpected connections. Just one example: not long ago a Let’s Talk About It group at the Hafford Public Library in Allagash read An Orphan in History, by Paul Cowan. The book is the multigenerational story of a Jewish family assimilating into American culture.

During its wide-ranging discussion, the group in Allagash talked in an open and personal way about what it means to be an American, what it means for immigrants to assimilate over generations, and the loss of language and cultural heritage that often comes along with that process. There, in the largely francophone St. John Valley, the topic had particular resonance.

Further discussion about the program is provided in this issue of Maine Policy Review by Jans (2015) who discusses the importance of this program for residents in the St. John Valley, and by Bartel (2015), who describes her experiences facilitating discussion in Lewiston-Auburn.

World in Your Library is a foreign policy program offered through local libraries in partnership with the Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations and the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan. The program brings foreign policy speakers to libraries for a series of three one-hour sessions on a variety of foreign policy topics.

World in Your Library gives rural Mainers access to

GRANT PROGRAMS

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eyond the direct programming offered by the MHC throughout the state, the MHC has a long tradition of providing grants to Maine nonprofits in support of a wide variety of humanities programs. These grants help ensure that the public humanities are reaching even the smallest places in Maine. MHC grants particularly aim to support projects that are collaborative, stimulate meaningful community dialogue, attract diverse audiences, and invite discovery of the humanities in engaging and exciting ways. Grants are given to well-established organizations as well as organizations that have little or no experience in applying for funding. Recent illustrative examples include • The MHC helped to fund The Hero Project, in North Berwick. Over the course of the school year, 85 high school students studied historical and literary texts about the nature of morality and heroism. They identified 21 individuals from their community who exemplify what it means to be a hero, and they wrote about these individuals. The culmination of the project was a luncheon where the community came together and the students presented their work.

• In partnership with the local Kiwanis Club, the MHC funded a seminar in Dexter for parents of prekindergarten children and provided three new children’s books to every attendee to encourage local children as they begin their literary journey.

• To mark the 200th anniversary of Eastport’s capture by the British during the War of 1812, the MHC supported commemorative activities there, which included a panel presentation and community discussion featuring four distinguished authors who have written about the time period.

CONCLUSION

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hrough all its programming and grant making, there is a key premise underlying everything the MHC does: gathering people together to read, share, talk, and think together makes a difference. At our best, 47

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this exchange transforms individuals and communities because engagement with the humanities is an essential part of a human life well lived.

This is not an elitist notion. On the contrary, the humanities get to the heart of what binds us together, regardless of age, reading ability, or station in life. The humanities can provide meaning and sense of purpose and can also help shape our aspirations by helping us to become more self-aware and to move beyond the strictly individual to examine our shared experiences and values.

It’s not simply that the humanities enrich our lives— though certainly they do. Just as important, the humanities have real-world benefits. Robust public engagement with the humanities strengthens communities and makes us better able to face the problems and challenges we must address together. Through the humanities, we can harness the power of human connection to help understand our past and shape our common future. We sharpen our ability to think and to adapt to new situations and changing contexts.

Herein lies what may be the most direct connection between the public humanities as practiced by Mainers throughout the state and the broad area of public policy.

The twenty-first century presents us with a world of overwhelming complexity. There are important issues that bear directly on public life, the full comprehension of which requires highly technical specialized knowledge that is inaccessible to most of us—the intricacies of climate science, the details of the global forces that shape our economy, the engineering and environmental factors that inform transportation policy, not to mention the specialized military and geopolitical knowledge that come into play when we as a nation choose to send military forces abroad.

Citizens and policymakers are simply not in a position to become experts in all the areas where they are asked to cast votes and make decisions. But this does not obviate our need to address these issues. In the policy debates around climate change, to take just one example, it is not an option for policymakers to say, “I’m not a scientist” and leave it at that. On the contrary, what’s needed is for all of us—citizens and legislators alike—to develop and exercise the critical thinking skills that are the requisite for being intellectually and civically responsible members of society.

And this is where the humanities come in: critical thinking and philosophical analysis are core aspects of the practice of the humanities. Similarly, engaging with history, encountering foreign cultures, exercising one’s MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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imagination through literature and poetry, and sharing the experience of the visual and performing arts—all these experiences help sharpen our ability to deal effectively with the big issues we face.

To return to the example of climate change, it is noteworthy that while the scientific disciplines that describe these phenomena are outside the purview of the humanities, other key disciplines—such as the history of science and the philosophy of science—are clearly humanities subjects. And they are subjects that members of the public can engage with in ways that can meaningfully inform public debate. Questions such as “What is a scientific theory?” or “What is the role of certainty and doubt in science?” are questions that the layperson can wrestle with. Even if it isn’t possible for most of us to fully comprehend the complete technical findings of scientific research, we can—and must—develop the cognitive skills that allow us to determine what is a sound argument and what is not. Without these skills, we cannot develop reliably sound public policy. ENDNOTE 1. The full Act is available on the NEH website, http:// www.neh.gov/about/history/national-foundation-arts -and-humanities-act-1965-pl-89-209.

REFERENCES Bartel, Anna Sims. 2015. “Why the Humanities Are Necessary to Public Policy, and How.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 117–123.

Jans, Sheila. 2015. “The Role of the Humanities in Rural Community Development.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 147–151.

Toner, Carol. 2015. “‘What Kind of Place Do We Want to Live In?’ Place, the Humanities, and Public Policy in Maine.”

Maine Policy Review 24(1): 80–83.

Hayden Anderson has served as executive director of the Maine Humanities Council since 2012.

A graduate of Amherst College, Hayden holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.

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Public Humanities: PUBLIC LIBRARIES

Public Libraries: Essential Infrastructure for the Public Humanities

by Stephen Podgajny

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ublic libraries are the key component in the delivery of local humanities programs in Maine. The value of Maine’s 265 public libraries cannot be discussed without a deep understanding of their relationship to the humanities. The humanities and the basic literacy skills needed to fully appreciate and experience them, in turn, describe the essence of public libraries. Public libraries provide the major infrastructure and audience potential (6,886,104 visits in Maine in 2013) for the public humanities precisely because they are public and are humanities-centered institutions.1 The public library is not dictated by statute, not limited to transactions or any specific functional activity, and is a unique expression of investment by an individual community in the common good. It is an invention that among other things seeks to better us, to help us to understand the world and ourselves, and to create a sense a place. What could make more sense, be more inspiring or potentially transformative than building a collective resource and sharing it among an entire community?

And what could be a better vehicle to present and show the relevance of the humanities to a community?

Public libraries sprang from a nineteenth-century belief that common citizens, with a supportive civic structure, could reach their individual potential.

Individual progress would by extension greatly benefit the whole community or, more cynically, reinforce American ideals through assimilation. Historians have argued over the purity of the basic motivations of the founding forces (for example control of the immigrant populations) for public libraries, but today’s public libraries have fully and enthusiastically embraced a multiplicity of roles and platforms for delivery of services and experiences. This evolution of the public library into an active community and cultural center takes full advantage of its ability to create any mission that it sees as appropriate for its community.

The last two decades have seen the introduction of computers for public use and the redesign of many public library spaces that transcend the notion that the number of books on the shelves is the single most

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important feature of an effective public library. The public has participated in debates about the role of technology, e-reading, and the concept of spaces that must serve a multitude of citizen needs, including programs and community conversations. Until recently, these conversations have been anchored and constrained within the historical association that equated the mission of the library with two factors: the act of lending and its major asset: the book. Complicating the public conversation further is the pairing of the assumed demise of the printed book with the predicted final chapter of America’s public libraries. In recent years, however, libraries have begun to transcend that framework by creating and taking on new roles and eliciting a new service narrative even while reading and borrowing of the printed book remains significant.

In the last decade, the public imagination has grown to accommodate the notion of the public library as a cultural center delivering an array of programs and resources to every socioeconomic group. Those programs and the resources that the library makes available are overwhelmingly humanities based. In trying to define the humanities, one often resorts to a simple list of academic disciplines which is just that—a list. The list would centrally include history, literature, languages, and philosophy. National humanities commissions have added the study of the arts, comparative religion, and law, while the National Endowment for the Humanities legislation includes linguistics, archaeology, and ethics. Beyond mere listings, it is another thing to capture the experience, value, and effect of the humanities. The humanities need to be experienced, and the public library, through its variety of programs and setting, provides a wide variety of opportunities to do so.

Public libraries have many functions and roles that naturally mirror methods and intent of the humanities.

Public libraries remain text-based institutions in whatever format that text is presented. Core library activities such as programming and lending support humanities processes of engagement. “The humanities presume 49

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particular methods of expression and inquiry—language, dialogue, reflection, imagination and metaphor,” and from the public library perspective the aims of the humanities “insight, perspective, critical understanding, discrimination and creativity” are bedrock public library objectives and might be supplemented only by “informed” (Commission on the Humanities 1980: 2) These methods and outcomes expressed 35 years ago by “The Humanities in American Life: a Report of the Commission on the Humanities” still resonate strongly for public libraries, and indeed, for our world.

THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF MAINE PUBLIC LIBRARIES

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o understand how public libraries support the humanities, it is helpful to understand the resources brought to bear in that effort. Public library infrastructure in Maine is fundamentally local. Maine lacks county library systems, which are common nationally.

Some Maine public libraries are town departments while others are independent nonprofits (501c3) with close ties to municipal government. Regardless of governance and the amount of private support from endowments, fees, and donations, the preponderance of funding for public libraries flows directly from municipalities. Unlike in most states, there is no direct state aid for public libraries. Recognition that public libraries are at the mercy of municipal budgets and general economic trends has created in all libraries in Maine a collaborative ethic that leverages existing resources and focuses statewide library planning. Somewhat counterintuitively, the lack of an organizational hierarchy, such as a county library system, may provide the flexibility to encourage more local creativity, dialogue, and partnership in presenting relevant humanities experiences.

The infrastructure available focuses on the efficient delivery of information throughout the state: hundreds of thousands of physical items lent by public libraries to public libraries course throughout the state annually.

The discovery of these items is made possible by the existence of MaineCat, a union catalog of holdings shared by many types of libraries in Maine. Those materials are lent willingly by participating libraries and are delivered statewide through a van service to 126 member libraries from Madawaska in the far north to University of Maine campuses, Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin colleges, and to York Public Library in the south.

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In the digital environment, citizens are served by MARVEL!, a collection of information sources and databases. Close inspection of MARVEL! leads one to the conclusion that despite the financial strains for public libraries, they have never been more capable of serving their public in highly sophisticated ways.

Considering only arts and culture, history and literature as broad categories, hundreds of thousands of journals in full text and abstract form, interviews, speeches, essays, editorials, criticism, original text documents, and biographies are available at any time via the Internet.

Those sources also include items that focus on Maine humanities such as the Maine Memory Network, Maine News Index, and Windows on Maine. The richness of MARVEL! is well beyond that which can be conveyed in the space allotted for this article.

Finally, the network infrastructure that delivers the humanities through major statewide information resources such as MaineCat and MARVEL! has been developed and enhanced over the past 20 years through innovative collaborations involving state government, regulatory agencies, private businesses, federal government, and the University of Maine (see Sanborn and Nutty 2013). Statewide library collaboration has made Maine a national model.

MAINES’S PUBLIC LIBRARIES: LEAD PARTNER FOR THE PUBLIC HUMANITIES

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aine’s public library infrastructure provides an incredible opportunity for humanities organizations and every individual citizen to embrace the public library as a powerful partner in the humanities experience. The role that each public library plays is dictated by the its mission and vision, community needs, staff expertise, and economic resources. This engagement is shaped by interlocking and complementary library responsibilities that include the requirement to collect; convene and present; combine and collaborate; and create, conserve, and preserve.

Public Libraries as Collectors Although public libraries as a whole benefit from the aggregation of resources as described earlier, each public library accepts the moral obligation to build individual collections to the best of its ability. The sum total of those individual collections is shared in a reciprocal manner.

Humanities-related materials constitute the overwhelming majority of public library collections. An examination of 50

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collections in public libraries participating in the URSUS and Minerva multitype library consortiums2 along with Portland Public Library (PPL) yields a conservative estimate of 1,500,000 items that could be classified as humanities based. It is a fiscal challenge to maintain the depth and quality of library collections regardless of the format. The depth and timeliness of Maine humanities collections are greatly enhanced by the constant updating of MARVEL! databases and the ongoing purchasing of humanities-based materials by public libraries.

In 2011, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded the Maine Shared Collections Strategy (MSCS), a collaboration of the libraries at Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, University of Maine, University of Southern Maine, and the Bangor and Portland public libraries. MSCS has created a strategy for a “statewide, multi-type library program for managing, storing, and preserving print collections among public and private institutions to achieve greater efficiencies and extend the power of every dollar invested in collections and library facilities” (Revett 2013: 65). With major libraries taking responsibility for collecting and sharing of specific subject areas and individual titles, it is now possible for public libraries to practice a more focused collection strategy. New collection storage centers at Bangor Public Library (BPL), PPL, and Colby College have provided long-term physical structures for the expansion of humanities collections. The participation of public and private colleges and universities provides enormous additional capacity to the humanities collections that can be shared with Maine citizens. The MSCS initiative has also provided the framework for addressing the expansion of access and integration of digital collections with print resources. As digital collections, such as the Digital Public Library of America, Digital Commons, and HathiTrust Digital Library,3 become more easily accessible and searched through integration into MaineCat and Google, the expansion of humanities materials will be enormous.

In the context of the digital age and the infrastructure for the public humanities, what of the librarian?

Public librarians are for the most part liberal-arts educated and trained as librarians. They navigate a world of information efficiently and make idea connections. Librarians have asserted since the popularization of the Internet and the explosion of knowledge that navigation and use of knowledge demands more than just receiving a list of search results. Leon Wieseltier could be describing the world of the public librarian in MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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the digital age in his essay “Among the Disrupted” (New York Times, January 7, 2015): The humanistic methods that were practiced before digitalization will be even more urgent after digitalization, because we will need help in navigating the unprecedented welter. Searches for keywords will not provide contexts for keywords.

Patterns that are revealed by searches will not identify their own causes and reasons. The new order will not relieve us of the old burdens, and the old pleasures, of erudition and interpretation.”

Librarians facilitate this navigation, making the library an increasingly essential resource for the public humanities in the twenty-first century.

Thousands of programs occur annually at Maine’s public libraries.

Public Libraries as Conveners and Presenters

Thousands of programs occur annually at Maine’s public libraries. Many are hosted, some are convened, and others are generated and presented by the library directly. As well as basic library programs directed toward youth and adults, libraries have an important role in other kinds of offerings in the public humanities.

Discussion and sharing of viewpoints and content is a critical component of the humanities experience, especially as it is through the process of exchange that individuals grow and communities are strengthened.

Public libraries convene and host community gatherings and conversations centered on an array of humanities programs. From their inception public libraries have been great democratizers, levelers, and lifelong educators. In the effort to create civil spaces, the library’s physical presence and safe environment may matter more and more as time goes on. Living in both the physical and digital worlds, along with founding principles of service to all, neutrality on issues, confidentiality, and a public service ethic, public libraries have developed great reach and have earned a reputation for trustworthiness.

A convener of any type must possess standing. The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life 51

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Project has extensively studied libraries and their place in the digital world. The presence of a public library in a community is seen as overwhelmingly positive: 91 percent say libraries are important to their community; 76 percent view libraries as important to them and their families; and 93 percent says that having a public library improves the quality of life in a community (Pew Research Center 2013). A key finding shows 96 percent believe public libraries are important because they promote literacy and a love of reading, both of which are core components in a lifelong appreciation of the humanities. That good will and standing provides libraries with the opportunity to convene people to have conversations about just about anything from books to what makes a civil society. In response to recent tragic events and civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, the public library there remained open and became a place of refuge and normalcy by providing a safe environment for adults and children.

Maine’s communities are changing before our eyes.

The causes are varied: lack of economic development for young and old, graying of our state, influx of retirees, refugees, and immigrants, and development pressures.

These forces of change require the creation of discussion forums to guide the future of our communities, and Lewiston Public Library (LPL) and PPL have been leaders in creating sites for community dialog.

In 2014, LPL with various partners played a central role in the The Changing Face of Home project. In response to absorbing over 6,000 immigrants from Somalia and other parts of Africa, Lewiston had a vested interest in promoting civility, understanding, and listening to the stories and viewpoints of others. Instead of the traditional text model, the project relied on the storytelling of four participants who expressed their ideas of home. Within LPL’s safe environment, the project introduced the idea and practice of civil discourse and exposed participants to the role of the humanities in creating such discourse and building community. In summing up the project, LPL Director Rick Speer said, “The discussion allowed everyone to better understand the struggles that their neighbors had gone through in their lives and the importance that they all placed in finding a safe place to raise their family and to call home.”

In 2013 PPL announced its Choose Civility initiative, modeled on the work of the Howard County Library System in Maryland. With generous funding from the Lerner Foundation, the library aims to position MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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itself as a community center where citizens can gather to civilly discuss issues important to the community. In partnership with Lift360 and the Maine Humanities Council (MHC), the initiative has hosted numerous programs since its inception, covering a variety of topics that affect Portland and the state as a whole, including incivility in politics, economic inequality and how we can become better citizens and neighbors. In partnership with the MHC, PPL hosted Creating the Communities We Wish to Live In sessions in various locations throughout the city where attendees read a short poem that generated facilitated discussion to explore what kind of communities we aspire to be.

Feedback has confirmed that people are looking for a trusted space in which to have these important conversations about our democracy. Further events are planned for the upcoming year. (See Bartel [2015] for further discussion of the Portland and Lewiston programs.)

Maine’s public libraries offer thousands of free humanities programs annually to the public: lectures, book clubs, reading, discussion, and more. In their openness to all, partnerships with community organizations, and consistency in presenting programs, public libraries overcome a major perceptual roadblock to public appreciation of the humanities: that the humanities are a narrow academic exercise with no relationship to real life. A statewide public library program that illustrates this richness of humanities offerings is the MHC’s Let’s Talk About It series, which is described in depth by MHC Executive Director Hayden Anderson elsewhere in this issue (Anderson 2015).

Public Library as Combiner and Collaborator

Due to a robust infrastructure, multidisciplinary interest and assets, physical presence, service to the entire population, and flexibility in mission creation, Maine’s public libraries are great synthesizers, collaborators, and combiners. They are also the perfect partner for public humanities initiatives and programs that seek to be interdisciplinary and address topics not traditionally considered to belong to the core humanities, as the examples below illustrate.

The mission of Cornerstones of Science (COS), a Maine nonprofit, is to work “with libraries to create experiences of science that spark curiosity and foster a deeper connection to the world around us” (COS 2012: 2). COS was born in 1999 in a public library (Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick) with the initial focus on use of the best works in science and 52

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technology that would improve science literacy, but also to give people an understanding of the meaning and process of science, the impact of science and technology on daily life, and to impart an ability to participate in the public policy debates that are centering more and more on science and technology. Since few Americans have strong backgrounds in these fields and many lack an even basic knowledge of them, many citizens cannot fully engage in the important current issues. The acquisition of science literacy is the means for the ultimate goal of nurturing informed citizens, who, to strongly echo the humanities, understand the world around them and how to use that understanding to advance community.

The ability to synthesize programs and disciplines and to collaborate with outside organizations is a core value for Maine’s public libraries. A review of the programming at the Blue Hill Public Library (BHPL) illustrates the point. In addition to its home grown programs, the library has hosted multisession programs on such topics as Examining Public Discourse in the Age of Technology; Science Religion and Faith: Quest for Understanding and Meaning; and Darwin’s Theory of Evolution: Is it Really So Controversial?, all in collaboration with Colloquy Downeast (Senior College). BHPL also facilitates the intersection of the arts and humanities through its Friday opera previews, which are conducted at the library the day before simulcast of the Metropolitan Opera performances at the Grand Auditorium in Ellsworth. The offerings at BHPL reflect local interest as well as the philosophy of the library, as Library Director Rich Boulet says: “I think more than anything public libraries are about access to information and experiences. Part of our role is making that information fun and engaging, adding value to the experience.”

Portland Public Library likewise has had enormous success in leveraging its art gallery to serve humanities experiences. Each fall for the past three years the library has hosted shows by major American illustrators such as Maurice Sendak and Edward Gorey and on topics such as the Pulps that perfectly connected art to text and provided a rich window into the humanities.

Public Library as Creator and Conservator

Public libraries provide the infrastructure for the public humanities where it matters most—at the local level. They collect, organize, preserve, publish, and facilitate discovery. They provide the tools to acquire MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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local, state, regional, national, and global information and to place it into a meaningful context. Thus public libraries create a scenario either individually or with partners that makes hitherto unknown material available and discoverable.

To fulfill its statewide mission to preserve the history and heritage of Maine, the Maine Historical Society has drawn public libraries into numerous partnerships as libraries in every county in the state participate in the Maine Memory Network, a statewide digital archive that provides access to thousands of historical items from museums, archives, historical societies, and libraries. According to Steve Bromage, director of the Maine Historical Society, “Public libraries are the center and crossroads of information in most communities, and can play a key role in local history projects, convening people, organizations, and resources. They bring professional staff, consistent hours, and a strong orientation to the general public. Participation helps libraries expand their capacity to provide information about local history; improves technology skills of staff; and extends their relationship with schools and historical organizations” (2015: 139).

The process and end products embedded in the library as creator and publisher of digital collections of all types has afforded the opportunity to move the goal of building community from a sometimes difficult-to-measure programmatic basis to something concrete and demonstrable. The newly published materials become part of the public collections and able to be shared. The size, variety, relatively low overhead to produce, and online accessibility can help digital collections to quickly become a major force in building community.

The creation of digital collections often has at its heart relationships with a partner who either donated the material or has some abiding interest in its future. A community partner approaches due to an anniversary or opening, or simply with a strong interest in a public policy debate. These moments provide libraries with a path to expose a specific community segment or event to the wider community while the infrastructure—the library and its platforms—creates a lasting collection to inform future search and community engagement. The collections remain, are discoverable by the world, and continue to build communities.

Three of Maine’s public libraries (BPL, Maine State Library, and PPL) became the first public libraries nationally to use the Digital Commons platform to 53

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publish local digital collections. Each library has begun its publishing based on its mission and also the opportunities afforded through existing collections. BPL and PPL have aggressively digitized local history collections of all types. Included are photographs, journals, city government documents, and reports.

Examples of the library as creator and bringing local content to the world include PPL’s effort to make the best use of a key newspaper and a major photographic collection. Portland Public Library has digitized the Casco Bay Weekly, a free and independent newsweekly, that ran from 1988 to 2004 and which functioned as a cultural record for southern Maine. This publishing leveraged previous indexing of the entire paper by library staff. The Portland Press Herald StillFilm Negative Collection consists of 70 years (ca. 1936 to 2005) of primary photographic images, including approximately 600,000 images made up entirely of negatives. The collection was accessioned by PPL, as a gift from the Portland Press Herald, in December 2009, and is currently being arranged, described, indexed, and conserved. The collections also are now the basis of a major exhibit at PPL. The depth and substance within this collection provides an extraordinary spectrum of real-time documentation of the life of the city of Portland through the twentieth century.

Public libraries continue to evolve, but...their foundation and natural affinity for the humanities will endure.

Publishing collections in digital formats is a form of preservation but not necessarily conservation. Many past microfilming projects have preserved hundreds of volumes of Maine’s historic newspapers. In the case of the Casco Bay Weekly, the print issues have been microfilmed for preservation purposes, and the originals will be stored in archival boxes. Many collection care decisions are not as clear as to conservation or preservation and are often budget driven. Ultimately, through the Maine Shared Collections Strategy, discussed earlier, a great humanities preservation effort by major libraries in Maine is already underway as thousands of individual items have been identified for retention.

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FUTURE OF THE PUBLIC HUMANITIES AND PUBLIC LIBRARIES

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ublic libraries reflect and respond to the society in which they exist. The infrastructure described earlier must be supported with reinvestment in order to have public collections, spaces, and technology resources with which to present and experience the humanities.

Until now, the infrastructure has been built through collaboration and a commitment to the common good.

Policymakers have responded to a certain degree, but more needs to be done. Considering the stunning statistical profile of public libraries widespread public impact (visitation, resources offered and used) the lack of significant direct state support to public libraries is inexplicable. Public libraries need more nonlocal support to extend hours and services and to attend to their larger infrastructure needs. It is also critical that those organizations and individuals who care about the future of the humanities be clear eyed about the societal trends that ignore or diminish the value of the humanities. If public libraries are the major force in presenting the public humanities, then coalitions extending beyond current partners must be built. Even with all of the good will and value delivered by public libraries related to the humanities, it is worrying that 31 percent of Americans say they “know not much or nothing at all of what their libraries offer” (Rainie 2014: 15). Humanities-based organizations—especially libraries—need a strategy to promote and illustrate the values of the humanities.

Public libraries continue to evolve, but as they change, their foundation in and natural affinity for the humanities will endure. In a digitally dominated world, while text becomes less frequently lent in paper format (books), the public library will provide infrastructure to make humanities content both affordable and accessible in digital formats while still offering print options. The public library as a physical presence will remain the natural place for welcoming and convening people and creating community through the sharing of views and ideas. Public libraries will still collect, convene, collaborate, create, and conserve in proportions that reflect community needs and opportunities.

By combining persistent value and flexibility public libraries stand as a bulwark against the tide of shortsighted thinking embedded in policy planning that views the goals of public education solely through the prism of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and workforce preparation. The marginalization 54

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of the humanities in public schools is an annual budget theme. Essayist Leon Wieseltier captured the threat to the humanities in the academic world in response to the broad societal trends of “technologism” and “scientism”: The notion that the nonmaterial dimensions of life must be explained in terms of the material dimensions and that nonscientific understandings must be translated into scientific understandings if they are to qualify as knowledge, is increasingly popular inside and outside the university, where the humanities are disparaged as soft and impractical and not sufficiently new.

(New York Times, January 7, 2015) The societal trends that Wieseltier decries are important to the future of public libraries. Public libraries at the center of their communities and committed to fulfilling individual and social potential will continue to provide a critical lifelong option for learning, growing, and developing that will happen primarily through engagement with the humanities.

As we come to recognize and value this relationship as an extraordinary asset of our everyday landscape, we will strengthen community and best position ourselves to make effective policy decisions for our future common good. ENDNOTES 1. In 2013 Maine public libraries reported 754,367 cardholders and offered 36,494 programs with an attendance of 558,423. Of those programs 21,888 were directed toward children with a total attendance of 354,577 (Maine State Library 2013). The vast majority of the adult and youth offerings could be classified as humanities programs, given the use of literature of all types to assist in illuminating a variety of topics.

2. The URSUS consortium includes the libraries of the seven University of Maine System universities, the Maine State Library, Bangor Public Library, and the Maine Law and Legislative Library. The URSUS libraries not only share a common catalogue and lending privileges between libraries, but also jointly subscribe to databases at considerable savings over individual subscriptions. The Minerva consortium also has a shared catalogue, with lending privileges among member libraries; it has 56 member libraries, including public, academic, hospital, and school institutions.

3. The HathiTrust Digital Library is a digital preservation repository providing long-term preservation and access services for public domain and in copyright content from a variety of sources, including research libraries, Google, the Internet Archive, Microsoft, and in-house

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partner institution initiatives. Partner libraries include Colby College and University of Maine.

REFERENCES Anderson, Hayden. 2015. “Power and Pleasure of Ideas: The Maine Humanities Council and the Public Humanities in Maine.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 43–48.

Bartel, Anna. 2015. “Why the Humanities Are Necessary to Public Policy, and How.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 117–123.

Bromage, Stephen. 2015. “The Maine Memory Network: Re-Imagining the Dynamics and Potential of Local History.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 138–140.

Commission on the Humanities. 1980. The Humanities in American Life. The Regents of the University of California, Berkeley.

Cornerstones of Science (COS). 2012. Awakening Curiosity, Enriching Lives. COS, Brunswick, ME. http:// www.cornerstonesofscience.org/Cornerstones %20of%20Science%20Brochure.pdf Maine State Library. 2013. Maine Public Library Statistics. Maine State Library, Augusta. http:// www.maine.gov/msl/libs/statistics/Summary.pdf Pew Research Center. 2013. How Americans Value Public Libraries in Their Communities. Pew Research Center, Washington, DC. http://libraries.pewinternet.org/files /legacy-pdf/PIP_Libraries%20in%20communities.pdf Rainie, Lee. 2014. “The Next Library and the People Who Will Use It.” Pew Research Center Presentation, November 13, Az/LA Mountain Plains Libraries.

Revett, Matthew. 2013. “A Shared Approach to Managing Legacy Print Collections in Maine.” Maine Policy Review 22(1): 65–66.

Sanborn, James M. Jackson, and David Nutty.

2013. “Maine Libraries: A History of Sharing and Collaboration.” Maine Policy Review 22(1): 52–61.

Stephen Podgajny has served as a public librarian for nearly four decades. He formerly directed the York Institute (now Saco) Museum, and since 2006 has been executive director of the Portland Public Library, Maine’s most heavily visited cultural organization. He is former chair of the Maine State Cultural Affairs Council and Maine Library Commission and has served on many boards.

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Public Humanities: MUSEUM THAT WOULD NOT DIE

The Museum That Would Not Die: The Strange Persistence of the Maine State Museum

by Bernard P. Fishman

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aine is the only New England state with a substantial state museum supported in large part by state appropriations. The Maine State Museum’s current annual state allocation of about $1.7 million, some 80 percent of the museum’s total expenses, can’t compare with the multimillion dollar budgets enjoyed by most other state museums, but it does provide a basic level of support for many valued public services. Yet it was not always so. The present museum can be said to have been founded in 1836, but it was closed or eliminated six times over the next 135 years before being resurrected for the seventh (and final?) occasion when its current building in Augusta opened in 1971. Its dogged persistence in reviving itself, against any reasonable expectation and sometimes even without organized state support or even awareness, is testimony to the immortality of a certain kind of public need. This saga may be instructive in considering how public policy can be shaped by somewhat inchoate public desires, often politically mute, yet in some cases, extremely persistent.

The perseverance of the Maine State Museum arises from basic communal and indeed human needs and also from Maine’s particular circumstances.

The museum began as an enterprise to house and display geological and biological specimens collected between 1836 and 1839 by Charles T. Jackson of Boston, who was legislatively authorized to conduct the first scientific survey of Maine. A circular (Maine State Museum, object 2013.56.1) sent out by Jackson, dated November 4, 1836, encouraged citizens to contribute specimens to the survey and stated that “It is in contemplation to form a large collection of the mineral products of the State, for the use of the Legislature, and for the citizens. Probably a State Museum or Cabinet of Natural History will be established at Augusta for this Purpose.” This was in fact accomplished that year when the legislature authorized the creation of a geological room in the statehouse. The State House Portrait Collection, now a part of the state museum, was also begun the same year, with the loan to the state, on consignment for possible purchase, of a gigantic, rather MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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eager copy by George Endicott and his artistic collaborator Moses Swett of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington at the Battle of Dorchester Heights. The portrait was liked well enough, but not actually paid for until 1850, when the state acquired it for less than one-third of the original asking price of $1,000.

From the scientific survey, over 1,500 specimens were received and placed in the embryonic state museum; but with no mechanism established for the sustained management of a museum, the displays were sadly neglected. Over the next 25 years, they actually disappeared, their specific fates unrecorded. The same happened again with what was collected through a second geological survey in 1861, from which specimens were similarly directed to be placed in the State House in the museum’s second manifestation. In 1890, W. S. Bayley, professor of Geology at Colby College, reported that these had been “thrown promiscuously into boxes…the specimens themselves rendered valueless…the catalogues accompanying the collections (having) disappeared.” Bayley salvaged “the few specimens still remaining from the general wreck” by sending them to Colby College. More lasting was the attention given to Civil War battle flags returned by Maine regiments. The first flags arrived in 1864, and in 1872 the collection was given its own specially built cases and displayed in the State House rotunda on what was assumed to be a permanent basis. Sometimes accompanied by cabinets of war relics and other curiosities, these flags elicited an almost sacred regard for the sacrifices expended in the great conflict and promoted a feeling of respectful awe among visitors. In time the flags became the responsibility of the Maine State Museum.

When the museum was reconstituted for a third time, it was through personal, and to an extent private, initiative. Maine citizens had been donating a steady trickle of illustrative mounted specimens of the state’s wildlife for display in the State House, when in 1896 the Maine Sportsmen’s Fish and Game Association proposed to develop an exhibit of the fish and game of Maine “as a source of pride to the citizens of our state” (Maine 56

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Sportsman, April 1896).1 The legislature made space available in the State House, a public call was circulated for specimens to make the exhibit “worthy of the greatest fish and game state in the Union,” (Industrial Journal, October 9, 1896), and the state museum was launched for the third time. Under Leroy Thomas Carleton, the new commissioner of the state’s Inland Fish and Game Commission, the collection became a personal project and expanded further. By 1899 it had outgrown its original two rooms and was given an attractive suite of refurbished accommodations in the State House basement, where a fascinating menagerie of taxidermy was created to greet curious visitors. Wildcats and lobsters shared display space with turtles and trout, while moose, bear, and deer killed by trains, hunted out of season, or simply donated by proud sportsmen loomed over all. So popular had this motionless zoo become that when the State House was rebuilt in 1909–1911, the whole lower floor of the new building’s south wing was given over to it. The museum was closed again, but this time for a major reinstallation, and it opened for a fourth time in 1911, the same year the battle flags were rehoused in fine new steel cases. Maine Governor Frederick W. Plaisted said of the flags at their rededication ceremony that they would “provide an inspiration to the boys and girls of the state for generations to come,”(Daily Kennebec Journal, December 26, 1911) and that they represented “a priceless heritage,” themes repeated often in connection with the museum.

In the period of World War I and the roaring twenties, the museum, still an apparatus of the Fish and Game Commission, saw even more impressive growth.

Under its own curator, Thomas James, it developed wildlife exhibits of grand scope and ambition and installed aquarium tanks with live Maine fish, ultimately even a small fish hatchery. But eventually the Depression, modernism, and looming war affected the national mood and the jolly, folksy museum exhibits seemed in need of a major refit. In 1940 a new commissioner, George Stobie, closed the museum for the fourth time in its history in part to provide it with large-scale diorama-type displays and a more comprehensive, streamlined, and realistic presentation of Maine’s native resources. The inspirations were certainly of the type seen in the 1939 New York World’s Fair and the kinds of immersive environmental exhibits that remain today as cherished wonders in New York’s Museum of Natural History. The aquaria were emptied; all the military relics except for the flags were banished to Camp Keyes in MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Augusta; the Victorian cases junked; and some 300 mounted specimens were sent off to storage. Stobie hired Klir Beck, who had designed Maine’s World’s Fair exhibit and Maine’s displays at various sportsmen’s shows, to develop the museum’s new exhibits. A few of them were actually realized and present when the museum reopened, though in a somewhat shrunken and understated way, for its fifth appearance, in 1942. The larger vision was never realized.

Even the reduced museum was a great public draw.

There was a large painted backdrop of Mt. Katahdin, including a miniature waterfall, plus some displays of smaller animal life, a few live fish, a scattering of historical relics, and a moose family and a bear family. None of these, however, survived the post-war American boom, when money was flush and government expanded on every level. The State House was becoming too small for governmental needs and the new state office building (now the Burton M. Cross Building) had not yet been built. In an act of surprising political vandalism, the State Museum was abruptly closed in 1948 by Governor Hildreth and the 94th Legislature to make way for more committee hearing rooms. For the fifth time the museum came to an end, and this time there was no expressed intent to bring it back.

…the idea of the museum refused to die. Its cheerful if mangy menagerie was sorely missed.

But the idea of the museum refused to die. Its cheerful if mangy menagerie was sorely missed. And in keeping with America’s enlarged and unassailable place in the world, the potential for a future state museum seemed to grow and grow. On February 16, 1956, an editorial in the Daily Kennebec Journal exclaimed “Only when the [state] library and museum are housed in a structure built specifically for them will they and the culture they represent be assured of the permanent place they should occupy in the life of the state.” The Lewiston Sun, in a piece reprinted in January 28, 1956, in the Daily Kennebec Journal, editorialized that “a State Museum for Maine is a ‘must.’ We are rich in history…we have unique forest and mineral resources 57

Public Humanities: MUSEUM THAT WOULD NOT DIE

not possessed by any other state…out-of-staters would take away a better impression of the State if their tour of the seat of government included a fine State Museum.”

Klir Beck was called back and from the bits and pieces of old displays in his storehouse assembled four striking big-animal dioramas illustrative of the seasons as experienced in the woods of Maine. These were installed in the State House in 1958–1959 along with a moving model of a Maine covered bridge with real fish swimming in the pool beneath, a working model of a zinc and copper mine, a “magic” display in which a rabbit and its surroundings changed from summer to winter, and an assortment of curios and oddities reminiscent of the old establishment. For the sixth time the museum was back in business, and now there was a growing sense that the new arrangements would lead to something much bigger.

In 1965 the legislature set up a Joint Interim Museum Study Committee to investigate the possibilities for the museum’s future and took testimony from citizens and from representatives of interested organizations. Almost without exception the comments were glowing, eager, and highly supportive. There were two main arguments for establishing a major state museum and placing it in its own building: to preserve Maine’s rich cultural and natural history in a comprehensive, inspiring, and instructive way and to provide a significant opportunity for enhancing the state’s tourism and economic prospects. In addition, a new museum would showcase the state and those attributes that distinguished it from other states. In its report to the 102nd Legislature, the Study Commission also wrote that “the ‘cultural’ explosion now sweeping the Nation might demand some sort of museum in Augusta” (Legislative Museum Study Committee Report to the 102nd Legislature). A letter to the commission from Representative and Mrs. Richard Berry (July 7, 1966) said that a new museum building would “mark [a] significant step in the current progress being made in our cultural awareness in Maine.” It was in 1965 that the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities were established, and culture was a big topic of the times.

It was a moment in the national consciousness when the United States could imagine replacing the once-dominant cultural achievements of old Europe with new ones of its own. Not to be left behind, the contemplated new museum building in Augusta, which came to include the State Library and a newly established State Archives, was called the “Cultural Building” in recognition of its importance in representing that special value.

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The Museum Study Committee returned a strong recommendation to build a state museum, stating, in a gesture to the beloved institution’s long association with natural history exhibits, that the new museum should include a wildlife display. The projected new museum was at last placed on a permanent footing by being officially established as an independent state agency with its own governing commission. A public bond issue to build the cultural building was overwhelmingly approved and construction of what became a $6 million structure began in 1968. In 1971 the museum opened in its new building for its seventh public appearance.

The remaining museum displays in the State House were dismantled and largely discarded, though the four animal dioramas were expensively restored and in 2001 moved into the greatly enlarged underground passage connecting the Cross Building with the State House.

The museum’s adventures continue into the present, of course, with the usual budget tussles and the museum’s accelerating efforts to keep abreast of public interests as well as the rising standards in the museum profession. Yet, the museum has become, and remains, one of the state institutions held in the highest public regard and affection. What it has achieved is effectively, if somewhat naively, expressed as an aspiration in an editorial from the Maine Sunday Telegram (June 13, 1971): the State of Maine Cultural Building is so darn good that it would be a bargain at twice the price….The reasons hinge upon a sense of… values which still exist in Maine but which have sadly vanished in too many parts of our nation….

Maine is more than the most beautiful state in the Union physically. Maine is still the living repository for the sanest, soundest state of mind in the Union….We need a sense of heritage behind us and a sense of passing heritage on...a sense of roots at one end together with a sense of new growth at the other end….These are the values which will live vibrantly and handsomely in the new State of Maine Library-MuseumArchives building, bridging Maine generations past and Maine generations to come.”

It was largely pride in Maine, a public and ultimately personal sense of the value of Maine’s historical and natural heritage, that kept the Maine State Museum alive and brought it back repeatedly. There was a bit of economic boost in the mix, some insecurity in comparison with other states, a nod toward tourism, and a dash 58

Public Humanities: MUSEUM THAT WOULD NOT DIE

of wanting to keep up with the new cultural waves spreading out from Washington, but it was mainly about being proud of Maine. Maine citizens were deeply proud of their state and some part of their own personal identity and value was connected with to it. It was a version of state nationalism, and we have certainly all seen the powerful effects of nationalism when applied to countries and ethnicities. It is at work at the state level too, in ways we hope are benign and constructive, encouraging education and knowledge primarily.

Woe to any who might imagine that the Maine State Museum is a merely decorative ornament of state government: when people have brought such an institution back from the brink again and again over a span of close to two centuries, they are surely voting with their hearts. -

Some of the Maine State Museum displays in 1904, when the museum was part of the Maine Commission of Inland Fisheries and Game and was housed in the basement of the State House. From a photo postcard courtesy of the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.

ENDNOTE 1. Materials cited in this article are all available in Maine State Museum History: Chronological Reference Files 1836--.

Bernard Fishman is the director of the Maine State Museum. He began his career as an archaeologist working for the University of Chicago in Egypt and has since directed five museums, all connected in some way with historical and archival collections, and public programming and research.

Cornelia T. ‘Fly Rod’ Crosby (1854-1946) about 1890, from her album ‘Maine Views,’ now in the collections of the Maine State Museum. Fly Rod contributed a number of specimens to the museum in its early days. She was an avid and famous sportswoman and the first officially licensed Maine Guide.

She is said to have shot the last caribou taken in Maine.

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Public Humanities: MAINE MUSEUMS

Maine Museums

Aroostook

Piscataquis

Somerset

Penobscot

Washington

Franklin

Hancock

Waldo

Oxford

Kennebec

Lincoln

Androscoggin

Knox

Legend

Sagadahoc

= History = Art = Combined = Other

Cumberland Augusta Brunswick

York

Portland

“Combined” museums have several types of collections, e.g. art + history, anthropology + history.

This list of museums and historical societies is adapted from one provided by Maine Archives & Museums and is not an exhaustive list of all museums.

The map was produced with support from the Spatial Informatics group in the School of Computing and Information Science, University of Maine.

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Public Humanities: MAINE MUSEUMS

Androscoggin Greene Lewiston Lewiston Livermore Livermore Poland Turner

Portland

Greene Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Franco Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Museum L- A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Livermore-Livermore Falls Historical Society Washburn-Norlands Living History Center .

Poland Spring Preservation Society . . . . . . .

Turner Museum & Historical Association . . .

Portland Tate House Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pownal Pownal Scenic & Historical Society . . . . . . . .

Scarborough Scarborough Historical Society Inc. . . . . . . . .

South Portland

South Portland Historical Society/

Cushings Point Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Windham Windham Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Yarmouth Skyline Farm Carriage Museum . . . . . . . . . . .

Yarmouth Yarmouth Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Aroostook Frenchville Grand Isle Littleton Mapleton Presque Isle Saint Agatha Sweden Washburn

Frenchville Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Greater Grand Isle Historical Society . . . . . . .

Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum .

Haystack Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Presque Isle Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sainte Agathe Historical Society . . . . . . . . . .

Sweden Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Salmon Brook Historical Society of Washburn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Franklin Farmington Kingfield Kingfield Kingfield Rangeley Temple Weld

Cumberland Bridgton Bridgton Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bridgton Rufus Porter Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brunswick Bowdoin College Museum of Art . . . . . . . . . .

Brunswick Brunswick Naval Museum &

Memorial Gardens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brunswick Pejepscot Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brunswick The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum . . . . . .

Buxton Buxton-Hollis Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . .

Cumberland Center

Cumberland Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . .

Falmouth Falmouth Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Freeport Freeport Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Gray Gray Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Great Diamond Island

Fort McKinley Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Long Island Long Island Historical Society, Inc. . . . . . . . . .

New Gloucester

New Gloucester Historical Society . . . . . . . . .

New Gloucester

Sabbathday Lake Shaker Museum . . . . . . . . .

North Yarmouth

North Yarmouth Historical Society . . . . . . . . .

Peaks Island Fifth Maine Regiment Museum . . . . . . . . . . . .

Peaks Island Umbrella Cover Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Portland Children’s Museum & Theater of Maine . . . .

Portland International Cryptozoology Museum . . . . . .

Portland Maine Irish Heritage Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Portland Maine Masonic Civil War Library & Museum Portland Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad

Company & Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Legend

= History

Portland Museum of Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nordica Memorial Association . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kingfield Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ski Museum of Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Stanley Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rangeley Lakes Regional Historical Society .

Temple Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Weld Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hancock Bar Harbor Abbe Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bar Harbor Bar Harbor Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bass Harbor Tremont Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Blue Hill Blue Hill Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Blue Hill Jonathan Fisher House . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brooklin Brooklin Keeping Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brooksville Brooksville Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brooksville Penobscot Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Castine Castine Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Castine Wilson Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cranberry Isles

Great Cranberry Island Historical Society . . .

Deer Isle Deer Isle-Stonington Historical Society . . . . .

East Orland Friends of Craig Brook Atlantic Salmon

Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ellsworth Ellsworth Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ellsworth Telephone Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Franklin Franklin Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Gouldsboro Gouldsboro Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hulls Cove Davistown Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mount Desert

Beatrix Farrand Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mount Desert

Maine Granite Industry Historical Society

Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mount Desert

Mount Desert Island Historical Society . . . . .

Northeast Harbor

Great Harbor Maritime Museum . . . . . . . . . . . = Art

= Combined

= Other

This list of museums and historical societies is adapted from one provided

by Maine Archives & Museums and is not an exhaustive list of all museums.

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Public Humanities: MAINE MUSEUMS

Seal Cove Seal Cove Auto Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Swans Island Swan’s Island Educational Society . . . . . . . . .

Whitefield Whitefield Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wiscasset Head Tide Archaeological Conservation Laboratory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wiscasset Historic New England: Castle Tucker

& the Nickels-Sortwell House . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Wiscasset Lincoln County Historical Association . . . . . .

Kennebec Augusta Augusta

Augusta Augusta

Augusta Augusta Clinton Hallowell Litchfield

Monmouth Pittston Readfield Sidney Vassalboro Waterville

Children’s Discovery Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Holocaust & Human Rights Center of Maine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kennebec Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maine Military Historical Society & Armed Forces Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maine State Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Old Fort Western . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Clinton Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vaughan Homestead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Historical Society of Litchfield & Litchfield Fair Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Monmouth Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pittston Literary & Historical Society . . . . . . .

Readfield Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sidney Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vassalboro Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Colby College Museum of Art . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Oxford Bethel Bethel Brownfield Denmark Dixfield Gilead Hartford

Hebron Hiram Lovell Norway Rumford Upton

Knox Friendship Hope North Haven Owls Head Rockland Rockland Rockland Thomaston Thomaston Warren

Bethel Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maine Mineral & Gem Museum . . . . . . . . . . .

Brownfield Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Denmark Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dixfield Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Gilead Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hartford Heritage Society, J.O. Irish Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hebron Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hiram Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Lovell Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Norway Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Greater Rumford Area Historical Society . . .

Upton Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Penobscot Friendship Museum Inc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hope Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

North Haven Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . .

Mussel Ridge Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . .

Coastal Children’s Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Farnsworth Art Museum & Wyeth Center . . .

Maine Lighthouse Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Knox Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Thomaston Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Warren Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bangor Bangor Bangor Bradley Bradley Brewer Corinth Hampden Millinocket Newport Old Town Orono Orono Orono Orrington

Patten Stetson

Lincoln Alna WW&F Railway Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Boothbay Boothbay Railway Village . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Boothbay Harbor

Boothbay Region Historical Society . . . . . . . .

Jefferson Jefferson Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Monhegan Monhegan Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

New Harbor Friends of Colonial Pemaquid . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Newcastle Frances Perkins Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nobleboro Nobleboro Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

South Bristol South Bristol Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . .

Southport Southport Historical Society/Hendricks

Hill Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Waldoboro Waldoborough Historical Society . . . . . . . . . .

Westport Island

Westport Island History Committee . . . . . . . .

Legend

= History

Bangor Museum and Center for History . . . .

Cole Land Transportation Museum . . . . . . . .

Maine Discovery Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maine Forest & Logging Museum . . . . . . . . .

Town of Bradley, Historical Committee . . . . .

Brewer Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Corinth Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hampden Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Millinocket Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Newport Cultural Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Old Town Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hudson Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Maine Folklife Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page Farm & Home Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Curran Homestead Living History Farm & Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Patten Lumbermens Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Stetson Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Piscataquis Abbot Abbot Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dover-Foxcroft Dover-Foxcroft Historical Society, Inc. . . . . . .

Greenville Moosehead Historical Society & Museums .

Greenville Moosehead Marine Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Jackman Jackman-Moose River Historical Society . . .

Milo Milo Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

= Art

= Combined

= Other

This list of museums and historical societies is adapted from one provided

by Maine Archives & Museums and is not an exhaustive list of all museums.

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Sagadahoc Bath Dresden Georgetown Richmond

Washington Maine Maritime Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dresden Historical Scociety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Georgetown Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . .

Southard House Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Cherryfield Cherryfield-Narraguagus Historical Society .

Columbia Falls Ruggles House Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Dennysville Dennys River Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . .

Eastport Tides Institute & Museum of Art . . . . . . . . . . .

Milbridge Milbridge Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Pembroke Pembroke Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Somerset Anson Bingham Fairfield Hartland Hinckley Madison

New Portland

North Anson Rockwood Saint Albans Skowhegan Solon

Anson Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Old Canada Road Historial Society . . . . . . . . .

Fairfield Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hartland Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

L C Bates Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Madison Historical and Genealogical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nowetah’s American Indian Museum & Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Embden Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Friends of Pittston Farm Museum . . . . . . . . . .

St. Albans Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Skowhegan History House Association . . . . .

Solon Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

York Alfred Alfred Shaker Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alfred Alfred Village Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Biddeford Biddeford Mills Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Biddeford New England Osteopathic Heritage Center . .

Kennebunk Brick Store Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Kittery Kittery Historical & Naval Museum . . . . . . . .

Limerick Limerick Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Newfield 19th Century Willowbrook Village . . . . . . . . . .

North Berwick North Berwick Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . .

Ogunquit Ogunquit Museum of American Art . . . . . . . .

Old Orchard Beach

Old Orchard Beach Historical Society Harmon Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Parsonsfield Parsonsfield-Porter Historical Society . . . . . .

Saco Saco Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

South Berwick Old Berwick Historical Society/Counting

House Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Waldo Belfast Brooks Freedom Lincolnville Searsport

Belfast Historical Society & Museum . . . . . . .

Brooks Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Freedom Historical Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Bayside Historical Preservation Society . . . . .

Penobscot Marine Museum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Legend

= History

= Art

= Combined

= Other

This list of museums and historical societies is adapted from one provided

by Maine Archives & Museums and is not an exhaustive list of all museums.

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Public Humanities: WATERVILLE CREATES!

Waterville Creates!: Greater than the Sum of Its Arts

by Kerill O’Neill and Nate Rudy

INNOVATION AND THE HUMANITIES

D

espite unique challenges of climate and remote location, we are drawn to Maine by its spacious and picturesque landscapes, the bounty of the harvest and our industrial heritage, the path of the rivers, the pull of family, meaningful social and economic pursuits, and even tiny amenities such as the illuminating, slanted light from the low-hanging winter sun. Many of these same qualities have been captured in art and celebrated in writing traditions for generations. Mainers know that innovation and hard work are essential virtues for survival in the sometimes harsh, cold place we call home. In more prosperous times, we have learned to cautiously reinvest for future growth, and in leaner times communities provide for those most in need. As we seek to become pioneers of a prosperous new Maine economy, innovative municipalities and local leaders are working to form a culture and environment that is attractive to investment from entrepreneurs and knowledge workers in the creative arts and those who seek the rugged and vital frontier spirit embodied by LL Bean boots, lobster boats, and lighthouses. As stewards of the state’s burgeoning creative economy, we share a drive to foster regenerative and sustainable local economies and communities for businesses, artists, and families.

Maine’s current economic development model focuses on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) as the key to the state’s economic future. What’s lost in the clearly important STEM education initiative is an explicit statement that the creative mind—the artful mind—lies at the center of these disciplines. Creative communities have informally embraced the study of art as the essence of a STEAM-based model for durable long-term economies as well as the core curriculum for immediate educational and youth outreach programming. The essence of all of the STEAM disciplines is human creativity and the discoveries of past generations, both of which are celebrated by the humanities. A new local arts initiative, Waterville Creates!, seeks to exemplify the roles of the arts and humanities in people’s daily

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lives. It straddles the imaginary line between artistic and economic creativity to question the false choice between community and economic development and the unnatural bifurcation of business interests versus essential community investments that has slowed and stymied conversations about Maine’s economic future.

WATERVILLE CREATES!

T

he Waterville Creates! partnership exists to uphold and exemplify the artistic, creative, and cultural energies that enhance and strengthen the city. At the heart of this initiative is a desire to promote Waterville as a major arts destination for Maine residents and visitors to the state. Through Waterville Creates!, the city’s largest arts and cultural entities—Common Street Arts gallery and studio, the Maine Film Center and Railroad Square Cinema, the Waterville Public Library, Revitalizing the Energy in Maine (REM), the Waterville Opera House, the Colby College Museum of Art, and the Waterville Main Street program—have committed to increased collaboration. Waterville Creates! acts as the coordinating entity for arts programming and cultural collaborations that will foster greater public awareness of and support for a robust creative economy in Waterville. It also serves as an advocate for Waterville as the city builds recognition as a destination for art, culture, and innovation in Maine. The mission outcomes of Waterville Creates! include meaningful, inclusive, and emotionally intelligent marketing messages to inspire creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, and small business owners to become part of an engaged and aesthetically centered community.

Each of the Waterville Creates! partner institutions offers unique strengths, and each has made substantial investments in programming and infrastructure within the last five years. The Waterville Public Library underwent a $3 million renovation and expansion project in 2011, highlighting the fine architectural features of the original 1905 Carnegie-funded structure while also adding vital space and modern amenities to promote creativity, discovery, and learning. New library programs 64

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and services include a business and career center, an art gallery for local fine and craft artists, a local history/ genealogy room, computer labs, STEAM education programming for youth, and permanent exhibits of natural history as well as Maine artists.

In 2012 the Waterville Opera House underwent its own $5 million renovation, preserving its historical integrity while bringing the 110-year-old facility up to date with new sound and light systems, seats, dressing rooms, and other amenities resulting in higher-quality productions and a more pleasurable experience for performers and audience members alike. The Opera House is now an 810-seat architectural treasure that welcomes over 30,000 visitors every year. That so much of the fundraising for the library and the Opera House was driven by local support is a measure of Waterville citizens’ commitment to the humanities and performing arts.

In December 2012, the Maine Film Center purchased Railroad Square Cinema and subsequently renovated and expanded the lobby to establish a gallery space for local art exhibitions, thereby greatly expanding the opportunities for additional film and arts programming, ensuring its mission to enrich, entertain, and educate people through film and art, and claiming a permanent home for the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF). The film festival draws an average of more than 8,500 people to its annual 10-day celebration of American independent and international cinema. In a 2011 economic impact study, the Maine Arts Commission estimated that MIFF generated over $750,000 for the region, and the festival has grown significantly since then.

The Colby College Museum of Art opened the Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion in 2013 to enhance an already substantial museum by adding a light-filled entrance, a gracious lobby, and an additional 10,000 square feet of exhibition space. The Colby Museum, now the largest art museum in the state of Maine, serves as a primary curricular resource for Colby students and faculty and provides a world-class asset for community members and national and international audiences. The media attention generated by this expansion pushed the annual number of museum visitors to 50,000 in 2014.

To enhance local arts education and outreach efforts, the Waterville Main Street program received crucial early funding from a Maine Arts Commission’s Creative Communities = Economic Development grant in 2012 to start the Common Street Arts (CSA) project.

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of the downtown area, recognized that the city has world-class arts offerings through the Colby Museum, Maine Film Center, and Waterville Opera House. Now, through CSA, it seeks to bring together art-seeking visitors, art-loving customers, and art-making sellers in a welcoming environment at the center of downtown Waterville. The CSA program offers studio art and gallery space to educators and artists. It emphasizes collaboration around major arts events held in and around the city including MIFF, art exhibitions at the Opera House and Colby Museum, and the Maine Open Juried Art Show, held at the Waterville Public Library and sponsored by Waterville Main Street and the Waterville Area Art Society.

Alongside the community-building efforts that went into envisioning and realizing the CSA project came recognition that expanding and revitalizing each individual component of the arts and culture landscape would open venues for everyone in Waterville to participate in an aesthetically centered civic and cultural life.

The art community’s decision to form a collaborative consortium, Waterville Creates!, signifies a deep and lasting commitment to that goal and inspires confidence that these gains in community arts assets will be carefully stewarded for the future. By working toward a shared vision, combining resources, and planning for efficient use of all their assets, Waterville Creates! will make the city even greater than the sum of its arts.

CREATIVITY AS AN ECONOMIC DRIVER AND SOCIAL CHANGE AGENT

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he idea of using arts and culture to engage a community and contribute to economic growth and development has an impressive record of success across America, from Roanoke, Virginia, to the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago, to Bangor, Maine.

In Bangor, the Waterfront Concerts Series generated around $30 million of revenue in just the first three years and has spurred real estate and tourism investment including several hotels and a conference center (Bangor Daily News, January 14, 2013). In Virginia, the Roanoke Arts Commission reports that in 2012, arts and culture added $24 million to the local economy (Roanoke Arts Commission 2014). Roanoke now hosts a yearly CityWorks(X)po conference to convene activists, policymakers, artists, and political leaders around the message of Big Ideas for Small Cities (New York Times, July 24, 2012).

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Here in Waterville, Colby College’s recently inaugurated president, David Greene, hopes to play a significant role in rejuvenating the city’s downtown, as he did in the 53rd Street renovation in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. From the first day on the job at Colby, Greene has made clear his desire to have the city and college work together on economic and cultural projects that will make Waterville a more vibrant and attractive place for future collaborations and creative spaces (Morning Sentinel, July 6, 2014). Moreover, Colby’s two-year-old Center for the Arts and Humanities has already been partnering with the Maine Film Center, CSA, and other Waterville arts institutions to sponsor

The arts, and the celebration of human discovery they represent, act as an axis for the flow of energy in a healthy community.… screenings in the Opera House, musical performances and art shows in the CSA gallery, and student engagement in arts and humanities lab classes that benefit both the city and the college. These labs position Colby students to, for example, research Waterville history, work with local fourth-graders, or document musical traditions of the various ethnic and racial identities that make up the rich tapestry of Maine’s soundscape. The center has now embraced the opportunity to collaborate with Waterville Creates! A similarly supportive attitude emanates from Thomas College and Kennebec Valley Community College, both of which are located in greater Waterville.

The arts, and the celebration of human discovery they represent, act as an axis for the flow of energy in a healthy community and as a guidepost for policy making. Community development organizations such as the state’s Main Street programs and the academic centers around Maine have embraced a people-centered outreach model that includes family friendliness, age and gender diversity, and a vital citizenry as part of the marketing message, as well as profiles of local and family-owned businesses that have grown here and made investments in a prosperous local economy.

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POLICY IMPLICATIONS

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he humanities identify the role of downtowns as a place that gives structure and orientation to humankind, a place where civilization flourishes and around which a society forms. Two roads meet at a crossroads, and at that meeting grows a downtown. Perhaps on one corner rises a place of business; on another a house of worship; on the third a public gathering place; and on the last, a bank. Around this hub forms a neighborhood of houses, other businesses, retail shops, warehouses, artist studios, civic forums, and restaurants. The neighborhoods that eventually surround that downtown feed it and are nurtured by it. To be part of an evolving gathering of people and interests is the essence of human experience, and the subject of the humanities as a discipline.

Humanistic models of community economic development embrace urban infill and reuse development strategies over new construction, thus reinforcing the value of existing places and people, reusing and renewing these valuable resources as any good Yankee might have done throughout Maine’s history.

Aesthetically envisioned urban settings provide context for otherwise-unused open spaces, thereby giving developers an incentive to invest in existing buildings, preserving continuity, history, and a sense of permanence for downtown residents. Initiatives such as Waterville Creates! seek to enliven these downtown spaces with music, dance, art, family-oriented civic life, and educational opportunities. The humanities provide the vocabulary that is used to define shared values, a common vision, and compelling marketing messages that are not only effective, but true to who we are as a people. Furthermore, the humanities lead to investment of money, time, and passion from members of the community and to newcomers eager to realize a vision for the future. The humanities are at the core of this shared vision in an aesthetically tuned civic life.

As for the future, the forces at work shaping Maine’s economy will tend to drive people toward urban centers, toward the coast, and toward each other in denser, older communities. Leading businesses and organizations have made major investments in mid- and central Maine, including a $306 million state-of-the-art hospital in Augusta and many millions in public and private sector investments in manufacturing, high-tech businesses, and infrastructure. To their credit, many of the same visionaries behind these investments also serve on the Waterville Creates! board of directors and on the boards 66

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of local and state arts, community, and economic development nonprofits. Maine’s charitable organizations and the partner organizations themselves have also taken on the challenge of helping us to find a way forward. The Unity Foundation has played a critical role in bringing together the different arts institutions in Waterville, moderating a substantive dialogue, and offering guidance and experienced mentorship to Waterville Creates!

A combination of private foundations, the City of Waterville, and two local hospitals—Inland Hospital and Maine General Medical Center—also saw the potential of this fledgling organization to benefit the city and the region. These organizations provided generous start-up funds that have allowed Waterville Creates! to design a coordinated marketing program that celebrates the arts as one of the city’s key assets.

AFTERWARD

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magine the heart of Waterville bustling with people walking down Main Street to catch the bus to Thomas College for an entrepreneurial symposium and Pecha Kucha presentation. Some out-of-town visitors have spent the afternoon touring contemporary and American art exhibitions at the Colby Museum. A father is picking up his kids from a pottery class at Common Street Arts while a drum circle forms on the amphitheatre in Castonguay Square. Another group has just emerged from the public library where a poetry reading finished a few minutes earlier. Now many people are heading to one of the nearby cafes to get a snack and a coffee. Other visitors are trying to squeeze in some shopping before an early dinner in one of several fine restaurants downtown. The pottery class father meets his partner in the Square, who is emerging from her office in the downtown business incubator. Together they will enjoy an early food truck meal with the kids, and play in the Head of Falls riverfront park. Later the couple will leave the kids at home with the sitter and see a theatrical performance in the Opera House. Not everyone is quite so rushed, however—they may be going to a later movie at Railroad Square, or catching a band at the venue down the street. They will have time for a drink and a lingering chat with work friends over a meal. In other words: Maine: the way life should be.

This picture of downtown Waterville resonates because the process of “artification” is already underway— many key elements are in place, and recent developments have transformed this central Maine city. Speaking

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about the role of humanism in modern life, sociologist and historian Richard Sennet said, “looking back to the origins of [humanism] is not an exercise in nostalgia; it is rather to remind us that we are engaged in a project, still in process, a humanism yet to be realized, of making social experience more open, engaging, and layered” (2011: 30). The arts and humanities provide the venue, the language, and the history that contextualize this project, and it is only through participation from all of these members of the community—artists, patrons, students, policymakers, developers, and government— that a lasting, authentic, and regenerative solution will be reached and sustained in Maine. REFERENCES Roanoke Arts Commission. 2014. Arts and Cultural Plan: Progress Bulletin No. 2. http://www.roanokeva .gov/85256A8D0062AF37/vwContentByKey /213D1C2C604074F085257D32004A57D0/$File/final %20A%26C%20Plan%20Progress%20Bulletin%202 %20March%202014.pdf Sennett, Richard. 2011. “Humanism.” The Hedgehog Review 13(2): 21–30.

Nate Rudy is the executive director of Waterville Creates! and formerly the director of economic and community development for the city of Gardiner, Maine, and the executive director of the Gardiner Board of Trade. Nate has worked in state and local government and has managed federal, state, and foundation-funded grant programs.

Kerill O’Neill is the director of the Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the Julian D. Taylor Associate Professor of Classics at Colby College. His teaching and research interests cover Latin love poetry, Greek tragedy, and Bronze Age archaeology. He is the field director of the Mitrou Archaeological Project, focusing on a prehistoric settlement in Greece.

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Public Humanities: HUMANITIES BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

Humanities beyond the Classroom: Blessed Be the Human Ties That Bind

by David Richards

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magine not being able to read—a job application, a newspaper, or this essay. Or imagine working with adults who struggle not only with literacy, but also with making it through the day, some without enough work or food or love. Imagine a moment at the end of a book discussion when a reticent middle-aged man, proudly reports that he has read an entire story on his own for the first time in his life. Imagine that the accomplishment is completion of the children’s book Little Bear.

Welcome to my experience of the humanities beyond the classroom.

The most appealing definition I have heard of the humanities comes from Julia Walkling, coordinator of the New Books, New Readers program of the Maine Humanities Council (MHC), the organization that supplied the copy of Little Bear to Robert. She has often pointed out to me that the word is made up of three elements: human, ties, with I smack dab in the middle. Quite simply, my fundamental objective as a humanities scholar facilitating book discussions and teaching writing is to foster human ties between me and the group, among participants, and within communities.

I fell unexpectedly into my work with the Maine Humanities Council. While studying history in graduate school at the University of New Hampshire, I led a few discussions as part of the council’s Modern Times in Maine & America project, which related to my dissertation research at the time on the rise of the Poland Spring resort during the late nineteenth century. After graduate school, I landed a job at the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan, Maine, which occasionally served as a host site for MHC programs led by Jeff Aronson.

After about a year of running book discussions at the library, Jeff turned to me one night and said: “You could do this.” A new avocation was born that evening.

Since 1998 I have facilitated nearly 100 book series and led over 400 discussions. Most of these events have been offered through two programs of the Maine Humanities Council’s Harriet P. Henry Center for the Book: New Books, New Readers and Let’s Talk About It. Over the past 16 years, I have come to view myself as an

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itinerant circuit rider, bringing my humanities training and facilitation skills to communities throughout central and western Maine, including Waterville, Stetson, Canaan, Palmyra, Pittsfield, Dexter, Guilford, Greenville, Rangeley, and Jay, in addition to my home base of Skowhegan. Everywhere my goal has been the same—to build ties more than to explain books.

The mission of New Books, New Readers is to improve the reading skills of adult, low-level readers.

The clientele encompasses a variety of groups: people with learning or developmental disabilities, high school dropouts and GED seekers, and a surprising number of English language learners (ELL), even in the smallest, most out-of-the-way locations in nearly homogenous Maine. I have worked with three dozen ELL students from 19 different countries spanning five continents.

Those who have stuck with it, like Simi from Greenville and Maria from Madison, both via Mexico, the nation, not the Maine town, really have been able to learn English quite well and just as important, to serve as models of assimilation for their children.

The program uses children’s books on the premise that good literature is ageless. Each of the 22 series focuses on a theme. Little Bear is part of the series on home. A good example of the adult discussion that can emerge from a simple story is Frederick, which is part of the series on courage. For kids, this picture book is the tale of a frivolous mouse completely oblivious to securing the necessities of life as winter approaches.

Digging more deeply into this children’s book invites mature readers to consider what those necessities really are. Are they limited to the nuts and straw of the practical mice, or do they also include the sun rays, color, and words in which Frederick, ruled by the courage of his convictions, is more interested? In effect, the story is an allegory for our own contemporary policy debate about the relevance of the liberal arts in a modern world increasingly dominated by science and technology.

Mankind cannot thrive on bytes alone. STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) may make us rich, but the arts and humanities are what give our lives richness.

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These are the mechanics of New Books, New Readers. Groups meet four times, usually with about a month of reading time between each session, first for a general discussion of the topic, followed by three more meetings examining sets of three books at a time. The reading material for each session is geared to different literacy levels. Typically, one assignment is predominantly a picture book; another, a combination of illustrations and text; and the third a longer chapter book.

Participants get to keep all nine books supplied by the MHC at no cost to them. The intention is that they will then be shared and promote literacy within families.

New Books, New Readers has sometimes been expanded to encompass the ideal of family literacy, particularly in small communities, where a limited pool of adult candidates would not make offering a typical adult literacy program feasible. This has been the model I have used with the LIFE program in Greenville 15 times since 2003. That is long enough that the brothers who started out as youngsters are now studying business at the University of Maine and economics at Colby College. Seeing kids grow up with an appreciation for reading is rewarding. Watching up to four generations discuss a story is illuminating. Inspiring young readers is gratifying. I still cherish the illustrated story “Mouse in the House” that Andrew, who happens to be Maria’s son, wrote for me several years ago as part of a family literacy New Books, New Readers in Skowhegan.

Another adaptation of the program has been bringing it into correctional facilities. It is not that most inmates cannot read; it is more that too many do not read. For many years, Julia Walking had been a siren trying to lure me into leading a series at the Somerset County Jail. For most of that time, I was able to rebuff her overtures with the excuse that the facility was too rundown and overcrowded to suit my instructional preferences. I lost that argument when the county went ahead and built a brand new jail in 2008.

A remarkable thing happened during the second New Books, New Readers program I offered at the county jail during the winter of 2011. Toward the end of the community series, one of the more hardened members of the group wrote a poem on the theme. The effort opened with the verse: “The community we live in/It’s sometimes hard to fit in/Hard to find trust/But try we must.” This was my awakening that even rough and tumble inmates hunger for human ties. Derek did not realize it, but his initiative raised a question, and planted a seed too. Were there other writers at the jail?

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The next chapter in my humanities moonlighting began during the summer of 2010. Under the auspices of SAD 54 Adult and Community Education, I started teaching a writing class for the inmates. My initial task was to prepare them for GED testing by helping with essay writing. I received a few practice samples. What quickly became apparent, though, was that most of the students came to class not because they needed to learn how to write, but rather because they wanted an outlet to share their writing. Prolific Logan was as deep as the Beats. Wrestler Tim penned rugged tales of adventures on the waters and in the woods of western Maine.

Academic Alex was amazingly well read, with a booka-day goal. One Michael was an earnest essayist; another was a razor-sharp rapper. Frank was a persistent polemicist; while John was a motor head. Matthew was a voluminous philosopher, and Jonah a whale of a storyteller.

From C Pod, where orange is the new black, Karen crafted cathartic confessionals, and Terry volunteered tortured testimonies; while Kizzy wrote religious tracts, and Sydney, Jonah’s prison bride, gave birth to brilliant poems. Illustrated with a tombstone, “Woman,” for instance, opened with the gut-punch line: “We are all dead by fifteen.” Sydney’s verse spoke volumes about the root trauma that eventually led many females to the downward spiral of depression, self-medication, and incarceration. All together the writing class participants at the jail have produced more than 1,400 pages of material, some of which has appeared in monthly newsletters initiated and edited by the inmates and all of which I preserve in four overflowing binders.

Watching up to four generations discuss a story is illuminating.

Over the past four and half years, I have worked with nearly 400 men and women at the Somerset County Jail. They have been from all over Maine and across the country thanks to the sprawling tentacles of drug networks. Yes, many have committed heinous crimes. There have been child molesters and pedophiles, “skinners” in prison parlance, robbers and rapists, wife beaters and murderers among the groups. No, I have never felt afraid as the heavy metal doors clanged shut 69

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behind me because, incredibly, there is humanity, too. I attempt to break down the walls of distrust and breach the barriers of brokenness to get at the good awaiting release from within. My constant mantra in class is “Write it out!” So far my best shot at making a connection is my initial writing assignment to the uninitiated.

I invite a response to the prompt: The truth about me is…. The resulting essays are always revealing.

It took me a while to overcome my own guardedness and recognize the latent humanity even amidst the hearts of darkness. I should have learned this early on through Derek and his poem. It was not driven home, however, until a couple of years later when Jonathan joined the writing class. He was gruff and fidgety, but with cause as he was afflicted with Tourette syndrome.

Consequently, my expectations were low. Then one night while waiting for inmates from other pods to arrive, he began talking to me about his cultural hero. I was dumbfounded to hear it was Sylvia Plath, whose personal demons and struggles he identified with completely. His was no superficial familiarity. He knew both Plath’s biography and bibliography. He had read her works and understood their meaning. That was my moment of enlightenment not to judge inmates by their scarlet letters. It was time instead to concentrate on the ties that bind.

The diversity of insights and opinions different people can draw out of the same book still astounds me.

I was reminded of the oft-surprising talents of inmates just the other night at the jail. Stephanie was new to writing class. She is from Boston, the BromleyHeath housing project of JP, Jamaica Plain, to be exact, and has an obsession about always wanting to be right.

Her puzzle this night was of all things the Emancipation Proclamation. She wanted confirmation that President Lincoln’s executive order had not freed all the slaves, only the ones held in the states still in rebellion. I was impressed as much by the depth and nuance of her historical knowledge as by the many colorful tattoos covering her arms.

The third component of my nocturnal humanities adventures is Let’s Talk About It. Like New Books, New MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Readers, this is another MHC book discussion program.

It is a staple for many public libraries, providing over 40 thematic series of books, ranging from Across Cultures & Continents: Literature of the South Asian Experience to Yankees & Strangers: The New England Town, as well as a scholar to lead sessions. I have facilitated 18 of the series and also created one. Mine is about cultural changes in the late-nineteenth-century United States and uses the following five texts: The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells, The Devil and the White City by Erik Larson, and my own book, Poland Spring: A Tale of the Gilded Age. The series asks readers to consider whether the rampant materialism, conspicuous consumption, and moral veneer of the earlier era pertains to our own times, too.

More satisfying than constructing my own series has been building relationships with Let’s Talk About It participants. The diversity of insights and opinions different people can draw out of the same book still astounds me. The phenomenon makes it fascinating to lead the same series in multiple venues. In places I get to return to more than once, the connections, both literary and personal, become even deeper. Truth be told, I have developed a favorite site. Entering 2014, I had led Let’s Talk About It for the Shaw Public Library in Greenville for 13 summers, dating back to 1998. It is a community I have grown to love ever since the first time I crested Indian Hill and saw the vista of Moosehead Lake, ringed by majestic mountain ranges, sprawl before my view.

I commenced my fourteenth Greenville summer in late June 2014. The series was Invisible New England: The Real New England? an examination of the region’s non-WASP ethnic heritage. Nineteen people, many of whom were repeat participants, some with attendance records dating back well over a decade, showed up to discuss the opening book, The Living Is Easy, by Dorothy West. Not many participants liked this account of African-American life in early-twentieth-century Boston. They could not identify with the story and disliked one of the main characters. Nevertheless, I tried valiantly to defend the novel’s merits. The disagreement made for a lively discussion. I was looking forward to returning to my home away from home for four more spirited book discussions with people who in many cases have become dear and valued friends.

My plans changed in an instant and with a sudden thud late on the evening of July 3, 2014. That is when I 70

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collided with an unseen, 900-pound moose while on my way to Greenville to see fireworks. On its way to crashing through my windshield and landing in the passenger seat of my compact car, the stealthy intruder broke my left hand, fractured my right arm, and cracked a vertebra in my neck. I seek no pity. The point is that what sustained me during the three-month recovery in the hospital and then at home was the care and concern of family and friends. Many of the latter were from Greenville and were alumni/ae of the numerous book discussions I have led there. They mailed get-well wishes, called, visited, presented gifts, and cooked for me. An oversize 14-inch by 22-inch, handmade greeting card circulated at the popular ice cream stand downtown still graces my living room and serves as a visible reminder of the many acts of kindness sent my way as I recovered from my injuries this past summer. That is what all the trips on behalf of the MHC to Moosehead Lake since 1998 had really meant. I was part of the community, a player in the Greenville version of Our Town. I had been blessed by the human ties that bind.

When I was younger, I thought Thomas Jefferson was the genius philosopher of America. The trinity of classical liberalism—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—has surely been essential to the development of this country. They have been necessary ideals. The Gospel of Individualism, however, is not sufficient for national greatness. In my later years, I have come to appreciate more the wisdom of America’s founding philosopher John Winthrop. The leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony delivered a seminal sermon in 1630 during passage across the Atlantic as part of the Puritan errand into the wilderness. “A Model of Christian Charity” laid out a vision of the New World as a “city upon a hill” for all the world to behold. The image has inspired belief in American exceptionalism for four centuries. It was a vision predicated on a social ideal in which everyone—male and female, young and old, rich and poor, mighty and meek—must be knit together as one. It is a social model whereby threads of individualism become woven into the fabric of community.

Blessed be the tie that binds.

I believe Winthrop thoroughly grasped the enduring essence of community nearly 400 years ago. Reading the journal he kept as governor reveals that he also understood its inherent messiness. In tribute to Winthrop’s model of civic engagement, I will be back to Greenville.

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a knitter and a friend. There are still many more books to explore and discussions to lead, with kids and old acquaintances alike. There are still many more human ties to foster. Blessed be the humanities. -

David Richards started working at the Margaret Chase Smith Library in 1996 and has served as director since 2012. During that time, he has facilitated a wide variety of programs for the Maine Humanities Council. He became a gubernatorial appointee to the MHC board of directors in 2010. In addition, he has taught writing classes for SAD 54 Adult & Community Education at the Somerset County Jail since 2010.

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Maine’s Quality of Place

Maine’s Quality of Place

For many of us who live in Maine, the state’s quality of place is a large part of what keeps us here—the iconic rocky coast, the vast forests, the rolling farmland, the quaint villages and towns. This section examines the relationship between this quality of place and the humanities. In the first article, Kreg Ettenger discusses how the humanities can help create a sense of place and enrich Maine’s tourism industry through cultural tourism opportunities. Carol Toner wonders what kind of place we want to live in and how the humanities can inform public policy debates. George Kinghorn interviews three Maine artists and a curator and asks them about the opportunities and challenges of being an artist in Maine. Catherine Schmitt describes how Maine Sea Grant has embraced the humanities as a way to communicate its relevance to Maine’s coastal communities using films, documentaries, radio programs, recipes, books, and poetry readings to reach a wider audience. In a brief article about Eastport, Linda Cross Godfrey portrays the role language played in turning the economic tide and reversing negative images of the town. And in the final article, Stephen Hornsby discusses the publication of the Historical Atlas of Maine, an ambitious attempt to map the historical geography of the state from the end of the last ice age to the end of the millennium in 2000.

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Maine’s Quality of Place: HUMANITIES AND TOURISM

The Other Maine Guides: How the Humanities Create Sense of Place and Enrich Tourism

by Kreg T. Ettenger

INTRODUCTION

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n a pithy 1933 poem, American humorist and newspaper columnist Don Marquis imagined a conversation between the universe and his own alter ego, an irascible, typewriting cockroach named Archy. In the poem, Archy challenges the universe by saying that it seemed to know little about itself, to which the universe replies that it was trying to forget many things—“such as cockroaches and poets.” Archy (who jumped on individual typewriter keys and therefore could not type capital letters) offers this response: you are wrong contended archy for it is only by working up the most important part of yourself into the form of poets that you get a product capable of understanding you at all (Marquis, “Poets”)

This poem says something essential and important about the nature of art and the role of artists. The universe is out there, in all its beauty and awesomeness, but it is artists (poets among them) who make sense of it, who define it, who give it context—who make it mean something.

This fundamental idea can help us to understand the connections between place and people, and between a tourist destination such as Maine and the people who want to visit it. No travelers go somewhere without some idea of what they will find once they get there. For the growing number of people who travel to experience culture and a sense of place, expectations are often formed by the work of writers, artists, poets, musicians, historians, and other representatives of the humanities. Such writers and artists might be travelers themselves, presenting their experiences as tourists. They could be residents who were first drawn to a place by the magical qualities they now seek to express. Or they could be lifelong residents, descendants of generations in the same location, MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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who feel a need to tell others about the special place they call home.

Place, as geographer Yi-Fu Tuan once said, is not just a geographical term. Place connotes experience, meaning, and context. Tuan explained this concept by referring to a conversation that was said to have taken place between physicists Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg as they visited Kronborg Castle, a famous tourist site in Denmark. Bohr remarked, “Isn’t it strange how this castle changes as soon as one imagines that Hamlet lived here? As scientists we believe that a castle consists only of stones, and admire the way the architect put them together…. None of this should be changed by the fact that Hamlet lived here, and yet it is changed completely” (Tuan 1977: 4). Tuan suggests that humanistic accounts, wherein “intricate worlds of human experience are recorded,” inform our understanding and enrich our experience of place (1977: 7).

As we explore the connections between the humanities and public policy in Maine, it is worthwhile to consider their complex and vital relationship to tourism, Maine’s hallmark industry. For one thing, the creative arts enhance the overall experience of visitors by offering a rich variety of encounters involving multiple senses, perspectives, and sensations. In addition, the arts and humanities help create an image of Maine that acts as a magnet to visitors. Stories, art, photographs, music, crafts, and other interpretations of Maine have created a sense of place that is at least as important to Maine tourism as the iconic natural places, wildlife, and scenic beauty that visitors often equate with the state.

The value of tourism to Maine is well known, but the role of the humanities in helping create this important sector is less understood. Studies show that many visitors participate in some form of cultural activities while here, ranging from visiting art museums and historic sites to participating in festivals or watching a performance. If culinary tourism is included as a part of cultural tourism, then the numbers grow considerably (Maine Office of Tourism 2014). But visitor surveys do not tell the whole story of the importance of the humanities to Maine 73

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tourism. For example, creative works play a critical role in generating images of Maine that attract visitors to the state, or that deepen their connection to Maine and lead them to return and to encourage others to visit. Film, television, literature, and other products of popular culture create a pervasive and compelling image of a destination and can generate significant tourism traffic (Kim and Richardson 2003). Visitor surveys also miss the growth potential of cultural tourism in the state.

Asking people why they come to Maine is different from asking them why they would come—in other words, what elements of tourism, as yet undeveloped, might lure them to Maine instead of other destinations with similar natural and cultural assets, such as Scandinavia, Canada, Alaska, or the Pacific Northwest?

In this article, I explore several themes related to the intersection between the humanities, cultural tourism, and public policy in Maine. I use two examples from Maine’s rich literary and artistic tradition to show how this canon can be drawn upon to create cultural tourism products and how such products respond to the desire of many travelers for authentic and meaningful experiences. I then describe several ways in which the humanities and cultural tourism can become better integrated in Maine. Among other suggestions, I propose that the humanities can and should play a critical role in the education of Mainers about tourism, whether or not they are (or intend to become) employed within the hospitality industry.

…cultural tourism remains an area of relatively untapped resources

Framing tourism in humanistic terms, drawing upon its diverse fields to help us to understand the layers and complexities of this rich subject, can improve understanding and reshape decision making about tourism. The humanities offer perspectives on tourism that can make better graduates, better employees and employers, better hosts, and even better citizens.

Incorporating the humanities into tourism education in particular holds real promise to meaningfully improve public policy and the quality of life in Maine. Before MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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discussing this topic further, however, I want to explore how the arts and humanities enrich cultural tourism in Maine, and have done so for generations.

CULTURAL TOURISM IN MAINE

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ourism is widely known as one of the most important industries in the state, as well as worldwide (UNWTO 2014). Unlike manufacturing and some service industries, tourism cannot be outsourced or relocated. Its strength and resiliency come from its connection to place, and the Maine brand, built on natural beauty, livability, and authenticity, continues to attract over 30 million visitors every year (Maine Office of Tourism 2014). Within the general tourism sector in Maine, though, cultural tourism remains an area of relatively untapped resources. Others have written previously in this journal about the status and potential for cultural tourism in Maine. Calhoun (2000) makes a strong case for investing in cultural tourism as a form of community development and for the critical role that arts and cultural organizations play in this form of tourism. Calhoun concludes that cultural tourism needs to be better promoted in Maine and suggests that products such as the Maine Art Museum Trail, Maine Maritime Heritage Trail, and Maine Garden and Landscape Trail provide good models for connecting visitors with Maine’s cultural heritage (see also Routhier 2015). In this issue of Maine Policy Review, Schmitt (2015) describes the Downeast Fisheries Trail, a network of 45 sites along the Downeast coastline in Hancock and Washington counties that demonstrate the fisheries heritage of local communities. Griswold (2002) notes that compared to other states its size, Maine has a disproportionately large number of authors, publishers, and literary works. This, she says, contributes to a strong sense of regionalism, which in turn draws visitors to the state. In terms of policy, though, “the question is not how to nurture a sense of place but instead how to encourage its translation into visible forms of cultural expression” (Griswold 2002: 83).

To explore these issues further, I consider two examples of how the arts and humanities can create a demand for, and help define and interpret, tourism experiences in Maine. The first is the quintessential account of a journey to Maine to experience wilderness, Thoreau’s The Maine Woods. The second example is the Winslow Homer studio in Scarborough, Maine, a site recently developed by the Portland Museum of Art as a tourist 74

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attraction. From a tourism perspective, these two individuals and their works represent major forces that attract people to Maine and provide polished lenses with which to view our state.

LITERARY TOURISM: THOREAU, TRAVEL, AND THE MYTH OF MAINE

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iterary travel is a well-established form of tourism that attracts millions of people each year to sites associated with authors and their works (Herbert 2001).

Perhaps no literary work about Maine has had more of an impact than Henry David Thoreau’s The Maine Woods, which Cramer (2009: xviii) describes as “writer’s art presented in the guise of unadorned travel narrative.”

The Maine Woods has provided many readers with their first introduction to Maine, especially its wild character and, of course, the fabled Mount Katahdin. At the University of Southern Maine, my own institution, professors have used this text to develop a course that includes a three-day excursion to the mountain. Even more ambitious was a 16-day canoe tour organized in 2014 as part of the 150th anniversary celebration of The Maine Woods by Maine Woods Discovery (Allen 2015; http://www.mainewoodsdiscovery.com/150thoreau/).

The trip involved a small group of experienced paddlers completing a 325-mile loop including Moosehead Lake, parts of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, and the East Branch of the Penobscot, all areas explored by Thoreau during his trips to Maine. Other paddlers joined the trip for shorter segments, similar to trips designed around Thoreau’s journeys offered by several guiding companies in Maine.

Part of what made this trip special was the composition of the core group of paddlers, which included Maine guides, members of the Penobscot Nation, and several well-known Thoreau scholars. According to Mike Wilson of the Northern Forest Center, one of the key organizers of the trip, the main motivation for these scholars was the “opportunity to personally see and to feel the places and experiences that informed and inspired one of America’s great philosophers.”1 Like other forms of experiential cultural tourism, the Thoreau-Wabanaki tour was a means of connecting with an inspiring figure from the humanities, in this case someone “whose writing about nature and wilderness has inspired so many and helped set the stage for the modern conservation movement.” Wilson points out that Thoreau was himself inspired by his Penobscot MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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guides, who in addition to navigating routes and keeping Thoreau safe and fed, “filled Thoreau’s mind and imagination with the stories, legends and traditions of the people who experienced the Maine Woods before him.”

Thoreau’s mythic and vivid descriptions have been an important driver for tourism in the state for 150 years, and there is no sign that they have lost their grip on the collective imagination. Building upon the success of the Thoreau-Wabanaki Tour, Maine Woods Discovery created a new section of its website describing the trip and promoting wilderness experiences in Maine’s North Woods. The Maine Office of Tourism devoted the fourth issue of its multimedia publication The Maine Thing Quarterly to a photo essay of the tour that promotes nature-based tourism in the state. As they say in the issue, “From whitewater rafting and scenic kayaking to moose watching and rock climbing, there’s a guide and a transcendental experience just waiting for you….

Whatever makes you happy and helps you transcend whatever needs transcending” (http://mainequarterly .com/thoreau/). Several Maine guides, including those who helped lead the Thoreau-Wabanaki Tour, now offer Thoreau-inspired trips. These and other businesses have clearly benefited from the literary legacy of The Maine Woods, just one example of the potential economic impact of the humanities in Maine.

WINSLOW HOMER AND THE PURPOSEFUL ART TOURIST

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hile many artists find their muse in the places they visit, these sites are often already well-established tourism attractions known for natural beauty, graceful architecture, or existing collections of art. For example, northern New Mexico was already both a tourism destination and a haven for artists by the time Georgia O’Keeffe arrived in 1929, thanks largely to the promotional efforts of people such as entrepreneur Fred Harvey and designer/architect Mary Colter (Weigle 1992). In addition to artists being tourists themselves and following in the footsteps of other travelers, many have played critical roles in the creation of tourism destinations, including iconic New England sites such as the White Mountains of New Hampshire (Cenki 2006). Rather than separate artists from other classes of travelers, therefore, we benefit from seeing the long historical relationship between art, tourism, and regional identity as richly interwoven.

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Maine’s coast has provided inspiration for artists for many generations and has also long been the site of a thriving art industry based in part on the tourism economy. One of the most successful recent examples of art tourism in the state was the purchase and restoration (to period authenticity) of Winslow Homer’s studio on Prouts Neck in Scarborough by the Portland Museum of Art, and the opening of it for visitor tours. Homer’s art remains the apotheosis of visual depictions of the Maine coast, representing for this rugged region what Thoreau’s Maine Woods is for the inland forest.

Homer, whom many think of as a “Maine artist” (see Kinghorn [2015] for a discussion of this term), was well traveled by the time he reached Prouts Neck, having spent extended periods in France and England along with Boston, New York, and Virginia. He continued to travel and paint in the Caribbean, Canada, Florida, and the Adirondacks long after he settled in Maine (Johns 2002). Not only was Homer an itinerant traveler, but according in an article by Ken Johnson (New York Times, November 12, 2012), he played a role in the development of Maine as a tourism destination, investing in several hotels on Prouts Neck with his brother and developing other property for summer homes.

The Winslow Homer Studio Tour is an example of a tourism attraction designed for purposeful cultural tourists, “who seek deep experiences that they actively research and plan for on subjects that interest them personally” (McKercher 2002). To protect the site and reduce the disturbance to neighbors, as well as to maintain a sense of intimacy for visitors, tour groups are limited to 10 people twice a day. According to the Portland Museum of Art’s website, the tours “celebrate the artist’s life, encourage scholarship on Homer, and educate audiences in some of the lesser known facts about the artist.… Guests leave the Studio not only with a fuller appreciation of Homer the artist, but a deeper understanding of Homer the man—how he saw the world, lived his life, and found his inspiration” (http:// www.portlandmuseum.org/homer/visit).

Reviews of the tour on TripAdvisor show that well-educated visitors appreciate the experience of visiting Homer’s studio and admiring the views that inspired his work. The following excerpts illustrate the reactions of several visitors who would likely meet McKercher’s criteria for purposeful tourists.

[T]he studio is well restored and a gem; so many artists’ studios have been lost. Regardless, the

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enduring experience is really in the view, the magnificent rocky coastline and views across to islands and land with which we associate Homer’s Maine work. [Nancy 2005, “Feeling Homer’s Maine Coast,” May 19, 2013] I’m a big fan of Winslow Homer’s art, especially his watercolors, and a visit to his studio was a glimpse into the inner life of this very quirky man.… The experience of visiting his studio is not as visceral as visiting Cezanne’s studio in Aix-en-Provence, which is still full of the objects he immortalized in his still lifes, but it helps to reveal the extent of Homer’s genius.

[LAWatercolor, “Eccentric Aerie for an American Icon,” October 30, 2014] For tourists who seek a deeper connection with art and artists, the experience of visiting an artist’s studio with a small group of like-minded enthusiasts can be more rewarding and memorable than standing in line to view a popular exhibit.

LINKING THE HUMANITIES, TOURISM AND HIGHER EDUCATION

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s Maine prepares to enter a new phase of tourism in which we compete with international destinations for highly informed and wealthier travelers, a humanities education may be critical for those who interact with such purposeful cultural tourists on a regular basis. International tourists in particular often expect tourism workers to be cosmopolitan and conversant about an area’s artistic and literary traditions (Johnson 2014). A broad education that connects the humanities with travel and tourism is therefore a prudent strategic policy goal to prepare Maine residents for the future.

According to a report by Maine’s Creative Economy Council (CEC) (2006), Maine is lacking a comprehensive approach to developing the state’s cultural tourism workforce, and a similarly comprehensive marketing plan for this sector of the tourism industry.

Higher education is a part of this problem and can be an important part of its solution. In the CEC study, the authors found that 75 percent of those in Maine’s creative economy workforce had at least a bachelor’s degree. In fact, many occupations in the cultural tourism sector require college degrees. The payoff is that these jobs tend to pay more than the average worker in

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Maine receives. What might help is to link these creative occupations more closely with the tourism industry so that they can build upon each other to create more opportunities for workers in both sectors. If the humanities represent a “bridge to empathy” for tourism students, as Caton (2014) suggests, then tourism may represent a bridge to economic opportunity for Maine humanities students and graduates.

There are numerous ways in which the humanities can build greater ties with cultural tourism in Maine, to the benefit of both the creative economy and the tourism sector. I will describe several tangible and practical ways these linkages can be strengthened.

First, Maine can promote the creation and development of artists, writers, and other producers of tangible cultural heritage, who will produce art and other products that visitors can buy before, during, and after their visit to Maine. In addition to the direct revenue that such arts-based commerce provides, many of these cultural products create additional demand for tourism in Maine by generating public interest in and knowledge of the state and creating curiosity about its landscapes, people, history, and culture. Research shows that cultural products such as films and books can have “particularly powerful effects on destination image formation” because they are seen as unbiased sources of information about a place, unlike traditional marketing techniques (Kim and Richardson 2003: 217).

The Maine Film Office (MFO), which encourages filmmakers to come to Maine, is a division of the Maine Office of Tourism. But there is little on the MFO website to suggest that Maine tourism officials recognize the potential of films set in Maine to actually generate tourism demand. While filmmaking can be big business, most films shot in Maine tend to be small, low-budget productions. Even in the best case, how does a million dollars or so in production costs injected into the local economy compare with the millions generated every year by the Field of Dreams site in Iowa, or the more than $100 million spent every year by tens of thousands of visitors to New Zealand who say their main reason for going is to see where The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies were filmed? The real money comes from cultural products that entice people to come to Maine, and this depends on creative types who can write stories, make films, and create art with Maine as their focus—or at least that capture some essential aspect of Maine. What Thoreau and Homer accomplished through the pen and the brush, creating dramatic, MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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mythical images of Maine that drew visitors in their times (and still do today), will likely be done in the future by filmmakers and multimedia artists.

A second strategy is the training of professionals in areas such as cultural documentation, preservation, interpretation, and curation, as well as in business and organizational skills that allow them to lead and run Maine’s various arts and culture institutions. Art curators, archivists, historians, folklorists, exhibit designers, and many others who collect, document, preserve, and interpret cultural heritage and art objects must have formal training. These and other occupations form the backbone of cultural tourism, guiding and operating the institutions that either work at the front line of the visitor economy or behind the scenes to support this sector.

A third strategy involves creating a core of tourism industry professionals who understand Maine’s cultural and natural heritage and its literary and artistic traditions, and who can interact meaningfully with, and create products designed for, Maine’s cultural tourism visitors. While this goal is directly tied to the study of Maine and other regional cultures, as opposed to the humanities more generally, arts and humanities courses would form the central pillar of such training. The professionals involved would be trained in developing tourism products that appeal to the global traveler who is familiar with cultural attractions in other destinations.

Fourth, the humanities can be employed to create a sense of “awareness, pride and a nurturing spirit” among Mainers for what their state has to offer visitors (Maine Office of Tourism 2014). The humanities can help average Mainers develop their own knowledge and appreciation of the state as a place of adventure, romance, excitement, inspiration, and enlightenment. It is all too easy to take where we live for granted or assume that we know a place simply because we were born or live there. Learning about a familiar place through the lenses of the humanities can broaden and deepen our understanding of that place, adding layers of knowledge that inevitably create a sense of richness and appreciation. This awareness and pride will come out in myriad ways as many parts of Maine reinvent themselves as visitor destinations.

Finally, as an educator in the state university system, I propose creating a new degree that studies tourism in Maine from a perspective that draws largely upon the humanities. This degree could be targeted towards those already working in the tourism industry who would like a college diploma but do not need the business skills of 77

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a hospitality management degree. It could also be attractive to other residents of the state who would like to better understand the role that tourism has played in the development of the place they call home. Finally, if developed as an online degree, it could be of interest to non-Mainers who would like to learn more about Vacationland and how artists, writers, composers and others, many of whom first came to Maine as tourists, have played a critical role in creating Maine’s image and sense of place. The humanities offer the disciplinary tools, perspectives, and knowledge to explore these subjects with depth and thoughtfulness. To paraphrase Don Marquis’ Archy, the humanities provide a product capable of understanding the universe—or at least our little corner of it.

CONCLUSION

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enry David Thoreau and Winslow Homer, two of Maine’s most famous tourists, were, curiously, as famous for their solitary habits as for their penchant for travel. Even more ironically, their depictions of Maine as a rugged wilderness where individuals could escape the bonds of civilization and connect with their true selves, as well as with nature, helped secure Maine’s fate as a tourism destination. Now the state finds itself wanting to appeal to special-interest travelers who bring more value as tourists, staying longer and spending more money than the average tourist. These travelers are seeking “authentic, unique experiences” that match “one’s personal identity and values” (Maine Office of Tourism 2014: 16). Many of these tourists wish to do more than just read books and view paintings about Maine. They want to see the world the way their favorite artists and writers saw it, which means visiting the sites that gave them inspiration and fueled their creative drive.

They want to experience the places and meet the people who fill their favorite stories, films, and photographs.

They also have new tools, including digital media devices, which allow them to connect with places and stories in new and powerful ways. Responding to the growing demand for cultural tourism products that employ new technologies while also protecting the authenticity and sense of place that bring visitors to Maine demands a thoughtful reconsideration of how the humanities inform tourism. This includes educational programming that prepares those who work in the tourism sector, as well as in the large network of related cultural and arts organizations throughout the state.

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Given the high expectations of cultural tourists, especially those with the financial means to travel to well-established global tourism destinations, the products created in Maine will have to meet high standards for quality (Vail 2007; Vail and Daniel 2012) and provide a meaningful and well-presented interpretation of local culture and nature (Milliken 2007). And because many cultural tourists are highly educated and knowledgeable about the places they visit, communities and local guides should be prepared to discuss their region’s literary, historical, artistic, and other traditions.

While not every local resident will need to become an expert on Maine literature, those in the tourism industry will benefit from having at least some level of cultural literacy (Johnson 2014) or literary cultural competence (Herbert 2001) in order to make the experience of cultural tourists more meaningful and satisfying.

Humanities professionals are gifted at and trained in the craft of showing the essence of things. Artists, musicians, writers, scholars, and other humanities practitioners can reveal and interpret the deeper nature of something, whether a place, a person, or a way of life.

They often find beauty in the mundane, complexity in the seemingly simple, and basic truths within apparent chaos. With a few strokes of a brush or well-chosen words they can show us the world in new ways, like turning a gem this way and that to reveal all of its facets and brilliance. What the humanities offer is an emotional and even visceral response as we connect what we see, hear, or think with something deep within ourselves. Like an experienced Maine Guide, those in the humanities can take us to new places, teach us new skills, and help us to develop a new and deeper appreciation for the world.

At its best, this is what tourism informed by the humanities achieves: a lasting change to how we see the world and our place within it. At the very least, our view can be broadened and our understanding expanded by the experience. Looking forward, we need to find ways to broaden and deepen the connections between the humanities and tourism in the state so that all Maine visitors can take away deep and meaningful experiences that bring them back again and again and lead them to encourage others to follow, just as Thoreau and Homer did before them. Finally, and perhaps above all, we need to prepare our residents to be culturally savvy hosts who appreciate for themselves Maine’s rich literary, artistic, and humanistic traditions and in turn can share these with visitors from away. 78

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ENDNOTE 1. Mike Wilson’s blog about this trip is available on the Maine Woods Discovery website: http://www .mainewoodsdiscovery.com/2014/07/11/maine -woods-rare-opportunity-immersion-nature/

REFERENCES Allen, Mel. 2015. “Thoreau’s Maine: A Photo Story of Adventure.” Yankee Magazine. http://www .yankeemagazine.com/article/features /thoreaus-maine-adventure Calhoun, Charles. 2000. “Promoting Cultural Tourism.”

Maine Policy Review 9(2): 92–99.

Caton, Kellee. 2014. “Underdisciplinarity: Where Are the Humanities in Tourism Education?” Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education 15: 24–33.

Cenki, Pavel. 2006. This Vast Book of Nature: Writing the Landscape of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, 1784–1911. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.

Cramer, Jeffrey S. 2009. The Maine Woods: A Fully Annotated Edition. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. Creative Economy Council. 2006. Maine’s Creative Economy: Connecting Creativity, Commerce and Community. Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, University of Maine, Orono.

Griswold, Wendy. 2002. “History + Resources = A Sense of Place.” Maine Policy Review 11(1): 76–84.

Herbert, David. 2001. “Literary Places, Tourism and the Heritage Experience.” Annals of Tourism Research 28(2): 312–333.

Johns, Elizabeth. 2002. Winslow Homer: The Nature of Observation. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Johnson, Patricia Claudette. 2014. “Cultural Literacy, Cosmopolitanism and Tourism Research.” Annals of Tourism Research 44 (January): 255–269.

Milliken, Roger, Jr. 2007. “Adding a New Leg to the Economic Stool in Maine’s North Woods.” Maine Policy Review 16(2): 116–120.

Routhier, Jessica Skwire. 2015. “The Common Good: Collaboration Among Cultural Institutions in Maine.”

Maine Policy Review 24(1): 105–110.

Schmitt, Catherine. 2015. “Maine Sea Grant and the Humanities: Marine Science (and History and Art) for Maine People.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 91–93.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

United Nations World Tourism Association (UNWTO). 2014.

Tourism Highlights: 2014 Edition. UNWTO, Barcelona. http://mkt.unwto.org/publication/unwto-tourism -highlights-2014-edition Vail, David. 2007. “Tourism Strategy for the Maine Woods: A Big Push to World Class.” Maine Policy Review 16(2): 104–115.

Vail, David, and Harold Daniel. 2012. “Consumer Support for a Maine Woods Tourism Quality Label.” Maine Policy Review 21(2): 68–80.

Weigle, Marta. 1992. “Exposition and Mediation: Mary Colter, Edna Fergusson, and the Santa Fe/Harvey Popularization of the Native Southwest, 1902–1940.”

Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 12(3): 116–150.

Kreg Ettenger is associate professor of anthropology and chair of the program in tourism and hospitality at the University of Southern Maine. His interests include sustainable tourism, cultural heritage, ethnography, and community development. He has worked in indigenous communities in the United States and Canada on environmental, economic development, and other projects.

Kim, Hyounggon, and Sarah L. Richardson. 2003. “Motion Picture Impacts on Destination Images.” Annals of Tourism Research 30(1): 216–237.

Kinghorn, George. 2015. “Regionalism and Contemporary Artists in Maine: Opportunities and Challenges.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 82–88.

Maine Office of Tourism. 2014. Five-Year Strategic Plan, 2014–2019. Maine Department of Economic & Community Development, Augusta.

McKercher, Bob. 2002. “Towards a Classification of Cultural Tourists.” International Journal of Tourism Research 4(1): 29–38.

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Maine’s Quality of Place: PLACE, THE HUMANITIES, AND PUBLIC POLICY IN MAINE

“What Kind of Place Do We Want to Live In?” Place, the Humanities, and Public Policy in Maine

by Carol Nordstrom Toner

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n the summer of 2014 plans emerged for a new landfill proposed for the town of Argyle in a location close to the Penobscot Nation’s land and water. The Penobscot people, in response to this proposal, issued a resolution stating their opposition to the proposed site for the landfill and outlining the threat to their environment, their people, and their culture. In July, the Penobscot people led a protest march through Old Town and turned out in impressive numbers at a Department of Environmental Protection public meeting. At that meeting, about 60 people, many of them members of the Penobscot Nation, spoke out against the proposal, basing their opposition to the landfill on its threat to the environment and their way of life. In his public statement of opposition, Chief Kirk Francis referenced the 1980 Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act, saying that settlement “was based on…enhancement of cultural practices critical to the identity of our people, including the ability to hunt, fish and practice our federally-protected subsistence lifestyle” (Bangor Daily News, July 2, 2014). Tribal member Maria Girouard of the Penobscot Nation Cultural and Historic Preservation Department also testified, saying that the plan jeopardized all creatures living in the area. She urged protection of the Penobscot River, calling it a sacred river.

And finally tribal historian James Francis spoke against the landfill proposal, explaining the Penobscot Nation’s cultural attachment to this place. Francis underscored the importance of place by asking, “What kind of place do we want to live in?”

James Francis’s question asks us to think about place and the quality of place, and his question also links the public meeting to public policy. His question, “What kind of place do we want to live in?” is ultimately a public policy question. Members of the Penobscot Nation and other local people attended the committee hearing to influence public policy. They informed the committee that they wanted their land to be free of

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pollution so that they could hunt there, and they wanted the Penobscot River to be clean so they could eat the fish. When the Penobscots and others testified against the landfill proposal, they demonstrated a participatory approach to policy making. According to University of Maine political scientist Kenneth Palmer, such an approach is typical of Maine’s policy-making process.

Maine’s state government, Palmer argues, is characterized by a “moralistic or participatory culture,” one that “stresses the importance of community and the obligation of citizens to take part in its governance” (Palmer 2010: 27). In their public testimony, the Penobscot people contributed to the shaping of public policy, thus taking part in the state’s governance. The state requested input from local communities on these policy questions: Is another landfill necessary, and if so, where should the landfill be placed? The citizens responded with thoughtful testimony, and in September 2014, the Department of Environmental Protection ruled against the proposed landfill. In this case, the Penobscots and other local people demonstrated the effectiveness of people working together to protect the quality of place.

In a political culture that stresses active citizen participation, as is the case in Maine, an informed citizenry is essential to good government. And the humanities—the study of people through history and literature and philosophy—and the social sciences—sociology and anthropology and political science—prepare people to exercise their citizenship in a responsible way, as James Francis and the others did in the summer of 2014. They understood and drew from the history and culture of their people, making their testimony more powerful and more persuasive.

Similarly, in the book Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues eloquently that the humanities and liberal education are essential to a democratic form of government. The title, Not for Profit, reflects

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her thesis that the purpose of education is not primarily to create economic growth, but rather to provide an educated citizenry necessary for an effective democracy.

She laments the decline in support for the humanities and argues for the importance of humanities in a democracy (Nussbaum 2010: 2): Thirsty for national profit, nations, and their systems of education, are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive.

If this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements. The future of the world’s democracies hangs in the balance.

Without history, how can we know where we came from?

Without literature, how can we learn compassion and empathy for others? And without philosophy, how can we imagine what a good society might be? As members of a democratic society, we all participate in the making of public policy to a greater or lesser extent. The humanities teach us how to think critically, which means thinking for ourselves rather than blindly following the loudest voices. And the humanities teach us compassion and imagination so that we can learn what is best for the common good, not just for ourselves.

In addition to the act of participating in public policy making, James Francis’s comments suggest something more specific about place in Maine when he asked, “What kind of place do we want to live in?” He echoes the cultural geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan, who said, “Space plus culture equals place” (Tuan 1977: 4). Tuan has written extensively about people’s attachment to special places, including Native peoples’ attachment to sacred places. He refers to such attachment as topophilia, which is “the affective bond between people and place”(Tuan 1974: 4). Art critic and fourth-generation Maine summer resident Lucy Lippard also wrote about topophilia in her book The Lure of the Local, Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society in which she claims, “places have influenced my life as much as, perhaps more than, people.” It is the local that lures her, that draws her to examine the nature of place where people and landscapes interact. She writes, “The intersections of nature, culture, and history…form the MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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ground on which we stand—our land, our place, the local” (Lippard 1997: 4, 7).

While many of us understand these feelings of attachment to place, some critics warn that topophilia may lead to overly sentimental nostalgia, resulting in a sense of place that is backward-looking, static, and exclusive. Some people who love a particular place often resist change of any sort, preferring to keep the place exactly the same. Cultural geographer Doreen Massey challenges this conservative understanding of place, calling on defenders of place to reject this static interpretation. Massey urges us to embrace a more progressive idea, a “global sense of place,” by which she means a sense of place that is open to new ideas and new people.

She advocates a sense of place that includes the history of in-migration and out-migration, connecting the local place to places beyond (Massey 1994). She argues that place should be understood as contested and changing because we all have our own ideas about place. In fact there are many senses of place. Massey broadens our understanding of place so that it is inclusive and welcoming to newcomers. Recently arrived immigrants become part of our sense of place in Maine in the same way that earlier immigrants did. Massey explains the value of both roots (as in staying put) and routes (as in traveling), and says, “The new ‘intrusions’ are no more from outside, no more ‘out of place’ than were, in their time, many of the components of the currently accepted ‘character of the place’” (Massey 1995: 183).

…place should be understood as contested and changing because we all have our own ideas about place.

Many of the ideas presented here, concerning place, the humanities, and participatory public policy, are integrated into the Maine studies program at the University of Maine. Drawing from many disciplines and sources, students in the program read Maine-based fiction and poetry, history and folklore, sociology, and archaeology. They examine diaries, letters, annual reports, maps, government documents, economic analyses, art, and films. They consider the concept of place and how it intersects with public policy. They ask what 81

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does place mean? How do people interact with the landscape in the making of place? Whose stories are left out of popular images of Maine? And what kind of place do we want to live in?

At the same time, the program allows students to pursue their own Maine-related interests through interdisciplinary and community-based research. Coming to the program from all around the state, these students bring their personal stories and local interests to their graduate research. For example, one student who grew up raking blueberries on her family’s blueberry barrens wanted to research the present-day blueberry industry and the quality of life that the migrant workers experience, asking, “What are the living and working conditions for the migrant blueberry workers?” Another student applied Martin Luther King’s ideas about minimum wage to Maine and found that even though the state’s minimum wage is slightly higher than the national average, it is not enough to live on, it is not a living wage. What kind of a place do we want to live in?

Having grown up near the Medomak River, one student investigated the alewives-enhancement program in her hometown. She researched the history of alewife protection and how the current stakeholders have responded to the state’s public policy as represented in the alewife sustainability program. Another student, inspired by the work and methods of anthropologist James Acheson in his book The Lobster Gangs of Maine (1988), interviewed a bloodworm (a type of marine worm) digger about his work in this multimillion dollar industry. Just as Acheson has high regard for lobstermen’s knowledge of lobstering, this student was impressed by the worm digger’s knowledge about the resource and his concern for its sustainability. She concluded that when workers themselves understand the resource and the need to protect it from overharvesting, the state would do well to include them when writing policy intended to protect the industry.

For a local art teacher in the Maine studies program, the state’s public art offers an opportunity to consider how public art reflects the state’s history and culture. She examined many forms of public art, including murals that were completed during the New Deal era, the more recent and controversial History of Maine Labor mural created by Judy Taylor, and granite sculptures completed in the last few years through the Schoodic Sculpture Symposium. Following the lead of art critic Lucy Lippard, this student pointed to the ways in which art reflects a sense of place, and she urged MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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K–12 art teachers to integrate public art into the curriculum. Another student followed her interest in innovation and examined Maine’s nineteenth-century innovators by studying patent records. She found an impressive amount of innovation embedded in these records—patents related to logging, lumbering, papermaking, farming, shipbuilding, fishing, and textiles. She described patents for water-powered custom saws to cut veneers and blind slats and shingles and tooth picks, to name just a few of the recorded patents. Guided by the insights of American studies scholar Kent Ryden and his focus on the interaction between people and landscapes, she mapped the location of the patent holders to demonstrate that nineteenth century innovations were place-based, meaning the innovations reflected the use of the landscape itself (Ryden 2001). For example, she found that the greatest number of forest-related patents was submitted in the Bangor area, Maine’s most important lumber town in that era. Linking this study to Maine’s twenty-first century innovators, she asked what conditions led to this flourishing of innovation in the nineteenth century and how those successes might inform today’s innovation networks.

These are just a few of the ways that students in the Maine studies program engage with the state’s history and culture, drawing from the humanities to increase their understanding about place and public policy. The Maine studies program, as well as many other humanities-based programs located both within and outside the classroom, provide the opportunity to link Maine history and culture to current events and policy making. Fairminded policymakers will surely see that the humanities are not useless frills (Nussbaum 2010) that we can discard during difficult economic times, but instead the humanities are the foundation of our democracy. Because Maine enjoys a tradition of participatory political culture, we all benefit when our citizens and our leaders are well prepared to analyze proposed policies and to determine what is best for Maine’s people and the environment. In Maine, where one of the state’s strengths is the quality of place, we draw from the humanities to learn about other eras and other cultures so that we can preserve the quality of place and imagine a better place for future generations. As the Penobscot people demonstrated in the summer of 2014, our historic and cultural connections to place may result in a greater sense of responsibility for the quality of our place. -

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REFERENCES Acheson, James. 1988. The Lobster Gangs of Maine.

University Press of New England, Hanover, NH. Lippard, Lucy. 1997. The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. The New Press, New York.

Tuan, Yi Fu. 1974. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Tuan, Yi Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Massey, Doreen. 1994. Space, Place and Gender. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Massey, Doreen. 1995. “Places and Their Pasts,” History Workshop Journal 39:182–192.

Nussbaum, Martha. 2010. Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. Palmer, Kenneth. 2010. “Maine’s Paradoxical Politics.”

Maine Policy Review 19(1): 26–34.

Ryden, Kent. 2001. Landscape with Figures: Nature & Culture in New England. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.

“Mount Ktaadn from W. Butterfield’s near the Grand Schoodic Lake.” Franz Graeter drew this image of Mount Katahdin in 1836 while serving as illustrator for Charles T. Jackson’s expedition in Maine. The illustration is Plate VII from the book Atlas of plates illustrating the Geology of the State of Maine accompanying the first report on the geology of the state

by Charles T. Jackson, engraving and lithography by Thomas Moore, 1837. (Collections of the Maine Historical Society, Maine Memory Network Item 6416) MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Carol Nordstrom Toner is director of the Maine studies program, a concentration within the master of arts in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Maine. Her research focuses on Maine labor history, immigration, and women’s history. She is the author of Persisting Traditions: Artisan Work and Culture in Bangor, Maine, 1820–1860, and coeditor of Somalis in Maine: Crossing Cultural Currents.

Penobscots in 1870. An image scanned from a black and white photograph identified as a copy made from a stereoscopic slide by Moses L. Averill, Old Town, Maine. The description on the original photograph was Indian Island, “showing the people living there,” around the year 1870. Several of the individuals in the photograph are holding baskets in the process of being made. (Maine Historical Photograph Collection, MS 316, University of Maine Fogler Library Special Collections)

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Regionalism and Contemporary Artists in Maine: Opportunities and Challenges

by George Kinghorn

I

n a 2002 essay “History + Resources = A Sense of Place,” Wendy Griswold asserts that “unlike many states, Maine has an unusually strong ‘sense of place,’ or cultural regionalism.” In no small part, Maine’s rich artistic history that includes art luminaries such as Thomas Cole, Frederic E. Church, Winslow Homer, John Marin, Andrew Wyeth, Berenice Abbott, Marsden Hartley, and scores of other important artists, contributes to this regionalism. This artistic tradition, rooted largely in the depiction of Maine’s diverse landscape, has defined Maine’s sense of place, and this is clearly evident in Maine’s visual art community and museums today. For many Maine artists and galleries this bold sense of regionalism is a boon. But for new generations of contemporary artists who are calling Maine home, this regionalist focus may be restrictive. After all, there’s a diversity of contemporary art styles, art media, and creative approaches being explored, and in our information-rich society, artists have the ability to stay in tune and be inspired by what’s happening in art markets all over the globe.

I had the pleasure of interviewing a few of Maine’s accomplished artists and a contemporary curator to discuss the notion of Maine’s regionalism and the challenges and opportunities of sustaining a career as a contemporary artist in Maine. We also explored the role Maine’s cultural institutions and commercial galleries play in creating new audiences and collectors of contemporary art.

George Kinghorn: Maine has a great sense of pride fueled, in part, by its rich history and natural beauty.

Of course, there’s much to be proud of including the beautiful coastline, picturesque mountains, untouched lands, and the resilient attitude of its residents. There exists a sense of regionalism that is reflected in how many individuals view and promote visual art in the state. These strong feelings about Maine’s sense of place has prompted a lot of discussion among artists and others about the notion of what constitutes Maine art and how we define a Maine artist within the context of contemporary society.

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Anna Hepler: We need to define what we’re talking about in terms of regionalism. There are many regions here and not just one sense of place. I think we’re talking mainly about the tourist industry as it careens up and down the coast of Maine. This is more about the romance that people from away have about Maine; this dictates a kind of romance that’s evident in the art market.

GK: Yes. For our purposes, I’m referring to a regionalism that comprises this romantic vision of Maine that is linked to the state’s artistic history. It encompasses not only the charm of coastal communities, but in my view, also the natural beauty of interior Maine extending to Mount Katahdin and our rural areas. Some Mainebased artists forthrightly assert “I’m a Maine artist,” while others find the label to be professionally confining.

Do you think this regionalism and/or romanticized vision of Maine benefits or hinders contemporary artists working in Maine today?

Lauren Fensterstock: I’ve lived here for 14 years. I consider myself a Maine artist and love living here, but being from Maine is not my primary identity. Does that mean that I have to make the content of my work about Maine? I find that I have a complex identity that is the result of many facets of my life. I think with any system of categorization, there’s simplification. What is problematic for me is that some exhibitions in Maine such as biennials and other shows are grounded in these categories or distinctions. These locally focused criteria may cut off possibilities for greater exchange and dialogue with the rest of the world.

Suzette McAvoy: We recently hosted an interview at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) with Deborah Weisgall, co-juror of the 2014 CMCA Biennial. Of course, the topic of “Who is a Maine artist?” as well as “What’s a Maine biennial supposed to be?” came up. One attendee, who was an artist, took exception to the fact that artists who don’t live in Maine 84

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Lauren Fensterstock works in installation, sculpture, and mixed media. Fensterstock lives and works in Portland, Maine.

Philip Frey works in painting and drawing.

Frey lives and works in Sullivan, Maine.

year-round, are allowed to apply to the CMCA Biennial. My feeling is if we excluded artists who are seasonal Maine residents, we would not truly be reflective of what contemporary art in Maine is at the present.

Interestingly, this topic of what defines a Maine artist also came up in a discussion at the University of New England in conjunction with their Maine Women Pioneers exhibitions.

GK: At one point was an artist’s year-round residency a criterion for the CMCA Biennial?

SM: No, we’ve always defined our mission as showing artists with strong ties to Maine. There are so many artists who don’t necessarily live here year around, but have ties to Maine. They may not be representing Maine in their work, but their art is influenced by a deep connection to Maine. In the recent biennial, there’s conceptual art, installation, video, and traditional painting. Works based on nature is a common thread; this may be the Maine connection.

Philip Frey: The question that I’ve been pondering the last couple of years is: If a Maine artist is producing works with Maine subject matter or that may be labeled “Maine art,” can they be taken seriously in art markets outside the state?

AH: I’m not interested in being labeled anything. We need to distinguish between what the market asks and needs in order to sell and as a way to secure its audiences, MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Anna Hepler works in sculpture, installation, prints and drawing.

Hepler lives and works in Eastport, Maine.

Suzette McAvoy is the executive director of the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockport, Maine.

versus what we experience as artists living here. There is a prejudice that regionalism is associated with folk art and craft; it’s a different market altogether. If regionalism is a cloak an artist wears for whatever reason, it will inevitably exist as a prejudice in terms of trying to shift work from a regional market to an urban and international one.

GK: Without doubt, Maine has a certain mystique.

This beautiful terrain has inspired and been the subject of works by so many artists throughout history. As visual art has evolved to encompass so many styles, media, and diverse approaches, the notion of the Maine artist or Maine art, particularly painting, is still real.

We may agree that this viewpoint is outdated, but there’s this romanticized notion of Maine and that lures many visitors (including art consumers) to the state.

SM: The image of the artist standing at an easel on the rugged coastline with crashing surf is for many still the perception of the Maine artist. I think now there’s a division between artists who embrace Maine as a subject matter and artists who work in Maine. I think it’s easier for those artists who embrace Maine as a subject matter in their art to accept themselves being termed or labeled a Maine artist. But there are so many artists here who don’t use Maine as a subject matter such as artists producing abstract or conceptual work.

AH: It’s part of the Maine brand. I mean as crass as that is, the artists have been a part of the branding of the state.

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That gets us right back to tourism and the whole romantic legacy that intensified in the 1920s. People started to build those lovely fancy houses along the coast.

There was a need to uphold the whole idea of this romantic other place, this getaway that is so beautiful that artists want to come and paint the coast and live here.

I think that the primary market here is a tourist collection market and that’s the art that’s being financially supported. At least that’s the art that is leaving Maine.

LF: I think it’s possible to build an arts destination that transcends this regional notion. There are institutions in other places such as MASS MoCA [North Adams, Massachusetts] and Dia: Beacon [Beacon, New York] that have successfully accomplished this; there’s the potential of building some other economy around this broader idea.

AH: Like it or not, I think artists and the people who consume art are both perceived as a leisure class. People coming to Maine to relax from their other hectic lives are lumped together with this notion of independently wealthy artists. These artists have all this time to devote to philosophic and superficial pursuits and buy into that same culture. I think it’s a pernicious cycle where these two elements are inextricably wedded to each other.

There’s the idea that objects of art can bring a similar leisure status, or the symbol of one, if you invest in them.

PF: Another aspect to consider is Maine’s isolation.

Portland’s a big place, but travel not far outside the city and it’s rural. Maine is an approachable place, but there’s also ruggedness to the state. There’s a close connection to nature, and that thread may run through a lot of work

by Maine artists, even those who are abstract or more conceptual.

LF: If it is true that the art market here is fueled by people from away who will buy art here because they want to take a piece of Maine back with them, then the market will continue to favor things that in some ways explore Maine as a place.

PF: I took part in a Maine residency a couple years ago and experienced this odd confluence of things happening.

You’re in Maine, looking at Maine through all of the windows of my studio, and making art of these views. At one point, I was out painting on location, when a person came along and wanted to buy the painting that MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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I was working on. They’re part of the leisure class and I was lumped right into the idea we’re discussing: I’m not part of that class, but rather a working artist. In this instance, I’m looking at and painting this beautiful scene of an island. The collector is staying there for the summer, and he’s looking at the same thing.

SM: So that person is buying into this particular vision of Maine.

LF: There are certainly many other narratives, but the Maine coastal landscape as a subject is so pervasive that it’s sometimes difficult to exist outside of this. I don’t think that a Maine venue has completely transcended this notion.

GK: What do you feel are the challenges and opportunities of being a contemporary artist in Maine?

LF: One of the challenges of being a contemporary artist in Maine is economics. You have to be able to make a living from your work and the reality is there’s not a big market here. There are only a million people in this state and only a small percentage of them buy work. Also, there are a limited number of state or foundation grants in Maine. I think that Maine can’t economically support all of the artists that we have. The artists have to reach out to larger markets. In a larger market, you’re able to network with people from other larger markets. I think that when we only create opportunities for Maine artists to exhibit, and we don’t bring in artists from other states, we have lost an opportunity to make connections that may boost Maine careers. Also, by bringing artists in, we raise the value of Maine as a place to exhibit and enhance the dialogue that’s happening here.

PF: For me, it’s just the reverse. I’ve been mostly selling here in this state through a handful of galleries, and there’s plenty of work for a representational landscape painter. So the issue for me is that being a Maine artist may be a hindrance, particularly when trying to find representation outside of the state. Galleries outside of Maine may not necessarily want to carry works that appear to be regional in scope or of Maine subjects.

SM: The Maine galleries that are representing artists are not necessarily making connections for artists outside the state. There’s a big burden today for artists to not only produce the work, but also to market themselves 86

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outside the state and seek exhibition opportunities. We ask a lot of artists these days.

GK: Most artists’ income is derived from diverse sources. Many rely, to varying degrees, on sales of their artwork to sustain their creative practice. When you survey Maine’s current commercial gallery landscape, are there adequate opportunities for you to sell your art here? Have you had greater success selling your works in markets outside of Maine?

SM: Throughout the history of art in Maine the market has been primarily outside of the state. We now have institutions in Maine that are showing really professional-level exhibitions and artists, but the commercial market hasn’t grown at that same level because the collector base still isn’t there. While there may be more exhibiting opportunities, there are still not as many opportunities to sell works within the state.

PF: I would say 95 percent of my collectors are from out of state. They have second homes and come from the larger metropolitan areas. In a sense, the market is still outside of the state, and people are coming here to buy.

Even with the museums and various galleries, I think it’s still the case that the population of Maine is not going to be able to support all of the artists we have.

LF: At the moment, most of my income is derived from sales and supplemented by speaking engagements and occasional part-time teaching. I would say 98 percent of this is from outside of this state. Even though I’ve been able to build a reputation as an artist in Maine and exhibited my work widely here, I’ve never been able to establish a commercial market in Maine. I’ve had very few sales in Maine and never sold my larger, more involved pieces here.

SM: In some ways the label Maine artist is actually a boon to certain artists in terms of marketing their work.

Some collectors only collect work that is by a Maine artist or portrays Maine subject matter. Even though an artist may have a broader audience and have produced work that encompasses other subjects or locales, some collectors want only their Maine work. It can be confining.

LF: I would like to bring this back to the economic needs of the artist. Much of my work is installation and MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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I can’t afford to do a project unless there’s a production budget. The larger projects I’ve completed have been outside of the state because these institutions and museums have more money available. This is essential for an artist to realize a bigger vision.

AH: Yes, these institutions are able to commission works and provide for a whole experience.

LF: A lot of art spaces in Portland have closed and some of the major commercial galleries are now gone. It will be curious to see, but I think Rockland is really going to be the center with the Farnsworth as the collecting institution and CMCA that will be able to take risks.

GK: What role do Maine’s visual arts institutions play in advancing contemporary art in the state?

With regard to programming, do you think Maine’s art museums are providing adequate opportunities to view contemporary art and is there a balance between Maine-based exhibitions and works produced by artists beyond our border?

SM: I think it’s a challenge for institutions in the state to get funding for exhibitions that are not Mainefocused. Some sponsors want to be seen as promoting and supporting this narrow definition of Maine. My goal is to exhibit a diversity of work that says “this is Maine today.” Maine is full of all kinds of art and people these days.

LF: The role of Maine museums should not be to solely promote Maine artists. Just because I live in Maine, doesn’t mean I’m not interested in other ideas and things from around the world. Whatever the subject matter of your work, I think Maine artists should stay engaged and aware of what’s happening globally. It’s always beneficial to see what else is happening.

PF: When I look at the Portland Museum of Art, sometimes I feel like it’s really weighted towards the biggest names. In terms of exhibitions, the rest of the Maine artists aren’t really represented there. There is, however, a chance for artists to be exposed in their biennial exhibition.

SM: For CMCA, our role is to provide a platform for exhibiting work that we feel is important and reflects the best of contemporary art produced in Maine. With our 87

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new building we’ll be able to provide more visibility for contemporary art produced in the state. We certainly want to add to the conversation in a way that expands the notion of art. It’s about exposing the public and other artists in the state to the wide range of work being created throughout the state. Maine art can hold its own with any place in the country and it’s important to get across that there’s quality work being created here.

GK: When I first arrived at the University of Maine Museum of Art [UMMA], I encountered a few individuals who were puzzled that the museum’s focus was not exclusively Maine art. I explained that it has never been the mission of UMMA, and the majority of works in the collection are not by Maine-based artists or of Maine subject matter. I have always maintained that as an academic museum, focusing primarily on exhibiting and collecting works created since 1945, our mission is to introduce citizens including Maine artists to a diversity of creative approaches being explored by artists from all over the country. Also, it’s important to place significant Maine artists within a larger and more global context and, I hope, through exhibiting at UMMA, their works will be introduced to larger art markets.

LF: This is a conversation that I feel like I’ve had many times. It’s interesting that when I travel to the Museum of Fine Art Boston, I don’t expect to see Boston artists.

Likewise, when I go to the Museum of Modern Art, I don’t necessarily expect to see works by New York artists.

The expectations placed on our art institutions with regard to this heavily weighted Maine focus seems to be much stronger here than in other states, and I feel it is damaging to the intellectual growth of our community.

SM: I think this particular conversation continues to happen in Maine because of the long history of artists being in the state and the disproportionate number of artists relative to the rest of the population. I think that programming has improved over the time that I’ve been in Maine. The museums are all doing more contemporary shows and featuring some contemporary Maine artists. Also, the Portland Museum of Art is acquiring and integrating more pieces by Maine artists into their collection. The more they can bring Maine artists into that continuum of American art; it will continue to break down those boundaries.

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LF: It’s not just about contemporary Maine art, but institutions such as Colby and Bowdoin that have more encyclopedic art collections.

SM: It’s such a service to artists in Maine to be able to see these important works in the flesh and not have to travel outside the state. It’s especially important that children growing up in Maine have the opportunity to be exposed to a range of art.

GK: What is the curator’s role in advancing the careers of contemporary artists in Maine? Have you had a beneficial or positive experience working with curators?

LF: I think the most important thing that the curators can do is uphold a certain level of quality and engagement. Having curators who are aware of larger art trends and ideas internationally is important. Also, it’s important to introduce Maine artists to what’s happening across the globe and to set high standards for artists.

SM: Personally, one important role is nurturing the next generation. The CMCA offers a lot of educational programming for all ages. As an institution it’s essential to expose young people in Maine to work that’s being done in the state. Many of these children would typically not be exposed to any original artwork. Ultimately, we provide opportunities for engagement.

AH: Curators have a responsibility to remain open and curious. Also, I know there’s a need for efficiency and curators are often pressed for time, but they should visit studios and find time for original research. Without the direct experience of visiting with artists, opportunities that present themselves such as exhibitions may be more linked to a popularity contest.

PF: The conversation that happens in a studio visit is so helpful. It gets me thinking about different viewpoints.

The curator may come in to view the work, and they are looking at it within a larger context. The curator may point out something that I didn’t see.

LF: Most of the time I’m alone in my room putting things together. When you’re working on a big project with a curator, it’s encouraging to have someone whom you respect invest in your work. Investing means having a deep look at your work and process. I think having the opportunity to have a deep conversation is important.

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AH: To have someone champion some aspect of what you’re doing is a huge benefit in terms of the affirmation.

But I think that the greatest gift is a little nudge. In the best relationships, the curator can bring amazing insight to your work and a perspective that you haven’t thought about. It’s like seeing yourself for the first time or in a new way.

GK: The whole process of organizing an exhibition is a collaboration between artist and curator. You’re creating an experience together, addressing spatial concerns, discussing content, and considering the viewer experience.

SM: Yes, there has to be a lot of trust on both sides.

As a curator, the artists are trusting you to present their work in a truthful manner; they’re trusting you to present it to the public in a way that is respectful.

Likewise, the curator has to trust that the artist is going to come through with the work within the agreed upon time.

GK: At the state level, do you feel that enough is being done to support visual artists? What are some of the challenges that exist?

SM: One of the critical things is for the state government to embrace that the arts are a valuable resource for the state. Maine has probably contributed more than any other single state to the history of American art (short of New York City alone!), but no one from the state legislature or the governor’s office seems to be speaking about it.

PF: This may be getting a little political, but when Judy Taylor’s labor mural was removed, I wrote a letter to the Bangor Daily News and Ellsworth American and wanted to note how much the arts have brought to the state financially. When you take all of the creative industries, including the tech industry, it was in the billions of dollars. This was according to a study by the Maine Center for Business and Economic Research and the New England Environmental Finance Center at the University of Southern Maine, the creative economy in 2002 paid a total of $2.5 billion in direct wages and $200 million of which was in the arts and culture industries. I think we need to put pressure on the state government, individually and collectively, to point out that arts are a major contributor to our economy.

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LF: There has been attention given to this idea of creative economy and arts as an economic engine.

Within this equation, the emphasis is always on the income and benefit to service industries such as hotels and restaurants and never on the actual artists as professionals who also need to bring in revenue. I think agencies like the Maine Arts Commission need to advocate for artists as professionals.

AH: I was going to say that I think the current administration obviously doesn’t value the arts much. The Maine Arts Commission has implemented some changes that have reduced funding for individual artists. The new granting policies and the small sums being awarded suggest a lack of trust in artists to produce something worthwhile. There are all these strings attached to grants.

We are constantly proving, stating, and writing our own eloquent justifications for why we should exist.

LF: The new grant structure does not seem to acknowledge artists for excellence in research and production.

It’s about art in the service of socially acceptable goals. If art supports education, then it’s legitimate. If art supports community building, then it’s legitimate. But, art as a distinct field of intellectual research is not valued and promoted. It’s often geared toward quantity of public engagement, rather than the quality of the research and innovation in the field.

SM: Art shouldn’t have to justify itself by being something other than what it is. I’m all for artists’ work that has an element of engagement, but only if that’s genuinely what they do as their practice. An artist’s solitary work in the studio should also be supported.

LF: I think that this is all part of a larger conservative social agenda that’s infiltrating our politics and society.

This agenda is anti-intellectual, anti-individual.

SM: The whole controversy started years ago with the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] and Mapplethorpe, and it’s been a struggle ever since. There’s a fear that if we give artists money to do their work, they’re going to take advantage of the opportunity and make work that’s controversial.

LF: There is so much political discourse right now about Maine’s economy and the need for job creation. We have a social prejudice against artists and those who are 89

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in creative professions. Many don’t consider these legitimate jobs. If we change our attitude about artists as professionals, we can better engage the creative industries and their capacity to be economic contributors in the state. We have to get over these anti-intellectual or anti-individual prejudices.

SM: The other day, the governor of Massachusetts gave this great talk about how their state is supporting the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). I thought: Wow! I would love that to happen in Maine. To have Maine’s governor stand up and talk about supporting contemporary institutions, and arts and culture in general, would be great. It seems like the leadership is not fully embracing the state’s history of the arts.

PF: I think part of the problem sometimes is that most people don’t understand the basic value of art. There’s a mystery in creating something by hand. Unlike other fields, art is not necessarily quantifiable. We can indeed show its economic impact on a graph or pie chart and we all know (or should know if we don’t) of its more intangible yet profound effects: creative thinking and one way to open our hearts and minds to our innate qualities and the natural world around us. I think part of the job of curators, gallerists, and educators is to excite and educate people—to try and describe something in art that’s indescribable. Also, there’s this misconception that the arts are elitist. This is perhaps one factor that institutions and politicians are railing against.

GK: This discussion will appear in a special issue of Maine Policy Review that explores the intersection of the arts and humanities with public policy. Do you have a specific policy suggestion that can improve the contemporary arts infrastructure in Maine?

LF: I would encourage policymakers to develop opportunities that generate cultural trade between Maine and other states. By bringing out-of-state artists to Maine, we raise the profile of Maine as a national-level art scene (a place where artists from all over the country want to show and where collectors want to buy); we expose Maine artists to current trends (making their work relevant to a larger audience); and help Maine professionals to network with visiting colleagues (opening relationships to profitable new opportunities). By sending Maine art out of state, we introduce our artists to larger markets, bring new ideas back to Maine, and create diplomacy for all of Maine’s cultural endeavors.

PF: The contemporary arts structure in Maine needs four things, all of which are interrelated : (1) recognition and promotion of its vital and far-reaching influence and intersection with our culture, businesses, and education system; (2) more financial support for individual artists to work on important projects that may not be specifically linked to education; (3) financial support for bringing curators and artists together to foster conversations, collaborations, and exhibitions; and (4) active promotion of Maine artists outside the state, creating conduits to museums, galleries, and other institutions and perhaps bringing an art fair (like Art Miami or Art Basel) to the state or create our own art fair. REFERENCES Griswold, Wendy. 2002. “History + Resources = A Sense of Place.” Maine Policy Review 11(1): 76–84.

George Kinghorn is the executive director and curator of the University of Maine Museum of Art, located in Bangor.

AH: I have a suggestion that is a precursor to policy: Many people involved in arts administration are themselves unsure about the value of arts and culture and struggle to defend it. As a result, the current trend for arts granting organizations is to fund efforts that engage the community with predetermined outcomes. This is an indicator of insecurity. What is needed through all levels of arts infrastructure is real conviction about the value of the arts and with it will come trust for the open-ended and necessary exploration that drives artistic innovation.

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Maine’s Quality of Place: MAINE SEA GRANT AND THE HUMANITIES

Maine Sea Grant and the Humanities: Marine Science (and History and Art) for Maine People

by Catherine Schmitt

We must seek through a welding together of science, art, literature, engineering, medicine, law, public administration, and politics to develop a public which will homestead our new spaces in the sea…through an integrated interdisciplinary education in the sea-grant universities.

—Athelstan Spilhaus

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he Maine Sea Grant College Program, a state-federal partnership program based at the University of Maine, is a science-based organization with an interdisciplinary approach to its mission of research, education, and outreach. Sea Grant works at the boundary of science and society, with a research portfolio dedicated to applied science. Sea Grant investigators address questions that are relevant to Maine communities.

Communicating this relevance has demanded that outreach staff in particular incorporate the humanities into their work with Maine’s coastal communities.

This philosophy can be traced to the origin of the Sea Grant concept. In the middle of the twentieth century, oceanographers and marine biologists, including Dana Wallace of Maine, saw a need for universities to do for fisheries and other marine resources what the landgrant concept had done for agriculture. In October 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Pell-Rogers Sea Grant Colleges and Program Act, creating an Office of Sea Grant within the National Science Foundation. Sea Grant moved to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration when that agency was created in 1970.

The University of Maine has hosted Sea Grant since the first funds were awarded to the state in 1971.

While initial efforts focused on marine research and related resource development, it wasn’t long before the program expanded beyond science to communications and community engagement (Abel and Goodwin 1998).

With the hiring of Kathleen (Lignell) Ellis as the first communications coordinator in 1981, writing became an important part of Maine Sea Grant’s work.

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Ellis, a poet, and graphic artist Majo Keleshian, hired in 1985, began a tradition of partnerships with Maine artists and writers. They demonstrated that fine art and creative writing could provide context, perspective, and interest to scientific information, while establishing a distinctive character to Sea Grant products and services.

Over the years, Sea Grant has employed underwater films, documentaries, radio programs, recipes, books, and poetry readings. We continue to work with (and provide financial support to) Maine-based artists such as Kim and Philippe Villiard of Boothbay Harbor, Wendy Turner (Kittery Point), Mimi Gregoire Carpenter (Cape Porpoise), Margaret Campbell (Harpswell), Kimberly Martul-March (Brunswick), and Isaac Wright (Belfast).

Like fishing and working waterfronts, visual and performing artists, writers, and musicians are integral to the cultural landscape of coastal Maine (Creative Economy Council 2006). Marine resources issues cannot be addressed outside of this landscape—or independent of their temporal context. And so history, too, is an important component of Sea Grant’s work.

A recent significant investment in history is the Downeast Fisheries Trail, a network of 45 sites along the coastline of Hancock and Washington counties that demonstrate the fisheries heritage of Downeast communities (http://www.downeastfisheriestrail.org/). Many partner organizations and residents were involved in selecting which sites should be on the trail (and which should not be). The featured locations—from cod-drying stations on Mount Desert Island to the first federal fish hatchery to Wabanaki fishing weirs—not only record and document the rich culture and traditions of Maine communities, but also provide insights into the multitude of fish that once swam the waters of the Gulf of Maine.

Documenting the history of fishing communities has several goals. First among these is education and awareness of Maine’s relationship to the sea and the significant loss of marine animal populations that has occurred over the last 200 years. Knowing that the

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baseline of environmental conditions has shifted (we no longer consider a Gulf of Maine aplenty with giant cod normal) can help build support for ocean science and conservation (Pauly 1995). Recovery and restoration require that we know what we’ve lost and what assets remain.

But the Downeast Fisheries Trail is also about fisheries present. The Downeast Fisheries Trail builds on existing efforts to enhance tourism opportunities as an economic development initiative in the region, which includes the most economically depressed communities in Maine. The trail was informed by research conducted

by Sea Grant marine extension associate Natalie Springuel in Newfoundland, where tourism has provided a means for communities devastated by the loss of cod fisheries (http://www.seagrant.umaine.edu/extension /Newfoundland).

A recent Sea Grant-funded study of four Maine fishing communities identified tourism as one way to diversify and strengthen coastal economies.

Communicating the importance of fishing heritage and waterfront access to permanent residents, seasonal residents, and visitors can help maintain a community’s identity as a fishing community, an identity tied to the resilience of individual fishermen and the fishing industry (Johnson, Henry, and Cameron 2014). (See Ettenger [2015] for further discussion of cultural tourism and the important role that can be played by local residents.)

The humanities are the keepers of “social memory,” a key component of community resilience.1 Social (or collective) memory links past individual and community experiences, for example with fisheries management practices and population declines, with present and future policies (Pillatt 2012). Social memory provides a wealth of ideas on how communities have responded to and adapted to changes in the past, and can be particularly important in times of crisis (Chiarappa and Szylvian 2009; Kofinas and Chapin 2009).

Winslow Homer’s paintings recall a once-plentiful Gulf of Maine and related way of life. Poets keep alive the memory of the sardine canneries that once dominated the economy of many Maine fishing communities.

Today, Sea Grant staff and students chronicle today’s fishing practices and culture with audio and video recordings.2 In 2013, Sea Grant launched The Catch: Writings from Downeast Maine, an annual literary journal produced in association with the Downeast Fisheries Trail.

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Literature, history, and the arts activate social memory of relationships to nature, a strong motivation for ecosystem stewardship and sustainability (Kofinas and Chapin 2009). Without this motivation, what is the value of applied science that seeks to solve society’s problems? In Maine, Sea Grant works for clean coastal waters, vibrant waterfronts, safe and sustainable seafood, and communities that are resilient in the face of change.

To be successful, we need more than science and technology; we need the humanities, so that human communities remember the past, and can envision their future. ENDNOTES 1. See http://seagrant.umaine.edu/blog/community -resilience 2. See: http://www.seagrant.umaine.edu/oral-histories -alewife-eel, Bolster (2012), Schmitt (2011).

REFERENCES Abel, R. and H. Goodwin. 1988. “The Halcyon Days of Sea Grant.” Oceanus 31(3): 3–4.

Bolster, W. Jeffrey. 2012. The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Chiarappa, Michael J., and Kristin M. Szylvian. 2009.

“Heeding the Landscape’s Usable Past: Public History in the Service of a Working Waterfront.” Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum 16:86–113 Creative Economy Council. 2006. Maine’s Creative Economy: Connecting Creativity, Commerce, and Community. Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, Orono, ME. https://mainearts.maine.gov/CMSContent /arts_other/2006_CE_report2.pdf Ettenger, Kreg. 2015. “Making Sense of Place: How the Humanities Enriches Cultural Tourism in Maine.”

Maine Policy Review 24(1): 73–79.

Johnson, Teresa R., Anna Henry, and Cameron Thompson.

2014. In Their Own Words: Fishermen’s Perspectives of Community Resilience. Maine Sea Grant College Program, Orono http://seagrant.umaine.edu/files /pdf-global/InTheirOwnWords_062314.pdf Kofinas, Gary P., and F. Stuar Chapin III. 2009. “Sustaining Livelihoods and Human Well-Being during SocialEcological Change.” In Principles of Ecosystem Stewardship, ed. F. Stewart Chapin, Gary P. Kofinas, and Carl Folke. 55–75. Springer, New York.

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Pauly, Daniel. 1995. “Anecdotes and the Shifting Baseline Syndrome of Fisheries.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10:430.

Pillatt, Toby. 2012. “From Climate and Society to Weather and Landscape.” Archaeological Dialogues 19:29–74.

Schmitt, Catherine. 2011. “Long May They Run.” Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors (Winter).

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Catherine Schmitt directs communications for the Maine Sea Grant College Program at the University of Maine.

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Maine’s Quality of Place: THE POWER OF LANGUAGE IN CHANGING A COMMUNITY’S STORY

The Power of Language in Changing a Community’s Story

by Linda Cross Godfrey

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n August 1, 2013, The Atlantic magazine, NPR’s Marketplace, and Esri computer software company, announced a nationwide immersive-reporting partnership called “American Futures Project.” Eager to prove there are worthwhile economic and cultural successes beyond Wall Street and Broadway addresses, Atlantic reporters James and Deborah Fallows, and NPR host Kai Ryssdal, began criss-crossing America.

Their mission: to select one community in each state that was the best example of resiliency and reinvention.

Two months later the trio came to Eastport, chosen as Maine’s example, and community #4 in the project.

Eastport was placed in an international spotlight.

Thus, began the reporting on Eastport’s 10-year revival and the role language had played in turning the economic tide and reversing negative images that overshadowed efforts to change.

Deborah Fallows, a linguist by education and practice, authored a story titled “Do You Speak Eastport: A Town Teaches Itself to Talk Positive” (2013). Deborah pointed to what linguists call language planning. “I would say that little Eastport, Maine, is engaged in some deliberate language planning of its own. Why? Just as Eastporters are looking to the power of the ocean tides to create energy for the world, they are looking to the power of language to create energy for the town” (Fallows 2013).

It was true. While the term language planning was not known, community visionaries had begun their efforts to inspire change by using words from well known leaders: The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. —Eleanor Roosevelt Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. —Theodore Roosevelt Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. —Martin Luther King

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Specifically selected names for new enterprises brought new thinking: • The Commons, LLC, renovated a twice-condemned 1887 building into a gallery and vacation rental business with a commitment to contribute to the common good.

• Dirigamus, LLC, a local redevelopment group, took Maine’s slogan Dirigo (I Lead) to a new collaboration with Dirigamus (We Lead/Let Us Lead), underscoring the value of many leading, together.

Attitudes began to change, confidence began to grow, and the spirit and energy of the town began to resurface. People began to exhibit pride, the town looked more prosperous, and others began to take notice. Eastport was showing its colors, yet in media reports, political speeches, even in local conversations, last paragraphs, closing lines, and final words still carried negatives.

Focus turned to what were called the DE-words. It seemed that no matter the positive bent of a report or speech, certain words crept in—depressed, dependent, decline, despair—were frequently used in comments about economics, services, and the future. A quiet campaign began to crowd out the DE-words by intentionally using RE-words: rebound, rediscover, redesign, reverse, renew, re-energize. In 2013, leaders harvested a few dozen media stories written about Eastport in the most recent three years, and not a single DE-word was found.

Examples began to show up in marketing materials: • Some call the line between the United States and neighboring Canada a border; many in Eastport call it an opportunity.

• Nearby Old Sow is the largest tidal whirlpool in the western hemisphere. Now, through language planning, it is also referred to it as an aqua vortex.

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Language planning has extended Eastport’s claim beyond being the U.S. place of the first sunrise. Eastport also claims the first moonrise and the first twinkle of the stars. Deep water, dark skies, vibrant retirees, bright youngsters, abundant nature, welcoming people, enriching culture, engaging experiences—all intentionally use language to advantage.

Eastport’s resiliency and reinvention certainly included language planning. Thanks to Deborah Fallows and the American Futures Project for pointing this out.

We can now recommend language planning as a critical early part of any change process—for people, places, and programs. -

Linda Cross Godfrey is president of the Atlantic Leadership Center in Eastport, a partner in The Commons, LLC, and Dirigamus, LLC. She has been facilitator of the Washington County Leadership Institute for 19 years and considers leadership, community building, and Downeast Maine her passions.

REFERENCES

Photo© Robin Farrin

Fallows, Deborah. 2013. “Do You Speak Eastport? A Town Teaches Itself to Talk Positive.” The Atlantic (November 18). http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/11 /do-you-speak-eastport/281586/

Tugboats leaving the harbor to meet ships approaching the port of Eastport via Canadian waters.

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Photo© on Dunbar

Photo© Don Dunbar

New Year’s revelers at StudioWorks prepare for a two-nation celebration: the midnight Great Maple Leaf and Sardine Drop happens twice— first on Canadian time and then an hour later on U.S. time.

Eastport residents are proud of the city’s dark night sky and deep water, its welcoming and walkable downtown, and its long fishing heritage.

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Maine’s Quality of Place: MAPPING THE HISTORY OF THE STATE

Mapping the History of the State: The Historical Atlas of Maine

by Stephen J. Hornsby

T

he Historical Atlas of Maine may well be one of the most significant scholarly achievements in the humanities to come out of the University of Maine.

Conceived in the late 1990s, the atlas was published by the University of Maine Press in 2015. It represents an enormously ambitious attempt to map the historical geography of the state from the end of the last ice age to the end of the millennium in 2000. The atlas combines maps, images, and text in 76 two-page plates to tell the principal stories of the people who have lived over the past 13,000 years in the place we now call Maine. More than 30 faculty and students, mostly at the University of Maine, brought decades of scholarship, as well as a considerable amount of new research, to the project. No other U.S. university has produced such a comprehensive cartographic treatment of an individual state.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, several major historical atlases were published in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. These atlases may have influenced the late Burton Hatlen, professor of English and director of the National Poetry Foundation at the University of Maine, to conceive of a historical atlas for Maine. In the late 1990s, Burt served as interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. In that leadership position, he saw the atlas as a way of bringing faculty in his college together in a joint, interdisciplinary project that would highlight the research strengths of the college and contribute to the university’s outreach mission to the state. Initial funding for the atlas came from a state appropriation in 1999 that was matched by the University of Maine System and University of Maine. The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the largest grant UMaine has ever received from them; a smaller but essential grant from the Bernard Osher Foundation rounded out much of the funding.

Being supported by a great deal of public money, the atlas had to be accessible to the people of Maine and to anyone interested in the state’s history. To tell the story of Maine, editors Stephen J. Hornsby and Richard W. Judd focused on Native peoples, Euro-American exploitation of the state’s resources, and environmental

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history. These themes were set in the larger regional context of New England and the neighboring Canadian provinces. Four chronological sections provided structure to the atlas: “From Ice Age to Borderland, 13,000 BP–1790;” “Shaping Maine, 1790–1850;” “Industrial Maine, 1850–1890;” and “Maine in the Modern Era, 1910–2000.”

The form of the atlas was also vital. Atlas plates had to be designed so that they could be easily read. Text was reduced to a minimum, shifting the weight of storytelling to maps and images. Topics of the plates vary widely, ranging from “Exploring the Gulf of Maine,” “Growth of Settlement,” and “Wabanki Mapping” to “Textiles,” “French Canadian Immigration,” and “Vacationland.” The project’s cartographer Michael Hermann produced hundreds of clear and legible maps and graphs. These were supplemented by dozens of historical maps and images. Final design was undertaken

by Michael Alpert at the University of Maine Press. This combination of scholarship and design proved enormously attractive when the atlas was published. The first printing of 3,000 copies sold out in a week. Maine now has an historical atlas that provides a powerful visual narrative of the state’s history, and an atlas that has few peers anywhere in the world. -

Stephen J. Hornsby is director of the Canadian-American Center and professor of geography and Canadian studies in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maine. He is coeditor with Richard W. Judd of the Historical Atlas of Maine published by the University of Maine Press in 2015.

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What Supports the Humanities

What Supports the Humanities?

To answer the question of what supports the humanities, this section enlists the help of four authors. In the first article, Linda Silka interviews four Maine policymakers and shares their reflections on the importance of the humanities in their personal and work lives. Jessica Skwire Routhier describes how, throughout their history, Maine’s cultural institutions have collaborated to share blessings and ease difficulties through their longstanding commitment to the common good. Libby Bischof presents a discussion of the extent of volunteerism in Maine’s museums, historical societies, libraries, and friends groups, discussing both the benefits and the challenges this reliance on volunteers creates for supporting the humanities. Anna Sims Bartel explores why the humanities are essential to public policy and looks at how humanities training can enrich the four main stages of policy: conceptualization, crafting, implementation, and evaluation.

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What Supports the Humanities: THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HUMANITIES

The Importance of the Humanities: Reflections from Leading Policymakers

by Linda Silka

M

aine is fortunate in being served by state policy leaders who care deeply about the humanities and who have devoted considerable thought to the role of the humanities in Maine’s past, present, and future.

Four of these leading policymakers generously made themselves available to be interviewed about the humanities and policy for this special issue of Maine Policy Review: Tom Desjardin, Peter Mills, Margaret (Peggy) Rotundo, and Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. (see sidebar).

The national debate about the future of the humanities has special resonance for a state such as Maine that struggles with limited resources, but whose distinctive quality of place is enhanced by its historical richness, its long traditions in music and art, and the extensive literary works created by the many writers who have made Maine their home. The debate in the state reflects many of the conundrums with which the country continues to wrestle: How do we encourage the humanities while remaining attentive to the scarcity of resources? Where do policy and the humanities intersect? When “return on investment” language enters the discourse, how do we evaluate the humanities? When might it be imperative to move beyond a simple bottom-line calculation? And how can individual communities benefit from investment in the humanities, especially those in sparsely settled rural areas that sometimes seem distant from humanities resources? (See Jans 2015.) Such recurring questions are at the forefront of national debate on the value and future of the humanities and served as starting points for individual discussions with four policymakers who have distinctive experiences and perspectives on Maine state government and its relationship to the humanities. The complete list of ten framing questions that initiated these discussions is included at the end of this article.

UNIQUE PATHS INTO THE HUMANITIES

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ach of these policy leaders followed a unique path into the humanities that informed her or his personal relationship to the humanities. Peter Mills pointed to his mother as a key contributor to his immersion in the

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humanities. For 37 years, his mother taught high school English, and as Peter remarked, she brought that teaching home. She set high expectations for her children to become adept thinkers through their immersion in literature. Peggy Rotundo spoke of the continuing impact of her undergraduate humanities courses at Mount Holyoke College, including courses in the literature of centuries past, and described how these courses taught her to think deeply about difficult issues. Earle Shettleworth cited crucial experiences in his youth. During his teen years, following the destruction of Portland’s Union Station to make room for a mall, his consternation at the loss of the historic landmark fueled his devotion to saving historic buildings. As a high school student, he gave more than 100 public talks about the importance of historic preservation, doing so at a time when Americans had little commitment to saving the past. Tom Desjardin pointed to the powerful influence of his work at Gettysburg. He went there to do historical work as a summer job during graduate school and wound up staying more than two years. He found that the Civil War battle at Gettysburg— perhaps the most influential of that war and one of the most heralded war sites in U.S. history—was in many ways a Maine battle. Observing gravestones while walking across the burial grounds revealed that many of the combatants in this key struggle were Mainers. The experience of working at Gettysburg remains a motivational reminder to him of the penetrating importance of the humanities for Maine and the nation.

These policymakers have also found innovative ways to bring thoughtful attention to the humanities through their work. Rotundo and Mills have both helped to craft legislation that demands careful attention to the precise use of language, a skill honed through immersion in the humanities. Mills, in heading a state agency, reports that he continues to be surprised at the extent to which his reading of classic texts proves helpful in making difficult decisions, in framing issues, and in bringing broader perspectives to bear on current challenges. Desjardin, while working as a historian for the Department of Conservation, observed that our state’s 98

What Supports the Humanities: THE IMPORTANCE OF THE HUMANITIES

natural lands have often been the sites of major historical events, so he sought ways to bring these stories to the forefront in interpretive signage for the public.

Shettleworth’s commitment to strengthening historical literacy throughout the state—through teaching, public lectures, and service on boards—allows him to stress the importance inherent in historic buildings and landscapes in order to help future generations acquire an appreciation of the built environment across time.

Through their varied activities, and in their own ways, these policymakers have both enlarged the place of the humanities in policy and have simultaneously drawn on the humanities to advance good policy.

Interestingly, the very experience of meeting in the policymakers’ offices revealed their commitment to the humanities. For example, one wall of Desjardin’s State House office features a classic painting of the Civil War

Tom Desjardin is an American historian of the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. His numerous books include Stand Firm Ye Boys From Maine: The 20th Maine and the Gettysburg Campaign and These Honored Dead: How the Story of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Maine. He has served as the historian for the Maine Department of Conservation and as senior advisor to the Maine governor. He is currently acting commissioner of the Maine Department of Education.

Peter Mills majored in literature at Harvard College and served five years on U.S. Navy destroyers, with several duty tours in Vietnam, for which he was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal. He later conducted intelligence missions about the Soviet Union. After graduating from the University of Maine Law School in 1973, he worked as a lawyer, first in Portland and then in Skowhegan. He spent eight terms in the Maine legislature before becoming director of the Maine Turnpike Authority in 2011.

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hero Joshua Chamberlain, while the opposite wall carries a facsimile of the U.S. Constitution. Desjardin described using images of the Constitution in his work with school children about the importance of knowing our nation’s history and of the rights shared by all in a democracy, from the poorest to the richest. And on the walls of Shettleworth’s conference room at the State Historical Preservation Commission, there are vivid posters showing the history of Maine’s forts and Civil War monuments.

KNOWLEDGE OF THE HUMANITIES BUILDS A CAPACITY TO MAKE SENSE OF THE PRESENT

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e tend to view the humanities as imbuing a respect for the past, but what these leaders reflected on is the degree to which knowledge of the humanities builds

Margaret (Peggy) Rotundo is a major figure in the Maine House of Representatives and is currently cochair of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Appropriations and Financial Affairs. A graduate in English from Mount Holyoke College, she is director of Strategic and Policy Initiatives at the Bates College Harward Center for Community Partnerships.

Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. is the Maine state historian and the state historic preservation officer.

He earned a B.A. in art history from Colby College and an M.A. in architectural history from Boston University. His duties as state historian include enhancing the knowledge of Maine citizens about the state’s history and heritage, encouraging the teaching of Maine history in public schools, serving as a consultant to the governor and legislature on matters pertaining to history, and lecturing on topics of Maine history and historical preservation. A prolific author, his most recent book is Homes Down East: Classic Maine Coastal Cottages and Town Houses.

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capacity to make sense of the present. They repeatedly cited their experiences in college, stressing that it was not just the content of what they learned, but also the ways in which they learned. Materials were deeply confronted and deeply analyzed. Mills contrasted his humanities immersion and its long and continuing reach with his more narrowly technical training in navigation in the Navy and its surprisingly short half-life.

Important as that naval training was at the time, it is no longer relevant because the technology is now outdated.

But his immersion in the humanities from decades ago remains relevant as he still draws on that experience when thinking through difficult issues. Rotundo talked about how her favorite course—on seventeenthcentury poetry—was extremely demanding, but was instrumental in teaching her how to think critically. She pointed out that such courses move beyond self-evident facts, teaching students to be sensitive to underlying issues: How does one know what one knows? How can one be sure? What is the basis for one’s claims? All four policy leaders noted that reading ancient history makes one realize the extent to which it is not ancient. The issues remain alive with relevance to the present. What the policymakers say about the impact that immersive study of classics can have on thinking is being confirmed by new educational research. Neuroscientists have begun working with literature and history scholars to test whether exposure to classics and historical content serves to strengthen and reshape the capacity for critical analysis (Kidd and Castano 2013). Rigorous studies are confirming that the study of classic literature is beneficial in this regard, indeed more so than the study of popular literature and culture.

…the humanities can facilitate the development of skills to engage the perspective of the other.

The interviewees unanimously agreed that the humanities are essential to teach one how to use language carefully. Reading words that are put together well helps create the self-discipline required for effective communication. Rotundo noted how important this is to crafting policy and legislation. An effective leader in MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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almost any walk of life, and especially in public policy, must use language clearly, forcefully, and without unintended effects. She reports using these skills every day in the Appropriations Committee. Mills spoke of a critical college course in poetry where the deep analysis peeled back like the papery skin of an onion to uncover layers and layers of meanings. He reported that what he learned about analytical thinking helped greatly in developing legislation. Recognizing that such skills are critical to our state, Rotundo emphasized the need to find ways to instill them in our future policymakers.

DEVELOPING SKILLS TO TAKE THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE OTHER

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nother point these policymakers emphasized is that the humanities can facilitate the development of skills to engage the perspective of the other. Being immersed in the humanities was crucial, in their estimation, in assisting them to develop empathy for others and learning not to demonize those who hold political and policy positions different from their own. Knowledge of the humanities helped them to grasp others’ perspectives and to see how to work with these differing perspectives to advance the common good. They argued that such skills are central to effective policy making. If our aim as a state is to promote good policy making, then we need to ensure that our students receive in-depth exposure to the humanities. This does not happen all by itself, they reminded us, and we need to give considered attention as a state to how to make this happen.

We turned next to a question that has repeatedly been brought up in recent humanities debates, that of when children should be exposed to the humanities.

Asked about how early to start familiarizing students with the humanities, our policymakers offered thoughtful responses. It is never too early, they argued, to expose young Mainers to the humanities, and we need to take advantage of every opportunity to do so. As Rotundo noted, children should learn history early or misunderstanding will fester. Mills said that the question is how best to build that knowledge.

The humanities, according to Desjardin, can give people an appetite for an essential lifelong quest to understand themselves and their world. In developing signage for historical sites, issues emerged about how best to support lessons to be used for school visits to the sites. Some people held that good signage for children inevitably requires oversimplification. In Desjardin’s 100

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experience, this was not the case. He found that creating displays that work for children was crucial because if they work for children, then they work for everyone else. He remarked that recent research on signage indicates that the messages should be concise because visitors on average will read only about 50 words before restlessness leads them to move on to the next sign. But that does not mean that only a reductionist story can be told. Instead, one needs to think innovatively about how to tell complex stories with relatively few words. He remarked on what can be learned from the expert communicators—the Shakespeares of the world—who were brilliant at understanding how people remember and use information. Desjardin pointed to Maine activities that have been effective in teaching the complexities of the humanities. He described history camps in Maine where the humanities are conveyed in skillful ways, and he cited the federal Teaching American History program that was implemented by the Maine Humanities Council to boost the quality and depth of historical training for students and K–12 teachers across the state.

THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF THE HUMANITIES

When it was mentioned to the interviewees that Maine is often viewed by out-of-staters as unusually successful in imbuing a sense of history among its citizenry, the policymakers dismissed the compliment with typical Maine modesty. Yet they went on to provide example after example that confirmed the strong involvement in the humanities by Mainers from all parts of the state. In Maine, individual towns—from Madawaska in the north to Kittery in south—have long been sites of activity in the humanities. Desjardin spoke of Mainers’ pride in Theodore Roosevelt’s essay “My Debt to Maine,” a tribute to the hardy denizens of Aroostook County, and in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s residence in Maine while writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin.1 Shettleworth mentioned that historical societies are ubiquitous, and all of the interviewees noted that nearly every community can claim a famous historical figure or a significant incident that took place there. They commented that the humanities crop up all over the state, and individual communities routinely celebrate their forebears who contributed to them. Fittingly, they observed, the decentralized approach to government for which Maine is known is reflected in its approach to the humanities.

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he discussions revealed that Maine policymakers have sometimes provided quiet leadership on policies that bring positive economic benefits from engagement with the humanities. Consider the contributions to Portland’s economy of the city’s preservation of beautiful old buildings. People are drawn to Maine partly because of its history, and the top-ten lists on which Portland so frequently appears often refer to the historic beauty of the city’s built environment. What is often forgotten, Shettleworth noted, is the seminal role that Maine Senator Edmund Muskie played in the writing and passage of the National Historic Preservation Act, legislation that has been essential to the preservation of numerous U.S. cities and their subsequent renaissance.

Shettleworth recalls visiting Washington, D.C., as a youth and stopping by Muskie’s office where he was shown a draft of what would become the landmark preservation act. The passage of this legislation heightened the potential for links between the humanities and the economy, reminding us that the humanities are not abstract and remote from life in books, but are also about the ambient structures and daily activities of our communities that make life meaningful.

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…the policymakers stressed the importance of every state cultivating the humanities within its borders.

THE HUMANITIES ARE NOT A LUXURY

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n response to the notion that investment in the humanities is a luxury reserved for wealthy states or a private matter for wealthy individuals, the policymakers stressed the importance of every state cultivating the humanities within its borders. They reiterated that almost every small town in Maine can boast a famous person or event in history—one does not have to go to affluent communities to find history—and that the investment to highlight the humanities at the local level can yield immense returns. Such local lessons range widely. They include stories of how Mainers have created new technologies, impacted the abolition of 101

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slavery, invented new methods of forestry and farming, and created new approaches to art and music. The policymakers pointed to the Maine Humanities Council and the outcomes it has achieved with modest funding (see Anderson 2015). The council’s engagement with local communities to create meaningful humanities programming has had an enormous impact. Also cited as an example of cost-effective promotion of the humanities was the Maine Community Foundation, whose programs have shown what can be accomplished with modest grants, often funded by generous Maine patrons, that are carefully conceived and distributed widely across the state.

The policymakers repeatedly warned of the dangers of false dichotomies. The argument that poor states can ill afford investing in the humanities often builds upon the false assumption that job preparation and the humanities are somehow at odds with one another.

Some argue for an exclusive focus on workforce training that leads directly to jobs. In this view, humanities are an unwarranted extravagance in the face of other urgent challenges. (See Cantor [2015] and Counihan [2015] for counter arguments.)

…all four interviewees pointed out that the humanities are ultimately and deeply about democracy.

But the policymakers further point out that sharp dichotomies simplify what is an increasingly complex issue. They noted that the assumption that either-or choices must be made—such as between STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and humanities—is no longer accurate. The world is changing in ways that belie the dichotomies. For example, STEM and the humanities are increasingly being blended, leading to the creation of jobs that call for an understanding of technical issues and of the humanities’ ability to conceptualize, communicate, and implement creative solutions.

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pointed to the appearance of a whole new industry based on wayfinding, a field in which technology assists in the sophisticated design of trails and other physical spaces to understand how people respond to various characteristics when finding their way. Such developments have not escaped the attention of scholars. James Banner’s monograph Being a Historian (2012) describes many of the new blended jobs, as does a recent issue of the journal American Scholar (Grafton and Grossman 2015) that highlights jobs that are now being obtained with humanities degrees. Innovative opportunities for jobs that blend technology and the humanities are destined to increase.

Noting that skills in both humanities and STEM will be needed in the emerging economy, the policymakers commented on how their positions and work reflect these blends. Desjardin emphasized that we increasingly live in a visual culture in which success requires multiple skills. His consulting work for the History Channel—in which the producers sought to create humanities content that was visual rather than written—called not only for deep knowledge of history, but also for an understanding of the technical features of visual media that produce viewer impact. Mills reported that, in his work overseeing engineers and planners as director of the Turnpike Authority, they do better at jobs in the long run when they bring humanities training as well as technical training to difficult practical challenges.

Similarly, Shettleworth noted that decisions related to urban renewal are best handled by engineers and planners who have the crucial sense of perspective that the humanities help to instill during a well-rounded education, often at little additional expense in the training.

The interviewees also commented that the nature of work is changing, a phenomenon that has implications for moving beyond the false dichotomies of the past.

Although work has been place-based in the past, it is increasingly possible with new technologies to work from any location. Instead of being exclusively focused on bringing bricks-and-mortar jobs to Maine, we must also turn our attention to creating rewarding places where people want to live and work—places that provide access not only to high tech resources but to life-enriching humanities (see Toner 2015). With a new information-age economy that makes work transportable, people are drawn to Maine for its long tradition of history, literature, art, music, and craftwork; in short, for its rich tapestry of the humanities and how it sustains valuable communities. In meeting Maine’s 102

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demographic needs, we can leverage its existing reservoir of humanities as well as welcome the contributions of new arrivals that will help the state continue to thrive in the future.

Framing Questions for Policymaker Interviews 1. Could you tell me a bit about your background and the ways that the humanities have been important to you?

HUMANITIES IS DEEPLY ABOUT DEMOCRACY

2. Do you have any stories of how the humanities have played a role in your life? In your policy making?

n contrast to the stereotype of the humanities as an elitist enterprise—an erroneous reputation that our policymakers expressed concern about—all four interviewees pointed out that the humanities are ultimately and deeply about democracy. The common good is an essential quality for a successful and functioning democracy, and this is what unites the United States. For such a society to maintain itself and prosper we need to maintain a strong tradition of humanities. The policymakers repeatedly returned to this theme of the humanities and democracy. For example, it shows up in Maine’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, members of whom were asked to speak with students at Bates College.

Rotundo reports that students there were perplexed why they knew so little about the history of Wabanaki people in Maine. Whether referring to Maine’s role in the Battle of Gettysburg, describing Portland’s historical markers at sites on the Underground Railroad, or talking about the ignoble history of the Ku Klux Klan holding its first U.S. daytime demonstration in Milo, we need to understand ourselves and our contemporary society in relationship to historical events that pivoted on fundamental issues that remain a constant element in human experience. To maintain a strong democracy, it is essential that we keep the humanities strong. And as these examples suggest, usable historical knowledge is not simply about nice history. The humanities are also about facing our past challenges and learning the difficult lessons they can teach us (see also Adams 2015).

What, finally, is the role of the humanities in a democracy? Earl Shorris, author of the critically acclaimed book The Art of Freedom: Teaching the Humanities to the Poor (2013), sheds light on this issue as he describes his search for how best to overcome the tragedy of poverty in an era of soaring global wealth. Shorris talked to many kinds of people, read widely in the research literatures, and observed many kinds of programs, all with the goal of understanding how to reduce poverty. To his

3. Has your background in the humanities influenced in any way how you go about your policy making work or the perspective you take on that work?

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4. Have you ever found that your commitment to the humanities and your work as a policymaker have come into conflict? If so, how have you found yourself addressing this conflict?

5. The state of Maine is often said to have an impressive history of leading in the humanities. Have you had a chance to give much thought to that history? Are there ways you see that history as holding important clues for how Maine might continue to lead in the humanities?

6. Much of the talk in Maine is about how we need to grow jobs and grow our economy. Do you see any place for the humanities within this discussion? Do you see any leadership role for Augusta in highlighting the importance of the humanities?

7. It has sometimes been asserted that as a country we can’t afford to invest in the humanities. Our limited resources should go to more pressing issues such as food and housing. If you were to provide guidance to policymakers struggling with this issue, what advice would you offer?

8. What role do you see government as potentially playing in encouraging the humanities (inside and outside schools)?

9. Maine is blessed with a wealth of volunteers—volunteers that contribute their time, resources, and energy—to the arts, music, and history. Our status as a humanities-rich place would be hard to maintain without our many volunteers. Do you see for policymakers in encouraging a commitment to and development of volunteers of all ages and all backgrounds?

10. Maine’s schools are an important place where students get exposed to the humanities. Do you see any ways that policymakers could be helpful in framing issues for schools that speak to the humanities?

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surprise, the resounding answer came from a woman incarcerated in a maximum-security prison. She asserted that the difference between the rich and poor is the humanities. The book goes on to document how Shorris created an international movement that uses the teaching of the humanities to bring people out of poverty through education. According to him, the humanities teach people the skills of how to respond not to the specific moment but to imagine and plan for the opportunities and challenges of the larger world. He forcefully reminds us that the humanities cannot just be luxury goods for the elite if our modern human experiment in democracy is to continue to expand: “In a freezing village near the Bering Sea and in the Nahuatl-speaking heights above Mexico City, among the homeless of Seoul and the varieties of poverty in Chicago, in Africa and Argentina, I would come to understand the democracy of the humanities” (Shorris 2013: 15).

Shorris led the teaching of great works of literature and philosophy to dropouts, immigrants, and former prisoners. The result, he convincingly shows, is that the humanities are crucial to the future of democracy. The policymakers in Maine have demonstrated this by their example, and eloquently called attention to this same profound theme. The humanities in their varied and often contested forms have been and will continue to be an important contributor to the health of our democracy. -

Grafton, Anthony, and James Grossman. 2015. “Habits of Mind: Why College Students Who Do Serious Historical Research Become Independent Analytical Thinkers.”

American Scholar (Winter): 31–37.

Jans, Sheila. 2015. “The Role of the Humanities in Rural Community Development.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 147–151.

Kidd, David C., and Emanuele Castano. 2013. “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.” Science 342(6156): 377–380.

Shorris, Earl, 2013. The Art of Freedom: Teaching the Humanities to the Poor. W. W. Norton & Company, New York.

Toner, Carol. 2015. “‘What Kind of Place Do We Want to Live In?’ Place, the Humanities, and Public Policy in Maine.”

Maine Policy Review 24(1): 80–83.

Linda Silka is a social and community psychologist by training, with much of her work focusing on building community-university research partnerships.

Silka was formerly director of the University of Maine’s Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center and is now a senior fellow at the George Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions. Prior to coming to UMaine, she was a faculty member for three decades at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

ENDNOTE 1. An image of Theodore Roosevelt’s original handwritten draft of his 1918 essay, “My Debt to Maine,” is available throught Maine Memory Network http://www.maine -memory.net/artifact/5997/zoom

REFERENCES Anderson, Hayden. 2015. “The Power and Pleasure of Ideas: The Maine Humanities Council.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 43–48.

Banner Jr., James M. 2012. Being a Historian. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Cantor, Ronald G. 2015. “Not a Big Stretch: Community College Humanities.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 26–30 Counihan, Patricia. 2015. “What Are You Going to Do with That Major? The Humanities, Jobs, and a Career.”

Maine Policy Review 24(1): 31–34.

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The Common Good: Collaboration among Cultural Institutions in Maine

by Jessica Skwire Routhier

It ought always to be remembered, that literary institutions are founded and endowed for the common good, and not for the private advantage of those who resort to them for education…. If it be true, that no man should live to himself, we may safely assert that every man who has been aided by a public institution to acquire an education, and to qualify himself for usefulness, is under peculiar obligations to exert his talents for the public good.

Inaugural address of Joseph McKeen, president of Bowdoin College, 1802

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ver since the early years of the nineteenth century, Maine has attracted and cultivated a reputation as a place where artists can work in peaceful solitude.

From Frederic Edwin Church’s breathless reflections of Mount Katahdin in the mid-nineteenth century to Neil Welliver’s thickly wooded forest interiors of the twentieth, many iconic images of Maine suggest stillness, quiet, and isolation. Although such paintings are legitimately the output of a single hand and a singular artistic vision, they are nevertheless rooted in the assistance, intellect, skill, and ingenuity of many others. Church had the railroad, the support of galleries and patrons in New York, and the invaluable help of a network of outdoorspeople that would eventually become the Maine Guides. Welliver also had New York connections and those of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, as well as a tight-knit community of professional artists in Lincolnville, Maine, where he settled in 1970, and from which he commuted to Philadelphia, where he worked for 19 years. Though both artists were famous for going alone into the wilderness to paint, their communities—variously defined—provided the base camp for their artistic expeditions.

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constructed, supported, questioned, improved, challenged, sold, shared, and promoted. In the context of today’s Maine arts and cultural institutions, that impulse is deeply connected to a longstanding dedication to the common good, a concept articulated more than 200 years ago by Bowdoin College president Joseph McKeen in words that remain poignantly relevant today. Maine has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the arts and humanities: some of the world’s most beautiful and richly varied scenery, firsttier museums and academic institutions, and summer weather that was preordained for painting outside. But it also has daunting challenges: deep economic, cultural, and geographical divides; relative isolation from the rest of the country; and darkness at 3:30 p.m. in December. Throughout Maine’s history, collaborative initiatives among the state’s cultural practitioners have sought to share the blessings and transmute the difficulties, providing evidence that Mainers remain committed to working together for the benefit of our state arts community.

Such collaborative efforts have their roots in the earliest days of Maine statehood, almost from the time of McKeen’s remarks. The recognition of the arts and their attendant industries as legitimate professions was made manifest in the formation of the Maine Charitable Mechanics Association in Portland in 1815. Using the contemporaneous definition of mechanic as simply a person who makes something, the association provided educational opportunities and financial assistance for its members, which included a guild of “painters, glaziers, and brush makers.” In fact, the group hosted the first large-scale exhibitions of art in the state as part of its recurring fair and exhibition, held in 1826, 1838, 1854, and 1859.1 With a fine arts department organized by critic and polymath John Neal, these events provided valuable visibility for many artists, artisans, and other creative people. Perhaps inspired by the vitality of the Portland-based association, the Bangor Mechanic Association was founded in 1828 with a

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similar educational mission. It established and ran one of several libraries in Bangor for many years, until in 1875 its collections became the foundation for what is now the Bangor Public Library (Alpert et al. 1998).

Both the Maine Charitable Mechanics Association and the Bangor Mechanic Association (closely affiliated with the Bangor Public Library) continue to exist today, and in the 200 years since their founding, many other associations have been established on similar ideals of mutually supporting both the professional and cultural lives of Maine’s citizens.

The Union of Maine Visual Artists (UMVA), for instance, founded in 1975 to foster better communication and support among artists and to advocate for artists’ interests and rights, helped bring back the statewide group show in the 1970s and 1980s. UMVA members advocated for the importance of such exhibitions in identifying and encouraging emerging talent, and they persuasively argued against the levying of submission fees for juried exhibitions (http://www .umvaonline.org/). In response, and for more than a decade, some of Maine’s leading arts institutions—the Portland Museum of Art, Maine Coast Artists Gallery (now the Center for Maine Contemporary Art), and the museums at Bowdoin College and the University of Southern Maine—shared responsibility for hosting the All-Maine Biennial (a juried exhibition open to all Maine artists) as well as the biennial exhibition of the Maine Crafts Association.

Such efforts have evolved today into a constellation of juried art exhibitions spanning the geography of Maine and beyond. The Center for Maine Contemporary Art has held its biennial almost continuously since the late 1970s, with director Suzette McAvoy overseeing a 2014 show that was praised for being “gritty, ranging, realistic and fresh” (Maine Sunday Telegram, October 5, 2014). The Portland Museum of Art (PMA), buoyed by an endowment bequest from artist William Thon, has hosted its own biennial since 1998, recently overhauled by Chief Curator Jessica May. And in 2009, University of Maine Museum of Art (UMMA) director George Kinghorn imaginatively added the I-95 Triennial, hosted every three years and connecting Maine artists to their colleagues along New England’s main highway corridor. The jurors for these exhibitions have ranged from Maine arts insiders to visiting dignitaries; many have worn both of those hats, including frequent New York Times contributor Deborah Weisgall and artist-scholar David Driskell.

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But the group show has not been the only way in which Maine’s arts institutions have worked together historically. Mindful that museums and other cultural organizations must also operate as businesses, the directors of Maine’s leading art museums formed the Maine Art Museum Trail in 1997. This shared marketing initiative presents a road map—no metaphor there—to experiencing Maine art from the Ogunquit Museum of American Art to the UMMA in Bangor. Its goal is to “promote public access to the arts, to educate the public about the state’s cultural heritage, to enable the museums to become strong visible partners in the state’s efforts to promote cultural tourism, and to forge new partnerships among businesses, the arts, and education.”2 Early leadership of the trail was provided largely by Kristen Levesque in her role as director of marketing and public relations at the PMA, so it is especially fitting that the PMA will host Directors’ Cut: Selections from the Maine Art Museum Trail in 2015. This special exhibition will feature artwork from each of the eight trail museums’ collections, personally selected by their directors. A force on the scene for 18 years now, the Maine Art Museum Trail—which in 2014 expanded to include the Monhegan Museum of Art and History—stands as an exemplar of how the state’s arts organizations work collaboratively and independently at the same time, much to their mutual benefit and that of the public.

Grounded in that same spirit is another collaboration that coalesced roughly in tandem with the Maine Art Museum Trail: the Maine Curators’ Forum. This loosely defined consortium of museum professionals and independent scholars is best known for the ambitious, multi-venue, statewide exhibition initiatives it has organized: the Maine Print Project (2006), the Maine Drawing Project (2011), and the Maine Photo Project (2015). From the beginning, these shared endeavors sought to cast new light on underused public collections in Maine; the focus to date has been on works on paper, since their relative fragility and sensitivity to light mean that they are less frequently displayed than paintings and sculpture. The projects of the Maine Curators’ Forum have been an essential point of intersection among arts institutions, artists, and curators-at-large who are engaged with these media. Print scholars Bruce Brown and David Becker, for instance, provided much of the vision and curatorial voice for the Maine Print Project and its accompanying book (Becker 2006), and photography historians Libby Bischof, Susan Danly, and Earle G. Shettleworth Jr. are literally writing the book 106

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on the history of Maine photography in conjunction with the Maine Photo Project.

Supported in part by a grant from the Maine Arts Commission that has underwritten much of the Maine Photo Project’s outreach and promotional expenses, the Curators’ Forum has been able to reach beyond the familiar parameters of arts with this 2015 collaboration.

Among the more than 30 participating organizations are not only art museums but also libraries, academic institutions, historical societies, and even an ocean science laboratory, featuring exhibitions whose topics range from 1840s daguerreotypes to images made from electron microscopes. Thought to be the largest such collaboration ever undertaken in the state, it is only the latest one in a decade that has also seen the Maine Folk Art Trail (2008) and the Maine Civil War Trail (2013), both initiated and organized by Maine Maritime Museum founder Charles E. Burden. The Print Project, the Folk Art Trail, and the Photo Project have all been accompanied by publications from Down East Books (the Photo Project book is forthcoming in September 2015), with contributions and images from Maine’s most cherished public collections.

A strong partner in the latter two Maine Curators’ Forum projects has been the Association of Maine Archives and Museums (familiarly known as MAM), the state’s only membership organization dedicated to supporting and promoting Maine’s collecting institutions. More than half of the organizations participating in the Maine Photo Project are among MAM’s roughly 300 members, testifying to how successful MAM has been in fostering community and nurturing a sense of a shared purpose among state cultural institutions. Since its establishment in 1990, MAM has done for Maine’s collecting institutions what that UMVA has for Maine artists: supported and advocated for them, both in broad, general ways and in response to specific cultural and legislative matters that have affected its constituencies. I served as MAM’s president in 2013 and 2014, and during that time MAM took a vocal stance on several state and national issues: the restoration of tax incentives for charitable giving in Maine; the elimination of the University of Southern Maine’s American and New England Studies graduate program; U.S. Senator Paul Ryan’s 2014 national budget proposal, which would have effectively eliminated the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities as well as the Institute of Museum and Library Services; and a recent budget proposal from Maine Governor Paul LePage that, MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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in part, compels Maine municipalities to levy property taxes on nonprofit organizations. In every instance, MAM has been able to point to a 2013 economic impact study of its membership that challenges the misperception that nonprofits take more than they give (MAM 2015). With the power of MAM’s numbers behind them, Maine’s cultural organizations can demonstrate with confidence that their collective economic impact is wholly positive: they draw millions of visitors to the state, generate millions of dollars in revenue, employ hundreds if not thousands, and do so without depending upon funding from municipal, state, or national governments.

Nonprofit professionals from other states often observe that the kinds of collaborations so firmly established in Maine are rare elsewhere.

Nonprofit professionals from other states often observe that the kinds of collaborations so firmly established in Maine are rare elsewhere. This is especially true of several extraordinary group efforts to save and secure Maine art and artifacts for collecting institutions in the state. These have not been one-sided initiatives, but are ones in which scholars, museum professionals, dealers, collectors, and philanthropists have recognized a common goal and shared their resources in order to achieve it. In 1997, Cyr Auctions in Gray, Maine, received for consignment a 1,000-page illustrated journal from 1864 to 1899, recording in remarkable detail the world of middle-class businessman John Martin in Bangor and Ellsworth. Appreciating that the object belonged in a public collection, Cyr worked with scholar Arlene Palmer Schwind (now the curator of Portland’s Victoria Mansion) to research the journal and work on its placement. Ultimately, in what then Maine State Museum Director Joseph R. Phillips (1997) described as an “unprecedented” achievement, a coalition of institutions and individuals—including the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Maine State Library, Bangor Public Library, Maine Historical Records Board, and Maine Historical Society, along 107

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with several corporations and individuals—funded the purchase of the journals for joint ownership by the Maine State Museum and the Maine Historical Society.

Martin’s journal went on to become a highlighted object in the book for the Maine Folk Art Trail in 2008, fulfilling Martin’s own ambition to have it communicate to successive generations the “the manner in which the Pioneers of this section of the country procured their education and livelihood, [and] enjoyed their amusement” (Murphy 2008: 94).

Thirteen years later, Maine’s leading cultural organizations were once again spurred into action when the Maine Charitable Mechanics Association announced that it was financially compelled to auction off 17 handpainted antique banners, originally created by the association’s various guilds and used in an 1841 parade down Portland’s Congress Street. All agreed that these rare, fragile relics of nineteenth-century Maine art and culture were important, and most sought to sustain them as a single collection in Maine; however, the $200,000 estimate put the banners well beyond the ready acquisition funds of any single Maine institution.

Just as for the Martin journals, the solution was to work together. While the auctioneer, James D. Julia, created incentives for the banners to be purchased together as a single lot, representatives from the Maine Historical Society, Maine State Museum, Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Maine Maritime Museum, Portland Museum of Art, and the museums at Bowdoin, Bates, and Colby Colleges pooled their resources. With additional support from individuals and corporations including Earle Shettleworth, James Julia, L.L. Bean, Diana and Linda Bean, Chris Livesay, Elsie Viles, the Libra Foundation, and an anonymous Boston foundation, these organizations purchased the banners for the permanent collection of the Maine Historical Society, which had effectively served as their steward since the 1980s. Then-director Richard D’Abate was gratified by the largesse. “The focus, hard work, and unselfish generosity of the cooperating museums was unprecedented in my experience,” he noted in an August 30, 2010, press release (Routhier 2010: 13). “I think we owe that to our common recognition that the banners were one of the state’s true artistic and historical treasures. They had to be saved.”

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collection? Conventional business philosophy would say that it makes no financial sense, especially since nonprofits cannot take advantage of any kind of tax benefit for charitable giving. The donations generated public goodwill and positive media coverage, to be sure, but nothing with a cash value that would compensate for what the organizations contributed. Is this just a case of nonprofit arts and cultural organizations doing what they are so often assumed to do reflexively—serving high-minded educational missions at the expense of sound fiscal management and sustainability?

That simple explanation is mistaken, and it belies the sound business background of many leaders of Maine cultural organizations. The leaders of Maine’s museums know business, but they also know their business, one that has flourished here since the Maine Historical Society was founded in 1822. They are not thinking just about the next fiscal quarter, but also about the long game—what things will look like in 2022, and then again in 2122—and that means concerning themselves with the health and strength of the entire industry—the fullest landscape of art, humanities, and cultural organizations—and not just their own fiefdom. As a general rule competition is a nonstarter in the Maine museum world. The leaders of this field understand that whenever any one museum—or any arts or cultural organization in Maine—has a success story to share, the entire industry benefits. And collections, the artwork, documents, and other artifacts that museums preserve, display, and interpret, are at the center of that, as they are the material expression of the history and cultural wealth that would be lost without these institutions. So while it’s certainly true that those who helped purchase the Martin journals and the Charitable Mechanics Association banners acted selflessly, it’s also true that they can expect a return on that investment. Part of that return will be the ready and eager support of colleagues for the next group initiative.

Within the Maine cultural community there is a shared understanding of the value of our material heritage, the importance of preserving it, and the solemn responsibility of collecting institutions—working both independently and collectively—to promote and provide access to it. Organizations such as the Portland Public Library and the Maine Historical Society have sought innovative ways to build their capacity to do just that, notably in the shared collections storage facility that they purchased and outfitted together in 2014 with both institutions’ needs in mind. Though the project 108

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had some critics (who feared that off-site storage would arts wing of the well-known bathroom fixtures company, limit public access to both library and museum collecwhich has gained a reputation for preserving outdoor tions), it has indisputably and exponentially increased artists’ installations and for relocating works that can no the ability of both organizations to grow and care for longer stay in place. Kohler purchased much of the their collections. In fact, the Maine Historical Society estate from Colby, and the two organizations have has long been a trailblazer in providing access through successfully shared it with “over fifty institutions in collaboration. Its Maine Memory Network, a free, more than forty Maine communities [that] now hold searchable online database of some 20,000 historical artworks by Langlais” (http://langlaisarttrail.org/). items uploaded by more than 270 participating organiPress coverage of the initiative has given much of zations (https://www.mainememory.net/), was develthe credit for the collaboration to the vision and perseoped in 1999–2000, when such initiatives were almost verance of Colby’s Curator of Special Projects Hannah unheard-of. Maine Memory Network continues to grow Blunt, and her leadership role cannot be overstated. and adapt today, but as always, its vitality and worth is However, like so many other Maine collaborations, the rooted in the contributions of its participants. (See success of the project arose from the efforts of many: Bromage [2015] for further discussion about Maine Colby and Kohler, of course, including Colby Museum Memory Network.)

Director Sharon Corwin and Kohler’s Executive Another recent project with many stakeholders is Director Terri Yoho; the Georges River Land Trust, led the Langlais Art Trail, a wide-ranging campaign to place

by Gail Presley, which assumed ownership and preservaworks from the estate of sculptor Bernard “Blackie” tion of Langlais’s 90 acres in Cushing; Portland gallery Langlais, a native of Old Town and a longtime resident owner Andres Verzosa, who represented Langlais for of Cushing, in public Maine collections. “The project is decades and worked with Colby to match works from startling in scope,” wrote Geoff Edgers in the Boston the estate with institutions that would value them; Globe (July 6, 2014), “as unorthodox as the artist’s conservator Ronald Harvey of Lincolnville, who cleaned career, and the result of a complex collaboration and stabilized many of the sculptures before they went between a college art museum, land preservationists, and a Wisconsin- FIGURE 1: Bernard Langlais, Horse (1966), Cushing, Maine, 2008 based nonprofit art foundation.’ In 2010, Langlais’s widow, Helen, left the Colby College Museum of Art the entire estate that she had inherited from her husband: $750,000 plus three buildings and 90 acres of land filled with thousands of works of art, from relatively modest drawings to the massive outdoor wooden sculptures for which the artist is best known (Figure 1). Although, in terms of sheer square footage, the recently expanded Colby Museum is the largest art museum in Maine, it is nowhere near large enough to absorb such a massive body of work.

Rather than auction off the collection piece-by-piece—a solution other museums have attempted with varying success and the inevitable loss of cultural heritage— Colby reached out to Wisconsin’s Photograph by Pixel Acuity, courtesy of the Colby College Museum of Art Kohler Foundation, the nonprofit MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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to new homes; and the leaders of the many Maine museums, libraries, schools, and cultural centers that welcomed the gift of Langlais’s artworks and celebrated them in a flock of exhibitions across the state in the summer of 2014.

Unprecedented—the word used by both J. R. Phillips and Richard D’Abate—is clearly no longer the right way to describe such collaborations that, however unusual elsewhere, now have a deep history in Maine.

The Boston Globe called the Langlais Art Trail “unorthodox,” perhaps better reflecting the boldness and vision of that project as well as all of the other initiatives described in this essay. That word, indeed, also describes Langlais’s peripatetic career: he was an artistic prodigy who emerged from a hardscrabble upbringing in Maine to rise to the top of the postwar New York art world, only to retreat in midlife back to the woods of Maine.

But unorthodox plus Maine plus retreat does not equal recluse—as we must also remind ourselves when considering that other Maine artist, Winslow Homer, who is so famously (and largely inaccurately) assumed to be a hermit. Langlais and Homer—and indeed, Church and Welliver—chose Maine because it is beautiful and serene, but also because it is welcoming, offering the simultaneous possibility for independence and community. All of these artists relied not only on their own gifts, but also upon an infrastructure that enabled, underwrote, and promoted the sustained work that they did here.

Langlais, who is probably best known for the gigantic Indian statue he completed on commission for the town of Skowhegan, knew this as well as anyone. While he might be surprised today to see the extent to which his sculptures are now represented in public collections, he would probably be less surprised to learn that the cooperation of Maine nonprofits was behind their placement.

Only a decade and a half into the twenty-first century, we have already seen monumental changes in the ways that we all live, work, and communicate.

Maine cultural institutions have responded to that, in part, through collaborations that have broken new ground and removed perceived barriers between art and history, profit and nonprofit, coast and interior, your place and mine. In 2020, Maine will celebrate 200 years of statehood, and we can do so with the knowledge that the full span of that history has been characterized by collaborative efforts to support the arts, preserve history, and share our cultural heritage, all in the interest of the common good. -

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ENDNOTES 1. More information about the Maine Charitable Mechanics Association is available on the Maine Memory Network website: https://www.mainememory .net/sitebuilder/site/1403/page/2058/display?use_mmn=1 2. http://www.portlandmuseum.org/exhibitions /directors%E2%80%99-cut-selections-maine-art -museum-trail

REFERENCES Alpert, Michael, et al. 1998. Seven Books in a Footlocker: A Commemorative History of the Bangor Public Library.

Bangor Public Library, Bangor, ME. Becker, David P. 2006. The Imprint of Place: Maine Printmaking 1800–2005. Down East Books, Camden, ME. Bromage, Stephen. 2015. “The Maine Memory Network: Re-Imagining the Dynamics and Potential of Local History.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 138–140.

Maine Archives and Museums (MAM). 2015 MAM Economic Impact Statement. MAM, Cumberland Center, ME. http://www.aam-us.org/docs/default-source /advocacy/mam-economic-impact-statement .pdf?sfvrsn=4 [Accessed January 9, 2015] Murphy, Kevin, ed., 2008. Folk Art in Maine: Uncommon Treasures. Down East Books, Camden, ME. Phillips, Joseph R. 1997. “Unprecedented Cooperation Preserves Historic Treasure.” Maine Association of Museums Newsletter (April).

Routhier, Jessica Skwire. 2010. “A Banner Day for Maine Museums.” Maine Archives and Museums Newsletter 13(4): 1, 13.

Jessica Skwire Routhier is an art historian, writer, editor, and independent museum professional in South Portland. She is the coordinator of the Maine Photo Project and a former president of Maine Archives and Museums.

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Who Supports the Humanities in Maine?: The Benefits (and Challenges) of Volunteerism

by Libby Bischof

W

hen Amy Aldredge, the executive director of the Yarmouth Historical Society (YHS), was getting ready to move her organization into the newly built Yarmouth History Center on East Elm Street last year, she consulted a local moving service for an estimate.

After receiving a quote that would have been a bit steep for her organization, Aldredge called upon a different kind of local resource—a high school sports team.

She put a call out to the athletic department, and in response, the boys and girls track teams of Yarmouth High School showed up and helped move the society out of its temporary location in the library and down the street to the new History Center in a matter of hours.

Their volunteering of time and labor saved the organization thousands of dollars, and Aldredge remarked, “I don’t know how else we would have done it.”

The people of Lincolnville were faced with a similar problem in 2012—only on a much larger scale—when the community decided to move forward with the renovation of a historic school house and turn it into a town library. Hundreds of community members turned out to volunteer their time and they literally pulled the old school house across the street to its new location.

(Watch the video here—it’s remarkable: http://www .lincolnvillelibrary.org/about.html#about). These examples of community members and student athletes pitching in to assist local organizations in a move are but two of thousands of examples of how the humanities in Maine are deeply dependent on the work of a broad spectrum of volunteers—from high school students to retired professionals.

According to the most recent information (2013) from the Corporation for National and Community Service, 32.5 percent of Maine residents volunteer annually, performing 40 million hours of service, ranking the state 13 out of the 50 in the nation.1 Included in this tremendous outpouring of civic energy are the thousands of boys and girls, women and men, amateurs and professionals, who give generously of their time to hundreds of local organizations that support and promote the humanities in Maine—especially local MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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libraries, museums, historical societies, and friends groups organized around preservation.

When I was asked to write this article, I quickly came to realize that the best sources of information about volunteerism and the humanities in Maine would not necessarily come from statistics, journals, and other scholarly references, but rather, directly from those who volunteer and organize volunteers around the state. As a result, this article draws heavily on interviews that I conducted in the winter of 2014–2015 with paid and volunteer staff at museums, historical societies, libraries, and friends groups, as well as others who volunteer their time to these organizations in a variety of ways.

According to the latest data (FY 2015, first quarter) from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Maine has 556 museums—the second highest per capita in the nation.2 In his article “Call it ‘Museumland’” in the Maine Sunday Telegram (September 7, 2014), Ray Routhier noted that of these 556 museums, 67 percent are categorized as historical societies, history museums, or historic preservation groups. The majority of these are all-volunteer organizations and would not exist without dedicated people intent on preserving and presenting their history for a wider public audience. In interview after interview with volunteers and those who coordinate them at a wide variety of organizations, a few common themes emerged.

First among them was this sentiment regarding the importance of volunteerism in the state: organizations simply could not do the work that they do without their large cadre of volunteers. From historic house tours, to docenting, research, archival preservation, and cataloging, communications and outreach to members, fundraising, collections management, educational programming, data entry, website development, and even financial management—volunteers work behind the scenes and at the helm of cultural institutions throughout the state, and, in many cases, are on the front lines of both preservation and outreach. Simply put, without the high level of volunteerism that exists within the state of Maine, the general public would not 111

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have access to the remarkable variety of historical resources and cultural programming that currently exists. Volunteers enrich the humanities in Maine in countless ways, perhaps most importantly by increasing access to history, literature, art, and culture in major cities, towns, and our lightly settled rural areas.

Jessica Skwire Routhier, past president of Maine Archives and Museums (MAM), said in a recent interview: volunteers are an absolutely essential part of the way that museums, historical societies, and other collecting institutions function in Maine.

Everybody here is understaffed and underfunded, and volunteers help to fill those gaps so that museums and other cultural organizations can deliver services to their visitors and patrons. They do everything from painting the gallery walls, hanging the holiday decorations, and stuffing envelopes to very high-level work that would be done by professionals in larger and wealthier organizations: cataloging objects, updating websites, leading tours, and so much more.

Relying on volunteers for traditional volunteer work as well as for work that would typically be done by paid professionals in wealthier institutions is not, however, without its challenges. To this end, another theme that emerged in conversations with both volunteers and professional staff members at a variety of institutions centered around the difficulties of over-reliance on volunteers to do professional work—especially in terms of archives and collections management. Jamie Kingman Rice, director of library services at the Maine Historical Society (MHS), explained some of these challenges: “We cannot always rely too heavily on volunteers to do collections work as we might lose some of the standards of the field.” She further noted that most of the materials her volunteers work with are “irreplaceable,” so, a certain “level of exposure and supervision” is key. Often volunteering is a trial-and-error process. It can take considerable time for volunteers to find organizations as well as appropriate tasks at those institutions that suit their interests, skills, and available time.

Moreover, there is a careful balance that must be struck; just as volunteers donate their time, they can also take it away in an instant, often without the notice that a paid employee typically gives.

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common sentiment about the challenges of volunteerism in the twenty-first century: “People no longer join an organization just to join an organization. We have to capture people where they are and work with their schedules, oftentimes allowing for a ‘plug in and step out’ volunteer experience, as well as a sustained volunteer experience. As a result, we must constantly restructure our expectations based on volunteer availability.” She added the caveat that when working with volunteers, it is always essential to remember that their “reward is a job well done, not a paycheck.” Despite challenges of recruiting, training, organizing, and managing the valuable time of volunteers, without fail, each organization and individual I spoke with lauded the contributions of volunteers and cited their work as essential in day-to-day operations. Aldredge, for instance, praised the tireless work of one of her volunteers at the YHS who, in the last two years, has essentially caught the society up on five years of tedious collection data entry into Past Perfect, a standard database used for collections management. Because of this volunteer’s tireless efforts, when Maine Public Broadcasting Network producer Bob Greene recently visited the society to do research for his television program, Aldredge was able to give him seven pages of Past Perfect data on the collection he was interested in. For Aldredge, volunteers allow YHS to function more efficiently, and consistently: “they make our organization look good.”

While larger Maine organizations have paid professional staff of various sizes, many also rely on volunteers for a variety of important tasks. The MHS is no exception, particularly in its Brown Research Library.

According to Rice, “there is no way we would ever get the amount of work we get done without volunteers.

They help from beginning acquisitions, to processing, to getting patrons materials. We would not be able to fully function without our volunteers.” In any given month, Rice manages between 15 and 20 volunteers who work with the library’s collections, some of whom have been volunteering for years, others for a season or semester.

Her volunteers range from a 16-year-old high school student to retired folks who have time during the day to give to their work at the MHS. Rice includes students doing unpaid internships (for their resume or for college credit) in the category of volunteers, as they also donate their time. Each season, she hosts interns from local colleges and universities, as well as graduate students completing masters in library science degrees. Rice herself started as a volunteer at 112

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MHS in the summer of 2002, after receiving her B.A. in history from the University of Southern Maine. When she works with interns and other student volunteers, she notes that it is important to have defined start and end dates for internships, as well as clear expectations and a specific project for the intern to work on—so that they can return to their home institution and say, “I completed this project.” Coming up with these projects can sometimes be challenging, as Rice wants them to be interesting and valuable to her interns for their own professional development. For those reasons, and because supervision takes a great deal of time and organization on the part of paid staff, she limits the numbers of interns she takes on at any given time.

These sentiments were echoed by Cathleen Miller, curator of the Maine Women Writers Collection (MWWC) at the University of New England, who noted, “I don’t want to take someone on as an intern if I don’t have a useful project for them and their professional development.” Miller is the only full-time staff member at the MWWC. She has a half-time assistant and a half-time cataloger, who also assists with digitization initiatives. She has a core of three regular volunteers and often takes on an intern each semester. Her volunteers tend to range from people in their fifties into their eighties, and they are often retired professionals with strong connections to the collections and who care about women’s lives, stories, and history. Miller tries to coordinate her volunteers and interns, when possible, so they are working on the same day, for ease of supervision since the management of volunteer projects can take a great deal of time and effort. In addition to their assistance in the processing of collections, Miller values the passion of her volunteers and their connection to the collections as an important outreach tool. One of the many benefits of volunteerism for her is that “people in the community have a stake in what we are doing and will continue to see value in preserving and perpetuating these collections for future generations.”

People volunteer their time in service of the humanities in Maine for many reasons. High school students in Maine often have to complete community service as part of their graduation requirements; local college and university students increasingly are required to do service-learning or internships in conjunction with their coursework; practicing humanities professionals frequently donate research assistance and expertise, or give public lectures on topics of interest to local organizations and communities; many community MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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members feel a sense of civic pride and want to help preserve local history; working professionals are looking for enjoyable activities that feed their passions; and retired men and women wish to stay active in their communities and donate their long-cultivated professional skills to organizations that need their assistance.

The reasons for donating one’s time are as varied as the people who volunteer.

People volunteer their time in service of the humanities in Maine for many reasons.

On a recent research trip to the MHS, I had the opportunity to speak with Kue John Lor, who has been volunteering at MHS for a little over a year and has catalogued thousands of previously unprocessed glassplate negatives in the library’s collections. Lor has a B.S. in history and a master’s degree in museum studies and would like to one day be employed as the curator or director of a museum or historical society. He moved to southern Maine a couple of years ago from the Berkshires, where he was working and interning in small museums.

While he currently makes his living working in retail, he gives his time and expertise to the MHS partly because of his desire to preserve and promote history and partly because he sees such volunteer time as an investment in his future career. His volunteer position is an important opportunity to network with society’s staff and visiting researchers and scholars, and his projects there add to his resume. Lor is also on the board of the Portlandbased Museum of African Culture, another organization that relies heavily on volunteers to sustain its operations, write grants, and keep the doors open. Lor loves hands-on work and interacting with the public and will continue to volunteer his time at both organizations.

For many undergraduate and graduate student volunteers and interns, volunteerism is an essential form of career exploration in the humanities. Working as a docent, processing special collections materials, doing research for patrons—all of these activities can help a student to decide whether or not to pursue a graduate degree in the humanities and related fields such as 113

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museum studies and library science. In this way museums and libraries that host interns and volunteers do a tremendous service by mentoring those who will pick up the mantle of outreach, interpretation, and preservation in the future. Such relationships require a mutual investment of time and effort on behalf of the student and the organization, but they are also mutually beneficial. An influx of youthful energy through volunteerism can also be a boon to organizations and something that many friends groups, boards of directors, museums, libraries, and historical societies are constantly trying to tap into.

Certainly young working professionals, many of whom are also raising children, have major demands on their time, but if civic engagement and volunteerism are instilled throughout their high school and undergraduate years, it will be easier for organizations to recruit new volunteers and board members. If volunteers in their twenties and thirties are initially asked to help on specific short-term projects and are made to feel that their efforts are valuable to the organization, humanities organizations will be more likely to attract and retain these essential new partners. Cultivating a younger cadre of volunteers and board members often requires more targeted outreach campaigns and sharing opportunities for volunteering on social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. These active recruitment efforts, however, can pay off in terms of attracting a broad cross-section of generational interest in programming and event planning, as well as new memberships and networks for fundraising.

…many small museums, historical societies, and libraries throughout the state are managed and operated entirely by volunteers.

An essential fact of volunteerism and the humanities in Maine is that many small museums, historical societies, and libraries throughout the state are managed and operated entirely by volunteers. The GHS is one such organization. According to McGowan, there are 14 current board members, including officers, and about 35 regular volunteers who keep the society open MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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year-round on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Volunteers also coordinate seasonal programming and exhibitions from May to September, the busy season for the society, as well as organize and process collections, fundraise, conduct outreach to members through newsletters and email, and countless other activities. In 2007, GHS moved into a new building, which, after much discussion, the organization decided to name the Georgetown Historical Society Center for History and Culture because, according to McGowan, “naming the building was a deliberate act to say who we are. History happens every day. We focus on the past, but we also program around contemporary issues and celebrate art and music.” The building has become a real community center for the small town—with dozens of programs each year on contemporary environmental issues, new historical research, as well as talks by local artists and musical performances. The basement has even been used to teach local elementary school students the art of wooden boat building. For McGowan, an all-volunteer institution benefits from the infectious enthusiasm of volunteers that is immensely fulfilling. She notes, “people come to work because they think it is important and they enjoy it. Volunteers bring an extra level of enthusiasm to tasks because of their interest.” When I asked McGowan why she continues to volunteer so much of her own time to head up such an active local organization, she told me: it’s important. I enjoy it. It’s a service to the community. I work with a great bunch of people.

Before I was even on the board I was brought in as a citizen of Georgetown to help with long term planning and reorganization and saw an opportunity to use my skill sets doing this interesting type of work. It’s still interesting to me.

Feelings of civic pride, interest in local history and culture, and a belief in the importance of community service are all essential elements that underpin the tremendous time, energy, and commitment of volunteer work that makes hundreds of organizations like GHS possible.

Jeanne Benedict, the only full time staff member at the Henry D. Moore public library in Steuben, Maine, highlighted another important element that makes the volunteer experience attractive to many Mainers, especially in more rural communities. She reminds us that volunteering can also be an important social experience, “a time to visit with friends, as well as meet new people 114

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in the community.” For some of her volunteers, it is also a way to “keep their hand in,” and continue to keep their minds active in retirement. The Moore library is a hub of activity for the community of just over 1,000 residents, and, according to Benedict, “the library is a busier and more dynamic place because of volunteers,” both those who have assisted in a recent major project to barcode all of the library’s more than 14,000 items so their catalog could go online, as well as those who make possible community dinners, summer reading programs for children, musical performances, art shows, and community movie nights. Libraries and historical societies, particularly through programmatic outreach, are a critical point of humanities access for Mainers throughout the state. Because of their community orientation, they are able to understand and meet the needs of their patrons and residents, as well as introduce new ideas and experiences.

Kim Smith, of the Presque Isle Historical Society (PIHS), another all-volunteer organization, echoed many of McGowan’s and Benedict’s sentiments. Smith was recognized by the New England Museum Association in 2014 as one of six outstanding practitioners within the large association, particularly for her “tireless dedication to the many and varied facets of the Historical Society’s role in the community.” According to Smith, the PIHS relies on about 50 active volunteers who give more than 2,000 collective hours to the society each year, the benefits of which are numerous both for the volunteers and the organization itself. As Smith explains, “for me personally (I am the volunteer with the most hours acting essentially as a volunteer director with over 1,000 hours annually in addition to working full-time), I find it very rewarding as I feel that I am giving back to my community on a daily basis.”

Furthermore, “it allows us to continue to offer our quality family programs as we simply do not have the budget to hire staff. The challenges, of course, are finding volunteers.” In a similar vein to the challenges discussed earlier, Smith articulated some of the challenges involved in the actual preservation of historic material, “once you find someone willing to volunteer, you must train them in proper archival, digitization, and other techniques. For many, that is too involved.”

Many of the individuals with whom I spoke said their organizations hold yearly volunteer recognition events, which is an important way of publicly expressing gratitude; others have annual awards, or invite volunteers to write articles, blog posts, and do other forms MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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of outreach to showcase their knowledge and their work. Each year, the governor’s office recognizes both individuals and organizations with the Governor’s Awards for Service and Volunteerism.3 Not only do these volunteers and organizations add to Maine’s tremendous quality of place; they preserve Maine’s heritage and ways of life that would otherwise disappear from public memory and consciousness.

Barb Hager, president of the all-volunteer group Spirits Alive, who preserve Eastern Cemetery, Portland’s 1668 burial ground, spoke passionately about the importance of preservation as well as education and outreach: our projects reach out to the community to educate and raise consciousness about this gem, and our projects serve the community by aggregating and preserving valuable genealogical and historical information. As an all-volunteer organization, we have inventoried, sketched, mapped, measured and now are photographing every headstone—some 2,800 in all. Our research brings alive the history of Portland, and our volunteer Docents share these wonderful stories through public tours, events, and lectures.

To facilitate this preservation work and outreach, tapping into the passion and interests of volunteers, and cultivating multiple strengths and skill sets on boards and within organizations, is key to sustenance, and to growth.

Nearly 30 years ago, in “Humanities in America,” Lynne Cheney, then president of the National Endowment for the Humanities, spoke of the public humanities as a “parallel school,” for citizens, enriching education and discourse and awareness throughout the nation (Cheney 1988). “The Heart of the Matter,” a report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, argues that “public programs and cultural institutions, connecting people of all ages and backgrounds, provide opportunities for contact, growth, and collaboration— the very essence of a civil society. They should be included among our highest educational priorities” (2013: 53). In Maine, as throughout the nation, dedicated volunteers support and contribute to the public humanities in a multitude of ways, as detailed throughout this article. In the giving their time, volunteers provide a brighter future for Maine, and an intellectually richer, more culturally engaged, and more civic-minded citizenry. To continue this important work, we, who care deeply about the humanities and the quality of our 115

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public life, must ask ourselves: How can I further the mission of the public humanities in Maine? Where will I give my time? ENDNOTES 1. Corporation for National and Community Service. 2013.

Volunteering and Civic Engagement in Maine, Trends and Highlights Overview. http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov/ME 2. Institute of Museum and Library Services. 2015. FY 2015, 1st quarter. Museum Universe Data File. http://www .imls.gov/research/museum_universe_data_file.aspx 3. To learn more about these awards, and to nominate an individual or organization, visit the website http:// www.volunteermaine.org/governors-service-awards/

REFERENCES American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 2013. “The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a Vibrant, Competitive, and Secure Nation.” AAAS, Cambridge, MA. http://www.humanitiescommission .org/_pdf/hss_report.pdf Cheney, Lynne V. 1988. Humanities in America. A Report to the President, the Congress, and the American People.

National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, DC.

Here in the Georgetown Historical Society library, volunteers are mailing the bi-monthly The Georgetown Tide to the 500 GHS member households. (Photo courtesy of the Georgetown Historical Society).

Libby Bischof is an associate professor of history and chair of the Department of History and Political Science at the University of Southern Maine. She is the author of Maine Moderns: Art in Seguinland, 1900–1940 and Maine Photographs: A History, 1840–2015 (with Earle Shettleworth, and Susan Danly). Bischof is an active public historian, enjoys working with K–12 educators, and is a member of the Maine State Museum Commission.

The Lincolnville Community Library opened on February 1, 2014, in this renovated one-room schoolhouse built originally in 1849. The opening date was just 15 months after nearly 200 community members helped pull the old building across Main Street to a formerly vacant lot (seen here). A large team of skilled volunteers and professional contractors worked together to turn the old schoolhouse into Lincolnville’s new library. (Photo courtesy of Lincolnville Community Library)

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What Supports the Humanities: WHY THE HUMANITIES ARE NECESSARY TO PUBLIC POLICY, AND HOW

Why the Humanities Are Necessary to Public Policy, and How

by Anna Sims Bartel

When we are claimed by citizenship or called to citizenship it is not in the language of maximizing our utilities favored by so many policy wonks but of hopes for a fairer, freer, more decent, just, and, yes, beautiful world.

(Elshtain 2011: 5) Forming the civic imagination is not the only role for literature, but it is one salient role.

(Nussbaum 1997: 88)

I

f public policy exists to guide and govern human behavior so that we can live together in freedom, interdependence, and sustainable productivity, then policymakers need certain things: skill at critical self-reflection; the responsibility and capacity to understand systems of the natural and human-made world; some sense of the common good and our mutual interdependence; sufficient respect for research, science, and knowledge to explore human welfare using these tools; deep ethical commitments to equity, fairness, and democracy; command of the technical aspects of crafting policy, seeing it adopted, supporting its implementation, and studying its impacts. Lastly, they need a “narrative imagination”: “the ability to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from oneself, to be an intelligent reader of that person’s story” (Nussbaum 1997: 10–11). Public policy is, after all, a prime shaper in the development of our durable futures, so it demands imagination, creative problem solving, and a capacity to foresee, choose, and build toward those futures. These demands do more than expose the dependence of our basic human and social capacities on the humanities; they point to the self-reflexivity, human solidarity, and basic empathy that are so often missing in current public policy.

The urgency of the humanities is already evident in policy circles: we have seen a significant rise in formal appreciation of humanistic understandings of the world in recent decades, with story, narrative inquiry, and case study playing a greater role in analysis and evaluation of

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everything from marketing to banking practices to medical interventions. And we have seen the adoption of intersectionality as a concept in social science (though it remains poorly addressed in policy, with a few notable recent exceptions),1 which is basically a refusal to strip humans down to a single component or perspective; in that sense, it is an effort to create a more human and humanistic understanding of, well, humans.

Work on metaphor has given us good reason to understand how deeply language affects our frameworks of understanding. Thibodeau and Boroditsky (2011) write that changing a single word recasts not only people’s understandings of a situation but their proposed policy solutions. Participants reading accounts of crime described as a “virus” sought more medical solutions (prevention, treatment, addressing symptoms), whereas those reading accounts of crime described as a “beast” sought punishment and confinement. In formal politics, our language (death panels) and myths (socialist medicine) drive wedges between us, forcing us to opposite policy positions despite shared interests in a whole and healthy world.

Furthermore, the humanities are not only connected to public policy; they gave birth to it. Core concepts and structures of policy and public life derive from the humanities: the whole notion of human rights, for example, “really derives from eighteenth-century literature, primarily from the novel” (Brooks 2009: 9). Even court systems and democracy itself were first designed based on the thinking and writing of philosophers.

Many of our colleges, including Harvard, were founded as training grounds for civic leaders and were rooted in core humanities curricula because leaders need to understand peace and war, the common good, beauty, and persuasion. To forget that is to forget that ideas shape us, even as we shape ideas.

Some examples: three intersections of the humanities and policy related to climate change. In Florida, arguably the state most threatened by climate change, one policy response has been to ban the terms “climate

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change” and “global warming”—an approach that surely overvalues the power of language. Here in Maine, Hayden Anderson argues that we don’t need more science: “What’s needed instead is a deeper and wider public understanding of the history and philosophy of science, a clearer picture of how scientific thinking works and how we non-scientists can make wise and rational decisions based on scientific findings” (Portland Press Herald, November 8, 2014). In other words, humanities. And at the University of Oregon, a course called “The Cultures of Climate Change” focuses on films, poetry, photography, essays, and a heavy dose of the mushrooming subgenre of speculative fiction known as climate fiction, or cli-fi, instead of scientific texts.

“Speculative fiction allows a kind of scenario-imagining, not only about the unfolding crisis but also about adaptations and survival strategies….The time isn’t to reflect on the end of the world, but on how to meet it” (New York Times, March 31, 2014). If our fundamental ways of understanding the world are so limited that we can’t understand the world, or each other, then we are at an impasse that policy cannot begin to solve. We can no longer conceptualize the common good let alone craft or implement legislation that might lead us to it.

Epistemology, then, philosophy, history, story, the humanities themselves, are essential to policy and to wise governance.

…why are we focusing so much on how policy can help the humanities rather than the other way around?

SO WHY DON’T WE THINK OF HUMANITIES AS POLICY TOOLS?

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iven all that needs to shift in the world, why are we focusing so much on how policy can help the humanities rather than the other way around? Because the humanities are under attack, and we want to keep the horse before the cart. Because robust humanities means robust humans and human cultures. Because we need strong grounding in the humanities to create the cultural and individual preconditions for good understanding

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and humane legislation. Most significantly, perhaps, we think of policy rescuing the humanities because the humanities, we assume, have no agency, no power. We think of policy as a tool and the humanities as objects of study. I suggest we flip that equation and imagine the humanities also as tools, for better understanding, fuller engagement, wiser problem-solving, deeper appreciation, richer living.

WHAT DO THE HUMANITIES OFFER PUBLIC POLICY, THEN?

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olicy is a set of codes and guidelines to advance the common good, so we obviously need the humanities to imagine and explore the common good in general and to understand and address particular issues that obstruct it. There are four stages in the life cycle of public policy, each of which would be inconceivable without the humanities and powerfully enriched by better humanistic training: conceptualization; crafting; implementation; evaluation.

Conceptualization Conceptualization of policy is perhaps the stage most dependent on the humanities. This early exploratory work is where we engage both inquiry and epistemology (what are the issues, according to whom, and how do we understand them?); ethics (what constitutes a problem, and for whom? who deserves better? who gets to participate in these decision-making processes?); and judgment (how do we decide what matters to us and what we think might work to address it?).

Conceptualizing public policy draws on what Nussbaum calls narrative imagination: the empathy, curiosity, and humanity we develop through reading because we insert ourselves into the lives and consciousness of others in a way we rarely can or will do outside of books (or films).

Furthermore, intractable problems demand innovative solutions that succeed by engaging creative capacities, as we see in highly effective prison improv programs and theatrical interventions in youth violence; “recognizing the citizen as artist promotes rhizomes or networks of civic effervescence” (Sommer 2014: 32). Perhaps most important, the humanities can help us to imagine good policy because they can help us to imagine a good, free, and peaceful life. Philosophy or Political Theory 101 might seem irrelevant in college, but where else can we seriously engage the thorny question of whether my right not to be shot trumps your right to carry a gun?

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Which freedom is more important? These are not new questions, but we seem to forget that there are logically and historically sound ways to arrive at communal answers (indeed, this is what policy is all about, in theory). These core processes of envisioning, inheriting, discussing, modifying, negotiating ideals are humanistic processes, and ones we skip all the time. We are so embedded in positions that we often lose sight of interests, and the interests, the ideals, are the places we might actually overlap and thus find common ground for useful policy.

Crafting The humanities also matter profoundly to the processes of crafting policy, to the historical, cultural, empathic, critical, rhetorical, and ethical capacities required to get and shape the information we need and to create from it workable solutions and alliances.

Imagine if people running for office had to submit sample legislation to demonstrate their judgment, values, and writing in a concrete manner: would it change our votes? Debate, rhetoric, writing, philosophical argument, and of course the many forms of interpretive practice are all critical to the crafting of policy that is both powerful and easily understood. Furthermore, good policy depends on a culture of listening, interpretation, and self-reflection; a willingness to solicit and receive criticism; a capacity to reshape ideas and to translate between research and the public interest.

Curiosity about others, understanding that there are multiple points of view in the world, and concepts of relativity, bias, fairness, humility, and inquiry are all crucial, because without these, we are just re-telling our own story, trying to build the whole world to match our personal experience, to the detriment of all of us.

Another notable humanistic skill we need desperately in the crafting of policy is the cultivation of common sense, otherwise known as ethical judgment.

Consider the fracking debate: which do we need really need more, water or gas? Is it valuable to render land unlivable by the many for the short-term gain of a few?

Whose land deserves to be rendered unlivable? California has just restricted water use of citizens, but not of fracking or oil industries. Where is the imagination and political will to apply those restrictions evenly, and/or to mandate that such businesses develop gray-water purification processes at the scale of their need? (And who is making these decisions? Are lobbyists crafting policy? Is corporate interest aligned with public interest?) Strategic MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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imagination can leverage existing problems to craft future solutions.

Policymakers would furthermore do well to adopt a problem-shed approach to social problems. The concept functions through metaphor, and the metaphor itself is powerful, demonstrating that problems, like water in a watershed, derive from and filter through a range of structures. And we can best manage them if we understand their origins, their journey, and the various influences on them. But it is also useful because of the concepts and practices it enables, like collective impact2 and other participatory methods that reach across sectors and silos to empower communities to define and address their own issues.

The humanities…matter profoundly to the processes of crafting policy.…

Implementation Implementation of policy also depends heavily on humanities-based skills. Marketing, public relations, advocacy, diplomacy, partnership-building, the fine arts of persuasion, all rely on cultural and historical knowledge and capacities that put ideas into practice with ethical judgment. Peter Brooks describes his horrified reading of the “Torture Memos,” released in 2002 by the U.S. Department of Justice: “These documents justified the use of torture by the most twisted, ingenious, perverse, and unethical interpretation of legal texts….

No one trained in the rigorous analysis of poetry… could possibly engage in such bad-faith interpretation without professional conscience intervening to say: this is not right” (Brooks 2014: 1). Amusingly, of course, his example posits that those who are engaging in bad-faith textual interpretation to justify torture might be at all sensitive to a concept of not right in any sphere.

Furthermore, implementation issues such as the judgment of when to trumpet victory, how to make humble amendments, and who to invite into the power circles are all vital components of strong policy. This stage also begs for better understanding of the very nature of knowledge: how can we make decisions 119

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together when we can’t decide what we believe or who we trust? Our ways of knowing, our capacities for judgment and assessment of evidence have never been more critical or less discussed. How we the people speak and interact together in public life matters deeply to the success or failure of policy: there is a significant difference, mapped by humanists, between civic discourse and civil discourse. “Civic discourse,” David Cooper posits, is about the tough stuff: “We have a problem. We need to talk about it” (Mathews, MacAfee, and Charity 2002: 5). But we also need civil behaviors, modes of treatment that demonstrate respect, curiosity, and basic kindness. He urges “a capacious view of civic discourse, one that breaks down the convenient yet somewhat misleading distinctions we tend to enforce between civil behavior in the public sphere and the inevitable and welcomed agitations of civic exchange and churn in a healthy democracy” (Cooper 2014: 116). Do the civil discourse initiatives currently underway in Maine take this large view, or do they merely encourage politeness to gloss over unreconciled and powerfully structured differences? Surely civility is necessary to do the hard work of civic negotiation, but it is not sufficient. The humanities help us to recognize and address these issues, so that good policy, well-conceived and well-crafted, has a chance of moving forward to make change.

Evaluation Evaluation is, of course, a vast field that boils down to the ethical practice of assessing and assigning value, usually through reductionist quantitative metrics. The humanities don’t fit well in that mode. We are all being pushed toward modes of evaluation that foreclose valuation, a way of measuring the world that forgets the world it seeks to measure. We cannot afford this. Some things are harder to measure than others, but that does not mean we stop valuing the tough stuff; quite the opposite. As a humanist engaged in social-change work, I propose the list of critical unmeasurables includes hope, beauty, trust, faith, relationship, solidarity, curiosity, communion. We can push further and note that good evaluation is also a learning process, so the humanistic notion of inquiry as an ongoing process of living the questions can support continual learning and adaptation toward complex, emergent solutions. And we can point out that the humanities are the home of aesthetics and utilitarianism, both bedrock systems of evaluation.

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that clarifies without oversimplifying, one that acknowledges the fullness and complexity of human beings in human society. Policy derives from the social sciences, and those are reductionist in their view of humans, oversimplifying us down to an economic logic rather than complex beings of many motives. “One thing the humanities has to do with public policy, then, is to challenge its presuppositions at base: to take apart models that have become standard in policy circles. This is invaluable lest we lose sight of the human being in his and her complexity and, correlatively, of citizens in their civic capacities specifically” (Elshtain 2011: 5).

WHERE ARE POLICY AND THE HUMANITIES INTERSECTING IN MAINE RIGHT NOW?

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here are a number of interesting examples of the intersection of policy and humanities in Maine in recent years. Poverty and attitudes about the poor have been topics of much discussion lately. Maine Equal Justice Partners (MEJP)is hard at work on issues of metaphor and human understandings of poverty, as they strive to create conditions of economic justice for all Mainers. They released a new report in the fall of 2014 about perceptions of people living in poverty, exploring the qualitative and narrative articulations of attitude. The assumption was, of course, that how people feel on an issue determines how they act; if poor people are considered bad people (e.g., drunks flying to Vegas to gamble on our tax dollars, to borrow from last fall’s political ads), then policymakers and citizens can feel justified in treating them badly. But those attitudes rest largely on ignorance, of course: when the statistics around poverty are understood (minimum wage only half of living wage, for example; rates of bankruptcy due to medical issues; unaffordable housing costs), attitudes may change. But our current culture shies away from statistics, or mistrusts them, or spins them. As storyteller Andy Goodman (2015: 2) says, “jargon jars, numbers numb, and nobody ever marched on Washington over a pie chart.” Novels, films, voices, human stories are what actually shape us, and their province is the humanities, as MEJP and others have wisely noted.

Let’s Talk Local, a program of the Maine Humanities Council, recently invited community members across Maine to come together and identify an issue to explore.

The purpose is not problem-solving, but rather opening the issue for richer, more diverse understandings. Our Lewiston group chose to frame the conversation around 120

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“The Changing Face of Home,” responding to the anxieties surrounding demographic shifts in LewistonAuburn after recent decades of immigration and economic stagnation. For our common text, we chose to invite live storytellers, members of our communities who shared their sense of home and how they developed it (in refugee camps, in exile, in a small FrancoAmerican tenement with a large French-speaking family, learning to speak English only in elementary school).

These stories opened us to the complexities of our many and migrant lives; they clarified for us the basic humanity and common desires of our neighbors, new and old. They reminded us that we are stronger and richer and more creative together than we could be alone, and they invited us to meet one another and think differently with each other. This kind of event seems like a smart and compassionate response to anti-immigration furor, one that furthermore can bring clearer light and greater public investment to the issues facing immigration policy.

In another recent program of the Maine Humanities Council, I was privileged to facilitate open text-based dialogue about Creating the Communities We Wish to Live In. We began with Adrienne Rich’s beautiful poem “In Those Years”: In those years, people will say, we lost track of the meaning of we, of you we found ourselves reduced to I and the whole thing became silly, ironic, terrible; we were trying to live a personal life and, yes, that was the only life we could bear witness to But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather they were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore, through the rags of fog where we stood, saying I (Rich, “In Those Years”) The conversations that followed were immensely diverse, raising questions of where we live, how we live together, who we take care of, how we imagine our needs versus those of others. A young man noted, at the end of a rich dialogue, that he had expected these

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conversations to be about social science, but this was different. This was a whole new (old?) way to think about community, from the heart and the imagination first. Maybe that’s what we need most right now; after all, nothing else is working, and poetry can’t hurt.

CLOSING WITH HOPE

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he most critical reason for the humanities to find better ways to speak to and with public policy is this: we have long tried to solve the same old human problems with the same old legislative tools, and by and large, it is not working. We need different tools.

The humanities are good tools for the job. They help us think about the common good. They develop our imaginative capacities to design better approaches. Our paradigm of policy making is solving problems, of treating the symptoms, when the humanities might invite us for once to imagine the world without the disease. In Martin Espada’s brilliant poem “Imagine the Angels of Bread,” he offers an array of extraordinary images for our contemplation: trumpets and fanfare greeting new immigrants on the other side of the border; the food stamps of young mothers “auctioned off like gold doubloons.” And this, moving us beyond the world of problem and into the world of peace: If the abolition of slave-manacles began as a vision of hands without manacles, then this is the year; if the shutdown of extermination camps began as imagination of a land without barbed wire or the crematorium, then this is the year; (Espada, “Imagine the Angels of Bread”) But that’s not how it works, is it, from a place of awareness and hope? We see slave-manacles, we revile them, we rise up in anger at the injustice and have a war.

We never imagined a land without barbed wire, and we never tried. We fought to right a wrong, which is the American notion of good policy. And indeed, it’s better than not. But we have so much further to go, as our continuing struggles remind us. To quote Martin Luther King Jr. from the last civil rights movement, still brutally incomplete: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Light and love are products of imagination, of vision, of faith, of, perhaps, a particular view of 121

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humankind. These are the lifeblood of the humanities.

The truly radical notion is that they are ours, or should be, and apply to all people, or should. It seems not only possible but downright urgent for us to ask our policymakers, our voters, our everyday everyone, to imagine the community they want to live in. And then to think together about what that means in practice, and then to build it. ENDNOTES 1. Various federal departments are acknowledging and seeking to remedy the challenges of siloed approaches to social problems, adopting more of a problem-shed collaborative practice by yoking departments for cross-sector grants. The Partnership for Sustainable Communities (partnership of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) is one notable example.

Anna Sims Bartel serves as associate director of Cornell University’s Center for Engaged Learning and Research. She has also worked at Bates College and at Wartburg College in Iowa, always trying to make higher education ever more useful in the world.

2. Maine has seen recent developments in collective impact work that are making great changes; see Lewiston’s Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, for example.

REFERENCES Brooks, Peter, ed. 2014. The Humanities and Public Life.

Fordham University Press, New York.

Cooper, David D. 2014. Learning in the Plural: Essays on the Humanities and Public Life. Michigan State University Press, East Lansing.

Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 2011. The Humanities and Public Policy. Symposium on the Future of the Humanities.

Council of Independent Colleges, Washington, DC. http://www.cic.edu/News-and-Publications/Multimedia -Library/CICConferencePresentations/2011 %20Humanities%20Symposium/Elsthain.pdf Goodman, Andy. 2015. Storytelling as Best Practice, Seventh Edition. The Goodman Center, Los Angeles.

Mathews, David J., Noëlle McAfee, and Arthur Charity.

2002. Making Choices Together: The Power of Public Deliberation. Kettering Foundation, Dayton, OH. Nussbaum, Martha. 1997. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

Sommer, Doris. 2014. The Work of Art in the World: Civic Agency and Public Humanities. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Thibodeau, Paul, and Lera Boroditsky. 2011. “Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning.” PLOS One 6(2): e16782. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0016782

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Digital Humanities

Digital Humanities

Along with almost every aspect of life today, the humanities are being transformed by new technologies as big data, network analysis, and machine learning offer new ways to understand human culture, creativity, and history. The theme of transformation runs through most of the articles in this section. In the first article, Pamela Fletcher and Crystal Hall argue that bringing computational tools to the study of the humanities and adding humanities’ focus on historical perspective and context, ethics, and value to the study of technology will benefit both areas. Pauleena MacDougal and Katrina Wynn offer a look at how as archivists at the Maine Folklife Center they are using new digital tools to both preserve historical resources and improve public access to them. Stephen Bromage reflects on the opportunities that the digital age has provided for reimagining many aspects of the work of the Maine Historical Society, describing the society’s experience in developing the Maine Memory Network, a statewide digital museum. Jim Henderson and Karan Sheldon outline the role of Northeast Historic Film in preserving and documenting Maine’s film history. And in the final article, Desirée ButterfieldNagy argues that most individuals and organizations could do considerably more to better manage and preserve their digital resources and avoid a “Digital Dark Age.”

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Digital Humanities and the Common Good

by Pamela Fletcher and Crystal Hall

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early every day we read news articles about how big data and computational methods such as network analysis and machine learning are profoundly reshaping financial markets, political campaigning, and scientific discovery. The humanities are experiencing similar transformations, as these same tools and methods offer new ways to understand human culture, creativity, and history. The digitization of large quantities of historical documents, archival materials, and curated collections is radically altering the scale at which scholars can conduct research and greatly facilitating public access to information. And computational methods and tools such as digital mapping and topic modeling allow scholars to identify and analyze patterns and topics across thousands and thousands of texts—novels, newspaper articles, or Tweets—and visualize historical trends in health, civic engagement, and public opinion across towns, regions, and nations. The intersection of the humanities and digital and computational tools offers exciting new opportunities for teaching, research, public outreach, and public policy. At the same time, these transformations of materials into digital objects and labor into algorithmic processes suggest new relationships between individuals and their societies that raise concerns about difference, equality, and representation—questions the humanities have a long tradition of engaging.

Together this emergent body of scholarship, teaching, and outreach is coalescing under the umbrella term of digital humanities. The term entered popular usage in 2004 as the title of a collection of essays edited by Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth (2004).

Now in 2014 there are professional societies, scholarly journals, graduate programs, and a grant office at the National Endowment for the Humanities devoted specifically to the digital humanities. Some claim this new field will save the humanities; others worry that it will crowd out traditional methods of reading, looking, writing, and teaching. It is our belief that neither of these outcomes at their extreme is likely. Instead, we believe that bringing computational tools to the study of the humanities and adding humanistic inquiry’s focus on questions of historical perspective and context, ethics, and value to the study of technology will benefit both areas.

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In addition to the promise that technology and the humanities at scale hold, the digital humanities paradigm shift has created a peril for users even greater than the often-cited fears over loss of privacy, commercialization of knowledge, censorship, hackers, identity theft, viruses, or viral falsehoods. Trend lines in big data sets often suggest a singular perspective on expression and experience, where humanistic inquiry strives to make sure that multiple voices are represented. As Cathy Davidson, scholar of the history of technology and a current member of the National Humanities Council, writes: “We’re still in the beta version of the information age, and there is an urgent need for sustained, humanistic participation to ensure a better version” (Davidson 2012: 485).

In this article we focus specifically on how the humanities in the digital age can be useful for the informed decisionmaking central to crafting public policy, and how public policies can support this new era of the humanities.

FROM DIGITAL HUMANITIES TO PUBLIC POLICY

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ata that represents both the most intimate and the most commonplace experiences of people around the world continues to grow at the explosive rate of billions of gigabytes per day. The algorithms to sort and automate that data are powerful, but the analytic and theoretical foundations for identifying the right questions to ask and then interpreting the answers remain underdeveloped, in large part due to the perceived incompatibility of computation and humanistic inquiry.

One temptation is to assume that because big data is so vast, it must represent everyone and all perspectives.

But human experience remains incredibly diverse in the digital age, and aggregating data on such a large scale can mask important variations and exceptions and may even obscure or misrepresent certain groups or types of experiences. Literary scholars, historians, and other humanists are skilled at identifying patterns as well as exceptions to those patterns and thus can offer the critical contextualization necessary to best interpret them.

So how might the insights and tools of humanities scholarship intersect with the questions of public policy?

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Imagine a hot-button political issue that generates more feedback from constituents than a single office can process. It would take months for a team of individuals to read and summarize all of the responses—clearly not a feasible option. Yet, to understand the anxieties that underlie a proposed policy change, that office needs to hear the many voices represented in that avalanche of data. In August 2014 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) found itself in just this position with the public comments on the issue of Internet neutrality. Net neutrality, also referred to as the Open Internet, is the principle that web users can visit what legal sites they want, when they want, without differences in cost or speed of access to individuals or corporations. The FCC had collected over 1.4 gigabytes of textual data, roughly 3.7 million responses, to proposed regulation about the speed and cost of using Internet infrastructures owned by corporations. Fortunately, the chairman of the FCC had insisted on an accessible and open data format for these comments to allow scholars, the media, and engaged citizens to visualize the data in a way that could make this wide-ranging content more accessible to policymakers and the public (http://www .fcc.gov/print/node/70406).

Many individuals and groups were quick to download the data and begin searching for patterns.

Their methods and results highlight the role of the humanities in assisting with these kinds of large-scale studies. The text itself needed to be analyzed to identify themes, vocabulary clusters, and supportive or critical commentary, all using techniques developed by literary scholars. Parts of speech needed to be identified and labeled across the spectrum from colloquial to formal in several languages. Those linguistic tags then informed the computational natural language processing that helped to sort the comments into meaningful categories. Mathematical network analysis was conducted to identify the strongest connections between themes, submitters, and style. One response to this FCC call for analysis was offered by the Knight Foundation, a private organization that funds innovative approaches to creating informed and engaged communities. Working in collaboration with the data analytics firm Quid, and using the methods outlined above, they produced a series of images of the relationships among the 3.7 million comments (Knight Foundation 2014).1 By summarizing and tabulating the types of responses received, this kind of data visualization offers MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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the FCC valuable information as it begins to issue rules on the Open Internet. But the perspective of humanities scholars can also add richness and nuance to the results, helping us to see not just what people are saying, but who is speaking and who is not represented. For example, media scholars contributed studies of news outlets and social media platforms to contribute a further point of comparison to the individual comments.

Among their findings was that even though Internet users in Maine submitted a high percentage of unique responses, the topic received little to no coverage in local media outlets (Knight Foundation 2014). Why was this the case? In addition, because comments were collected electronically, requiring Internet access at home or at a local institution, rural web users, with the most to lose in changes to regulation, were likely to be most underrepresented in the data. As Scott Weingart argues in a blog post, here, the digital humanist can help to bridge the large-scale and the local, allowing us to see the individual and the particular within the aggregate (http://www.scottbot.net/HIAL/?p=40944).

Similarly, methods from gender and sexuality studies helped contextualize and explain the predominance of male voices in these responses. And even the product of this analysis, the computerized network graph, is the inspiration for creative, commercially available art and consequently represents a new field of study for scholars of visual culture (http://www.redbubble.com /shop/gephi+art-prints).

Humanities scholars can effectively bring their expertise to bear on data generated by contemporary policy issues, helping stakeholders interpret, visualize, and understand current issues as the Open Internet example shows quite plainly. The next two examples examine how one type of more traditional humanities subject matter—novels and other kinds of books—can also yield valuable insights that can improve our understanding of a broad range of urgent public policy issues.

While computation can make large patterns more clearly visible, they are the aggregate of information about many smaller communities. Google has implemented a project with the ambitious goal of digitizing a copy of every book ever printed, which they have calculated to be 129,864,880 volumes.2 Estimates of how many of these books they have digitized after years of collaboration with many large national and institutional libraries range from 12 to 30 million. While Google’s corporate interest in these billions of pages and trillions of words remains a mystery, part of their scanning 125

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project has involved transforming printed pages into searchable text, which can yield tables of word and phrase counts in books printed between 1500 and 2008.

Working with a team of programmers led by a genome specialist and a data scientist, they have built an online tool to visualize the results of custom word searches in its database of books: the Ngram Viewer (https://books .google.com/ngrams).

The preliminary results of the NGram development group suggest that a study of word counts in Google’s holdings of digitized books can reveal universal patterns about memory, the suppression of ideas, and fame (Aiden and Michel 2013). The large-scale work of the Ngram designers suggests a fame curve, which varies according to the age at which a person becomes famous, the rate at which their fame grows, and how quickly their fame declines. The example in Figure 1 uses the search terms “Margaret Chase Smith,” “Edmund Muskie,” “Susan Collins,” and “Olympia Snowe.”

The leaders of the team that developed the Ngram Viewer recently published a book of their results, Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture, which offers some context for interpreting Figure 1. The

data for “Margaret Chase Smith” follows the general results that Aiden and Michel found for 150 famous politicians: fame arrives when the person is in their forties, increases exponentially through their seventies, and then begins a gradual decline (Aiden and Michel 2013). In broad strokes, the Ngram graph in Figure 1 shows that Smith, born in 1897, fits the trend, and Collins and Snowe seem to be following suit. Yet, the perspective of the Ngram Viewer represents such great distance and time that the nuances of community dynamics are invisible. The dip in occurrences of “Margaret Chase Smith” in print between 1953 and 1960 is an anomaly that is smoothed over and unaddressed by such a large-scale examination.

For humanists, the study of primary-source evidence that is directly derived from the subject of study is fundamental to identifying biases in the data and revealing important distinctions that are smoothed out and thus hidden within the overall patterns. Analysts typically describe the volume, variety, and velocity of big data, the 3Vs, but students at Bowdoin College are investigating a fourth V, veracity, to determine the integrity and reliability of data in humanistic fields. For

Figure 1: Relative Frequency of the Names “Edmund Muskie,” “Margaret Chase Smith,”

“Olympia Snowe,” and “Susan Collins”

Created by Crystal Hall with the Ngram Viewer application searching books in English in the Google Books database from 1930 to 2008, with a smoothing of 3.

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example, in the first-year seminar “How to Read 1,000,000 Books,” students are examining and cleaning a subset of word counts from Google Books to test the conclusions about culture drawn by using the same materials. The course asks if Google’s books can (or should) represent everyone. For example, is a simple name search accurate enough to represent the popularity of a person in print? The students are asking what synonyms should be included to truly understand the frequency with which a person appears in books over time and the context in which we recognize that a book is talking about the person for whom we are searching.

Creating a graph for “Senator Smith” would return many false positives. How many U.S. senators (historical and fictional) have been named Smith, after all? On that note, how many women in the country might be named Susan Collins?

Here the strengths of humanities scholars play a vital role in answering questions about big data sets: for whom is the data speaking, and how does that correspond to what the data claims to represent? The work of the literary scholar or historian can push the data to reveal more than just the relative popularity in print of, in this case, three Maine politicians (or women who share the same name). Humanists would try to answer a number of questions about Figure 1: What are the mechanisms of power and representation that influence the lines of popularity for these names? Are there other areas of print or digital communication that would better measure the presence of these women in public media? To what scale are Maine publications represented in the data set? Are the books from in-state publishing houses digitized and counted within this “universal” view of history? Having this knowledge would reveal both the historical context in which these women’s political careers flourished or continue to have an impact as well as the local or national pathways by which they entered the field.

Literary scholars are also using these kinds of digital databases to perform more complex textual analysis, translating their traditional questions to a much larger scale. Matthew Jockers, an English professor at the University of Nebraska, has performed sophisticated statistical analyses on the digitized texts of thousands of nineteenth-century American and British novels (Jockers 2013). His primary interest is in understanding the larger landscape of nineteenth-century fiction, as a corrective to traditional studies that have focused on close readings of exceptional novels.

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But some of his findings also have implications for understanding the current literary market. For example, he found there were surprising correlations between the marketing and composition of thousands of novels in the United States and Britain in the decades immediately after the American Revolution (Jockers 2013).

Could understanding this flow of cultural influence from a larger market to a smaller one help us to identify similar situations today? What if such a method were applied to labeling and marketing trends to help small Maine businesses to better identify trends that will help them to compete locally, nationally, and internationally?

Digital humanists have developed sophisticated tools for analyzing texts, and this scholarly expertise has a more urgent need for application beyond the academy today as a result of how readily accessible big data in our information age threatens to overwhelm meaningful interpretation and understanding. Humanities scholars are also skilled at identifying, contextualizing, and analyzing difference, the difference of expression and experience that creates richness and beauty as well as conflict and strife. When these new and traditional skills are combined, these kinds of methods can help us to anticipate, rather than just react to, matters of local, national, and international policy concern.

Every year individual academics, teams of scholars, and think-tank organizations produce thousands of documents about ethnicity, cultural dynamics, local history, religion, and other crucial aspects of human experience and creative output. With the assistance of the high-level text analysis described earlier in this article, the content of these studies can now be made more accessible to leaders and decision makers who craft and implement policy. A recent article coauthored by a big data scholar at Georgetown University and members of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers highlights the ways in which the questions raised by digital humanists are assisting in large-scale analysis and policy design (Leetaru, Perkins, and Rewerts 2014). This work created an archive drawn from the leading databases of academic scholarship. The overall project encompassed publications related to Africa and the Middle East, and in one case study, that of the Nuer ethnic group in Africa, the algorithms located 1.5 million related publications that were used to create maps of populations, identify experts in this field of study, analyze questions of food and water security, explore themes related to the targeted genocide of this group, and chart relative scholarly attention to this group during the last 50 years (Leetaru, Perkins, and 127

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Rewerts 2014). These results were distilled into charts, maps, and summaries to guide policymakers to the data and scholarship that would quickly and reliably inform them. The geographic coverage of the overall database is impressive, and its potential as a research tool is powerful, as the Nuer example shows, but the project also identified the discrepancy between government and academic publications. Leetaru and his colleagues (2013) argue that the geographic interest of academic literature has changed little over time, one presumes because the areas of study represent rich and complex questions of concern, while the government documents appear more reactionary. Areas of darkest color in Figure 2 indicate where government research, news media, and academic literature overlap in their concerns, but readers should note the circles in lighter shades (primarily the academic literature) that stand alone.

Perhaps most importantly, Leetaru and his colleagues found that U.S. government publications focus only on areas of present policy concern, rather than identifying potential future policy issues, while the academic literature offers broader and more constant assessment. Given the focus of the humanities on difference, change, and otherness, this is essential information that needs fuller integration with government policy.

Such a study of Russia, China, or India could lead in new, preventative directions for policy, directions that allow us to anticipate emergent issues rather than scramble for background knowledge after an incident has occurred.

Our examples so far emphasize how humanists’ methods and interpretative questions can help interpret big data, with a particular focus on the crucial cultural and individual variation that can be lost within the aggregate. Digital humanities is also centrally concerned with collecting this local knowledge, history, and Figure 2: Visualization of News Coverage of Africa and the Middle

East in Different Databases concerns to bring it into the larger public domain using digital and computational methods. This includes making data and interpretation accessible to the public and using the power of digital and computational methods to assist cultural organizations, elementary and secondary schools, and civic entities in developing the skills to use this information fruitfully.

Two curricular initiatives aimed at bringing policy issues to the fore highlight this kind of work.

The first emphasizes the ways in which these tools and methods can have an immediate impact on a community. In fall 2014, Jack Gieseking taught “The Digital Image of the City” at Bowdoin, which used studies of New York City as models for examining issues in Portland, Maine, related to housing, infrastructure, and public space. Students in the course, many without prior knowledge of Figure is reprinted from Leetaru, Perkins, and Rewerts (2014: Fig. 25). Darkness of color computational skills or humanistic indicates higher number of articles about a given area from multiple sources. The figure social sciences, collected data in has been modified to blue and white from the original full-color version. For maps of each source, plus this composite one, all in color, see Leetaru, Perkins, and Rewerts (2014). the form of narratives and mental MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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maps, which they then analyzed using the methods of text analysis and spatial analysis common to digital humanities. They incorporated data from Portland’s city offices to better contextualize their qualitative findings within the available quantitative big data. At the end of the semester, students presented their findings and suggestions to representatives of the City of Portland with the goal of establishing partnerships that could inform better policy making in the future.3 Bowdoin College’s Joseph McKeen Center for the Common Good is currently working to identify similar points of collaboration with the Brunswick community and regional historical societies.

The second example highlights how instruction in the digital humanities has the potential to increase outreach to the public, involve a team of collaborators, and bring visibility to historical events that continue to resonate within local communities. In November 2014, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art launched the virtual exhibition Fifty Years Later: “The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting”—A Digital Exhibition.4 The website revisits a landmark exhibition from 1964 at Bowdoin, one of first in the nation to examine the representation of African-Americans in American art. The content of the virtual exhibit was created by Art History Professor Dana Byrd and the students in her seminar “Race and Representation” in the spring of 2014. The website was built by a student as part of a Gibbons Summer Research Program fellowship in order to incorporate technology with the interdisciplinary questions raised by the artwork and the artifacts of the original exhibit, including photographic negatives from a visit to Bowdoin by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The student worked with staff at the museum and Bowdoin’s Digital and Computational Studies Initiative. In both cases, student learning and scholarship became a valuable educational resource for a broader public.

Such work can also have a statewide impact with implications for national policy. One example comes from the collaborative work by fisheries expert Ted Ames and digital mapping specialist Eileen Johnson.

Ames and Johnson collected narratives of historical fishing grounds to identify changes in cod and haddock populations along the coast of Maine. Their research combined local, community-level humanities information with large-scale data about water temperatures, underwater topography (bathometry), and spawning zones. Ames is clear about the challenges faced during MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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this project: “Simply interviewing some fishermen and then cleaning up the data to make it presentable to the scientific community is only a small part of what has to be done to interview fishermen effectively” (Ames 2005: 186). Cultural knowledge, linguistic study, textual analysis, and historical study were all required to assemble the collection of fishermen’s narratives about cod and haddock populations in a meaningful way. When combined with geographic information systems (GIS) processing, those data can be compared with other spatial analysis common in the sciences, for a powerful result. The combination of digital humanities, ecology, and GIS has revealed a rich resource in these narratives that could serve as a cornerstone for informing regulatory decisions (Ames 2005).

FROM PUBLIC POLICY TO DIGITAL HUMANITIES

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or these kinds of collaborations to flourish, digital humanists (and other scholars) need access to data and funding for research and outreach. Access needs go beyond a searchable database that returns one kind of result about one kind of query. All of the questions raised by the results of the Ngram Viewer search for “Margaret Chase Smith” demonstrate a need for contextualizing information within its full text, alongside image files, and with the available associated details about authors, publishers, editors, publication types, and other such metadata. Digitization is a critical first step toward providing greater access to materials, but the bigger benefits occur when users can also access the raw data in formats that allow them to manipulate the data and thus see connections and relationships that were previously invisible.

Much data is already held in public repositories (or nonprofits), but the process of digitization and building good metadata—that summarizes basic information about the data and makes it easier to find and work with—is expensive and time consuming. Some cultural organizations signed contracts in the early years of digitization, effectively giving ownership of their digital data to commercial entities in perpetuity. Open access is a goal of many digital archives, but financial pressures and interests still lead to mixed results. Google Books is accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, but there is no information available about what materials are included and why, searches turn up variable and inconsistent results, and available metadata is spotty. In 129

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contrast, Hathi Trust is a curated and customizable digital book collection, but requires a subscription for access. The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has attempted to address all of these concerns. DPLA is a nonprofit, collaborative portal for accessing the collections of many American libraries. The platform for virtually studying over eight million objects held by DPLA represents a range of involvement of professional and amateur scholars.

The aggregation of all this data can also come at the cost of obscuring local histories and concerns in two main ways. The first, discussed earlier, is the danger that the small-scale is entirely masked by aggregated big data.

The second is the loss of information that can occur when a small-scale collection is tallied with many other datasets, as its own value as a representation of local populations is lost. How have town, regional, and state libraries built their collections, and what do those patterns reveal about local interests and issues? The statewide library catalog MaineCat is an excellent example of the potential for using an existing large dataset (three million unique items) to better understand regional identities and concerns over time as represented by the nearly 100 municipal and educational libraries that participate in this service.

Museums are also major repositories of data in the form of both objects and their associated metadata. The first step in making these resources available is, again, digitization and documentation. While museums have historically been reluctant to make their images publicly available—because of copyright law and because permissions are a (small) source of profit for some institutions—there is a growing movement for making all images freely available at high resolutions. Digitization may also raise concerns that the virtual will replace the real and thus reduce visitors to physical collections.

Many museums, however, have found that adding context and representation online for the objects on display actually encourages visitors to engage their collections more deeply. The ability to see one object against the backdrop of the text, geographies, chronologies, and networks of an entire collection opens new doors for research and understanding about that object.

This potential is of such importance nationally and internationally that a new funding initiative has been established with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to digitize the hidden collections of unique, local historical societies and museums. The program will be administered by the international Council on Library MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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and Information Resources (CLIR). In a press release on the CLIR website, Dan Cohen, a board member and executive director of the DPLA, identified the value of this effort as “essential for filling in gaps in our digitized cultural record” (http://www.clir.org/). The continued dialogue between local stories and large-scale data will only be productive as long as each recognizes the value of the other.

People engaged in all fields of human experience will need computational literacy to engage the present and create a better future. Supporting digital and computational learning and experimentation across all areas of K–12 education is critical; students should engage such ideas and methods alongside their engagement with humanities, social sciences, and sciences, rather than having technological skills cordoned off into its own narrow field. Collaboration is critical to achieving this goal. Institutions of higher and primary education, libraries, archives and museums, and state and local organizations can share expertise and datasets by working together on so-called legacy projects, long-term collaborative efforts in which participants from different institutions–and different locations–contribute to shared project and goals.

CONCLUSION

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he attentive reader might be surprised at how few of our examples come from what might seem to be traditional humanities scholarship, centered on specialized research topics. While the digital humanities is, indeed, transforming the way that research is conducted and the modes of analysis in specialized fields, we have deliberately emphasized how the lessons and larger questions of humanistic inquiry might be brought into a broader field. It is our belief that humanistic scholarship and methods have a tremendous amount to offer public policy and are vital voices in conversations about science, sustainability, social justice, and public history.

Such perspectives are also critical to shaping the emergent digital world on terms that bring the efficiency and power of computation together with a commitment to the common good and humanistic values.

The same attentive reader will have seen that our presentation of the relationship between digital humanities and policy has been expressed in as many questions as statements. This has been less deliberative and more from necessity. As an emergent field, digital humanities has had little time or opportunity to help shape policy 130

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(or vice versa). Yet, as a well-established field of disciplines, the humanities continue to prove themselves adept at asking valuable questions about problems of identity, equality, and the nature of knowledge. Solutions to those problems, particularly at a large scale, are best addressed by a collaborative effort. Dialogue is key: a dialogue between local and big data, a dialogue among stakeholders, a dialogue for the common good. -

Leetaru, Kalev H., Timothy K. Perkins, and Chris Rewerts.

2014. “Cultural Computing at Literature Scale: Encoding the Cultural Knowledge of Tens of Billions of Words of Academic Literature.” D-Lib Magazine 20.9/10. http:// www.dlib.org/dlib/september14/leetaru/09leetaru.html Schreibman, Susan, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth, eds.

2004. A Companion to Digital Humanities. Blackwell, Oxford. Also available as an e-book at http://www .digitalhumanities.org/companion/

ENDNOTES 1. Technological limitations prevent us from reproducing the image, but we encourage readers to access NPR’s presentation of the key visualization here: http://tinyurl .com/lgh66ua 2. More information about this project is available in a blog post by Leonid Taycher: http://booksearch.blogspot .com/2010/08/books-of-world-stand-up-and-be-counted .html 3. This blog post by Jack Gieseking, “Digital Image of the City: Smart City Recommendations for Portland, Maine,” provides more information about this project: http:// research.bowdoin.edu/digital-computational-studies /student-research/digital-image-of-the-city-presentations/ 4. Read more about this exhibit at http://www.bowdoin. edu/art-museum/exhibitions/2014/1964-portrayal -revisited.shtml

Pamela Fletcher is professor of art history and codirector of the Digital and Computational Studies Initiative at Bowdoin College.

She is the author of Narrating Modernity: The British Problem Picture 1895–1914 (2003); the coeditor (with Anne Helmreich) of The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London 1850–1939; and coauthor (with David Israel) of The London Gallery Project (2007, revised 2012),

an interactive digital map of London’s nineteenth-century art market. She was recently appointed the first editor in the new field of digital humanities and art history for caa. reviews.

REFERENCES Aiden, Erez, and Jean-Baptiste Michel. 2013. Uncharted: Big Data as a Lens on Human Culture. Riverhead Books, New York.

Ames, Ted. 2005. “Putting Fishermen’s Knowledge to Work: The Promise and Pitfalls.” Fishers’ Knowledge in Fisheries Science and Management, ed. Nigel Haggan, Barbara Neis, and Ian G. Baird, 184–188. Blackwell, Oxford.

Davidson, Cathy N. 2012. “Humanities 2.0: Promise, Perils, Predictions.” Debates in the Digital Humanities, ed.

Matthew K. Gold, 476–489. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Jockers, Matthew. 2013. Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.

Knight Foundation. 2014. “Decoding the Net Neutrality Debate. Media, Public Comment and Advocacy on the Open Internet.” The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Miami, FL. http://www.knightfoundation .org/features/netneutrality/ [Accessed December 17, 2014]

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Crystal Hall is an Italian literary scholar and a digital humanist.

She is director of the Digital Humanities Course Cluster at Bowdoin, part of the Mellon Humanities Initiative, 2014–2016.

She is author of Galileo’s Reading.

Her research uses large-scale textual and network analysis to study literature, with a specific emphasis on the library of Galileo Galilei. She teaches a first-year seminar that incorporates elementary R statistical programming language into the analysis of literature and coordinates outreach and educational opportunities for faculty who wish to incorporate computation in their courses.

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Digital Humanities: THE DIGITAL HUMANITIES IMPERATIVE

The Digital Humanities Imperative: An Archival Response

by Pauleena MacDougall and Katrina Wynn

INTRODUCTION

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igital humanities (DH) is an emerging field that involves the creation, use, and preservation of digital humanities resources. But it can also include advocacy, research, teaching, publishing, investigating, analysis, and synthesis. Digital humanities is a subset of the humanities that grew out of literary and linguistic computing in the 1970s (see sidebar for timeline). Digital humanities scholarship is organized in an international group of professional societies under the umbrella of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (http:// adho.org/). During the last 20 years, DH research has led to the development of publications such as the University of Illinois Press book series on Topics in the Digital Humanities and the journals Digital Humanities Quarterly, Digital Medievalist, Journal of Digital Humanities, and Literary and Linguistic Computing. Centers in several countries devote their research to digital humanities, even at a time when funding for the humanities at colleges and universities is flat or even decreasing.

As an emerging field, DH education and research is an important addition to the education of Maine students. It is not enough to be born in a digital world; Maine students need additional skills in digital literacy, global awareness, and interactive communication as they join the workforce, whether they are working in business, libraries, education, or other fields. The future of digital humanities and its many convergent practices seems nearly infinite. Policies that will most likely effect the practice are statewide policies that can enhance the work and educational opportunities of Maine citizens such as access to broadband, access to computers and software in schools, as well as support for humanities education at all educational levels and support for libraries and archives.

The scope of DH is vast and rapidly growing, and practitioners find it necessary to develop and learn about archival standards, digital collections management, computing humanities, blogging humanities, scholarly

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tools, databases, copyright laws, and networked writing—all deeply intertwined with traditional humanities, but expanding and growing exponentially in tandem with the Internet.

THE DIGITAL IMPERATIVE SHAPES PRESERVATION AND ACCESS

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he work of archivists and librarians focuses on two primary goals: preservation of their holdings and providing public access to the material in their collections.

For the archivist, the greatest current challenge to this TIMELINE • First desktop computer (mass marketed) Hewlett Packard, 1968 • Intel microprocessor, 1971 • Electronic digital computer patented, 1973 • First Apple personal computer, 1976 • First IBM PC, 1981 • ARPANET (science network expanded by National Science Foundation), 1981 • First Listserv (Paris, France, by Eric Thomas), 1986 • World Wide Web (by British Tim Berners-Lee), 1989 • MOSAIC web browser, 1993 • L-Soft listserv software, 1994 • Private and commercial use of Internet (email, instant message), mid-1990s • First database, 1996 • National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Initiative, 2006 (Kirschenbaum 2010)

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work is technological change. For example, sound recordings have been made on wax cylinders, wire cylinders, an array of tape sizes in reel-to-reel and cassettes, and vinyl records. Texts have appeared on many materials, though most commonly paper. Photographs and negatives are on paper and film. The archivist needs to preserve all of these materials through a series of actions including proper care (climate control, archival grade storage materials, minimizing handling) and making access copies. As the digital age has rapidly changed the technology of how sound, texts, and images are created, the work has taken on added complexity. As a result, the digital archivist needs to provide digital preservation and access to collections such as those housed at the Maine Folklife Center (MFC) at the University of Maine in Orono.

The MFC oversees the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History, founded by Professor Edward D. Ives in the 1950s. The 160-plus collections in the archives contain over 3,900 individual accessions, including roughly 12,600 photographs, 2,500 slides, 3,000 audio recordings, and 325,000 pages of printed materials, covering a broad range of topics. The materials were collected beginning about 1958 and include interviews with people who lived in the late nineteenth century. The collection is continually growing, as staff and members of the public conduct fieldwork projects in folklore and oral history. Northeast Archives is the state’s only major repository for folklore and oral history materials.

The collection is especially strong in documentation of occupations, foodways, community histories, lore and legends, traditional music, social activities, ritual and worship, material culture, and expressive arts. Specific topics include the logging and lumbering industry; fishing and lobstering; women in Maine; country and western music; northeastern multi-ethnic culture; labor history; Native Americans; and tourism and hunting.

Collections in the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History include those that have been generated through various class activities and grant-based initiatives, as well as materials that have been deposited by donors from outside the University of Maine community. Much of the material is in the form of oral history interviews, but there are also class papers, topical surveys, field journals, photographs, commercial publications and recordings, exhibit materials, printed ephemera, and other kinds of documentation.

The MFC first ventured into the digital world in 1992 when the University of Maine’s Raymond H. MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Fogler Library received a grant to add bibliographic information about the first 2,000 or so accessions of the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History to its online URSUS database. Prior to that date, anyone who wished to access the collection had to come to the MFC and search through card file indexes. At the conclusion of the cataloging project, researchers and students could, for the first time, access information about the collection through the Internet.

Then in 1998, MFC’s archivist began converting the card files of the Northeast Archives and Oral History to a database and creating collections descriptions that were then put on a newly formed MFC website. At that time, libraries and archives still recommended analog rather than digital copies for preservation purposes. As a result, when the MFC decided to create preservation copies of audio files, they did so on preservation master tapes. The in-house database provided more opportunities for searching the collection by keywords, but was still only accessible to visitors who came into the MFC. PRESERVATION

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n April 1999, the MFC received a National Endowment for the Humanities Preservation and Access grant to make preservation copies of its older, more endangered materials. As preservation masters of original analog-formatted audio files were created, listening copies were copied onto CDs. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that born-digital materials began to arrive at the center with the advent of affordable digital recorders and digital cameras. The arrival of digital recordings, digital photographs, and digital documents required new thinking about preservation and access.

Collections descriptions grew on MFC’s website as the result of this preservation and access effort, and patrons increasingly requested digital copies of audio, photos, and documents which the MFC did not have.

To meet that challenge, the board of advisors for the MFC came up with a plan to digitize the entire collection with the help of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress made an offer to purchase and preserve the original tapes, photographs, and documents from our collection in exchange for a sum that would support digitizing this important collection.

Over the course of two years beginning in 2012, 4,433 hours of audio tape were sent to George Blood 133

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audio/video/film preservation lab in Philadelphia for digitization. The digitized files were returned to MFC on hard drives. Students, under the supervision of Archives Manager Katrina Wynn, scanned 178,150 pages of documents, 18,015 photographs, 13,864 negatives, and 2,517 slides. The details of the undertaking were complex. Wynn created a number of digitizing policies and procedures to complete the task. In addition, she had to check the MFC’s database for accuracy throughout the process. In conducting this work, we recognized that the digital files being created would need to be of high quality so we consulted the Library of Congress’s Digital Preservation website (http://www .digitalpreservation.gov/) and the archivist (first Michael Taft, later Bertrand Lyons) at the American Folklife Center with specific questions.

Digitization processes are complex and include the necessity of recording metadata for each item. Metadata is information (some of which is embedded in the digital files and some in separate files) describing when, where, by whom, and how the digital files were created.

This information is necessary so that, in future, when files need to be normalized, emulated, or migrated to accommodate new technology, the archivist will know how to proceed. Migration, the most common option, means updating a digital file as new software develops (like taking an old Microsoft Word file and updating it with each new version of Microsoft Word). This means there will always be access to the contents, but migration can affect the formatting and appearance of a digital file.

Aside from the conversion errors that can occur with migration, the method takes time and must be done on a fairly regular basis. A second option is normalization, which is a type of migration, specifically into one type or a very few types of file formats, often open-source, nonproprietary ones, in an attempt to beat technological obsolescence. For example, an archive could convert all its photographs into TIFF format, whether their original was TIFF, JPEG, or GIF. Emulation, almost the opposite of the first two options, involves preserving the old version and using technology to mimic the old environment in order to open the old file and see it as it (mostly) originally appeared (this is fairly common for people to do with old computer games). This method depends on greater technical skill than migration and also access to the hardware to read materials created by older technology.

Digital preservation has its own technical challenges. Hardware and software can become obsolete, MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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making access next to impossible. In addition, digital bits (0s and 1s) reside on a storage medium (CD or hard drive), and these bits can degrade over time. Furthermore, data loss for digital files is even more catastrophic than for analog because it can easily include the loss of an entire recording, rather than a minor loss of sound, for example. Technical issues that must be addressed include the cost and capacity of digital storage; the complexities of archiving and preserving website content and video; finding ways to automate processes; maintaining a technical infrastructure to support long-term digital preservation; the difficulty of preserving a wide variety of formats; and keeping up with ever-developing standards and new technology. Archives are also continually challenged by the lack of funding to maintain skilled staff.

To meet these challenges, staff at the MFC made copies of transcripts as PDF files along with printed copies on acid free paper. The digitized sound files had already been copied onto tape, so we also preserved the tape copies. We placed all of the completed digital files on hard drives and transferred copies to the University of Maine’s Fogler Library computer server, with a backup copy at University of Maine at Fort Kent. These files are regularly migrated and checked for degradation.

However, if all of these preservations fail, we can always go to the Library of Congress to retrieve the originals.

Clearly, there are limitations to any of the methods we are using for preservation, but we hope the redundancies will overcome any weak links in the preservation plan. Still, as the MFC is the repository for most audio recordings from the state’s historical societies and libraries, it is essential that we follow best practices with multiple redundancies for preserving the historical record. To this end, we created a digital preservation policy that dictates how often and by whom the digital files need to be checked and their care reevaluated.

DIGITAL ACCESS

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n addition to preservation, we are also working to provide greater access to the collection. The primary work of creating accession descriptions and abstracts of the interviews in our collection is time consuming and ongoing. As we complete each description, it is put in an online database that can be viewed and searched on our website (http://umaine.edu/folklife /archives/collections/).

To increase awareness of and access to the collection, the MFC, with funding from the National 134

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Endowment for the Arts, developed an online exhibit for the University of Maine’s Digital Commons called “The Maine Song and Story Sampler.”1 The exhibit presents audio and video recordings of traditional songs and stories as MP3s and MPEG4s, JPGs of associated photographs with accompanying transcriptions of the text and musical notation as PDFs and contextual information—thus creating a global audience for these unique traditions. Visitors to the site can click on a Google map of northeastern North America, find their Maine or Canadian Maritime community, and click on a link to a song or story collected in their community. Each song and story includes contextual information: the name of the singer and collector, date and place of collection and other interpretive information. MFC staff and students listened to various recordings and chose selections with interesting content and good sound quality. (See sidebar on next page for an example.)

The variety of songs and stories chosen reflect the diverse occupations and ethnicity of the people, as well as a range of both inland and coastal communities, large cities and small towns. Teachers interested in using the materials in the classroom will also find a free downloadable curriculum.

PERMISSIONS/COPYRIGHTS

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n selecting materials for the sampler, MFC staff attempted to contact interviewers and interviewees for permission wherever possible. By law, the creator of any object (text, audio file, or photograph) holds the copyright unless and until the creator turns that right over to someone else. Audio interviews belong to both the interviewer and the interviewee. Although materials in our collection are accompanied by a release form that essentially turns copyright over to the MFC, the form does not explicitly give permission to put the materials on the World Wide Web. We followed the spirit of the guidelines of Fair Use Copyright Law to the best of our ability. The purpose of the exhibit was educational, and no fees are involved for interaction with the exhibit. We avoided using works by commercial artists and made selections short. We also included information about the artists and researchers involved and provided bibliographic information for users. Because we were unable to find people to grant permission in every instance, we placed a statement on the site stating that we would take materials down if copyright holders objected to

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the resources being placed there. So far, no one has requested that materials be removed. Anyone creating a documentary or even a website using archival photographs or audio and visual materials needs to be aware of copyright law. The law states, “the distinction between what is fair use and what is infringement in a particular case will not always be clear or easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission” (http://www.copyright.gov /fls/fl102.html).

DIGITAL DICTIONARY

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nother digital humanities project at the MFC is a collaborative project with Native programs, the Penobscot Nation, and the American Philosophical Society to complete a Penobscot language dictionary.

The current Penobscot Language Dictionary consists of a 500-page dot-matrix-printed manuscript of Penobscot words with English translations. The original manuscript is the work of researcher Dr. Frank T. Siebert and his assistants. They began creating the dictionary for the Penobscot Nation during the 1980s by writing words on index cards and then alphabetizing the cards and typing the words from the cards on sheets of paper in alphabetical order. Towards the later part of the 1980s, project staff began entering the dictionary words on a computer and saving the information on a computer hard drive with backups on 5¼-inch floppy discs. Upon Siebert’s death, the manuscript and disks went to the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia as part of Siebert’s collection.

At the request of members of the Penobscot Nation’s language revitalization group in 2012, MFC staff approached the National Endowment for the Humanities for a grant to complete the dictionary. The current project seeks to make both an online database version of the dictionary for the Penobscot Nation and a final published print version. Working with a part of the dictionary that was digitally entered onto floppy disks in the 1980s, the American Philosophical Society contracted with George Blood, an audio/video/film preservation lab in Philadelphia, to transfer the digital files onto current media. Then the project’s linguist, Conor Quinn, transferred those digital files into an XML-structured digital manuscript, with every original component separately tagged.

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EXAMPLE FROM THE MAINE SONG AND STORY SAMPLER Title: Bye-Bye Longjohns

Grange in Maine has always been social – to improve the quality of life for farm families. From the very beginning, music played a central role in Grange activities. Recent Grange musicians retained many older styles of music and traditional entertainment.

From the “official” Grange piano music to songfests and harmonica tunes, the music of an earlier age is still heard in Grange halls throughout the state.

Narrator: Jim Cahill and Dot Ruppell Location: Bingham, ME Document Type: Song Collector: Jeff McKeen Date: 1991

Transcription

NA: 2245 CD: 2172 Abstract “Bye-Bye Longjohns” is a musical representation of how most Mainers feel by the time March rolls around. For some, this feeling comes even earlier.

The song was written in western Maine during the late twentieth century.

Description “Bye-Bye Longjohns” is a musical representation of how most Mainers feel by the time March rolls around. For some, this feeling comes even earlier.

The song was written in western Maine during the late twentieth century. The song began as one verse by the nephew of Grange member Myrtle McKinney, who was also the official musician in Norridgewock, ME. After singing the short song, Jim Cahill asked Dottie Abbott, a resident of The Forks and member of the Grange in Bingham, to write additional verses.

The fact that the song has multiple authors likely explains the change in refrain from the first to second verses. Though even more verses may have been written since, the three verse song heard here was the full version as of 1991. Also note that the song follows the tune of “Bye-bye Blackbird.”

The Patrons of Husbandry was founded by Oliver Hudson Kelly in 1867 as a secret society of agriculturists concerned with education, economic cooperation, political lobbying, and fraternal association. The first Grange in Maine was established in Hampden in 1873, and by 1887 the state had the largest Grange membership in the nation. The chief function of the

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1. I put them on October 1, that was orders from my hon, How long, longjohns? They’ll keep me warm all winter long, I want to tell you in this song, How long, longjohns? They were closer to me than a friend, next year to Sears again I’ll send; I kind of miss this underwear, for several months we were a pair, Longjohns, bye-bye!

2. They got smelly towards the end, it was even hard to bend, Bye-bye longjohns! I bought red but they turned black, I should really take them back, Bye-bye longjohns! I must admit that I was glad to shed them, but for months they really warmed my aft end; There were times I thought I’d freeze, especially when I felt a breeze, Longjohns, bye-bye!

3. I’d have shed my underwear, I don’t care I’ll go bare, Bye-bye longjohns! They were very close to me, they tickled me, tee hee hee, Bye-bye longjohns!

If you see them you’ll know where to find me, how I miss that old trap door behind me; I have shed my underwear but I don’t care I’ll go bare, Longjohns bye-bye!

Keywords: Jim Cahill, Dot Ruppell, Jeff McKeen, Bingham, Maine, Grange, Patrons of Husbandry, Myrtle McKinney, Norridgewock, Dottie Abbott, The Forks, longjohns, folksong, Bye-bye Blackbird Disciplines: Ethnomusicology | Folklore | Oral History Recommended Citation Cahill, Jim and Dot Ruppell. 1991. “Bye-Bye Longjohns.” NA2245, CD2172.13. Maine Folklife Center, University of Maine.

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XML is a free open software that can be read by both humans and machines; it also supports Unicode, a universal character set that can be used in any human language. This makes XML democratic and usable by anyone with access to the Internet. It ensures interoperability—a concept important to archivists and librarians who must transfer data from older media to newer media. The use of XML presents a model for creating dictionaries without expensive software programs or extensive programming knowledge.

Since most indigenous languages are preserved by a small number of people with few resources, this method is an important contribution to dictionary making for marginalized peoples.

Currently Quinn, Pauleena MacDougall, and several student assistants are correcting errors and entering missing lexical items, with the goal of having a robust and complete digital manuscript of the dictionary.

Having the materials in an XML document make editing easier, as much can be automated while keeping all formatting out of the database. Eventually the digital manuscript will be placed in a design program for final publication by the University of Maine Press. In the meantime, any number of versions of the dictionary and sub-dictionaries (place name index, for example) can be easily constructed. Versions of the dictionary are preserved in stages as the process moves forward. This will allow for back-checking in case of errors and also will provide other scholars with a record of the process.

In parallel to the dictionary work, Quinn has also collaborated with language teachers for the Penobscot Nation’s Department of Cultural and Historic Preservation in building a Penobscot language curriculum. In consultation with the Listuguj Educational Directorate’s Mi’gmaq language program, Quinn developed critical design principles for language teaching. In particular, Quinn took a minimalist approach by establishing a small set of core vocabulary to illustrate basic grammar—grounding the introduction of both with extensive visual reinforcement. All of this dictionary work has all been accomplished rather rapidly because we can work in a digital realm and can quickly and easily correspond via email with all of the principals involved. Collaborative work of this kind is only possible because of widespread access to the Internet and is illustrative of the potential for digital humanities teaching and scholarship.

Our experiences with digital humanities illustrate a range of ways that humanities scholars work in the MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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digital world. Creating more accessible versions of previously undigitized materials, preserving and conserving digital humanities resources, creating new digital resources (as in the case of the dictionary), and sharing scholarship across the Internet using new and better software tools are just some of the ways that the digital world is changing the humanities. ENDNOTE 1. The Maine Song and Story Sampler may be found on UMaine’s Digital Common’s site (http://digitalcommons .library.umaine.edu/) by entering “Maine Song and Story Sampler” in the search field.

REFERENCES Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. 2010. “What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin 150:1–7.

Pauleena MacDougall is director of the Maine Folklife Center and a faculty associate in anthropology at the University of Maine.

MacDougall edits the Maine Folklife Center’s annual monograph series, Northeast Folklore, and is currently working with staff in collaboration with the Penobscot Indian Nation in preparing the Penobscot Indian Language Dictionary for publication by the University of Maine Press in 2016.

Katrina Wynn has served as the archives manager of the Maine Folklife Center since 2012 and teaches the “Introduction to Folklore” course at the University of Maine. She is working on a graduate certificate in digital curation from UMaine, a program she pursued to aid her in her digital duties at the MFC.

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Digital Humanities: THE MAINE MEMORY NETWORK

The Maine Memory Network: Re-Imagining the Dynamics and Potential of Local History

by Stephen Bromage

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t a time of major shifts in technology, the economy, and the expectations of the public, institutions in all sectors are going through substantial transformations. This is certainly true of humanities organizations.

At Maine Historical Society (MHS), the digital age has provided a remarkable opportunity to reimagine many aspects of our work, ranging from how our own institution engages and serves the state, to our sense of how history can be practiced.

This article will briefly explore the MHS’s experience creating, nurturing, and sustaining the Maine Memory Network (http://www.mainememory.net/), our statewide digital museum. Launched in 2001, the Maine Memory Network (MMN) began as an online digital archive whose primary goal was to expand access to historical collections across the state. It has continued to evolve and has since become a flexible online museum and an exceptionally robust platform for a wide range of historical interests and activity. The most remarkable characteristic of MMN—and the one that distinguishes it from other online collections initiatives—is the degree of autonomy it gives historical societies, libraries, museums, and other contributors in sharing their collections. MHS provides extensive training, support, and the technological infrastructure. Contributing partners (CPs) choose what material to share and then all work is done locally. Contributors select items in their collection; scan or take digital photographs of those items; and then, through their own free account, use a web browser to upload, catalog, and manage the material in the MMN. At the same time, we strive to ensure and maintain the quality and accuracy of material in MMN: once uploaded, each item and its catalog entry is reviewed carefully by a project cataloger before it is made public. The model recognizes local knowledge and expertise, helps local partners to build capacity, and radically expands the perspectives that are included in the telling of Maine history.

The relative simplicity of this model—and the extent to which it facilitates local representation and participation—has proven remarkably adaptable and

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effective. More than 270 organizations across Maine have become contributors. Each has received extensive training and support and established collaborative relationships with MHS staff. In many cases, they have also developed partnerships with other local and regional partners. Maine Memory Network now offers access to more than 50,000 historical items, hundreds of online exhibits, websites built by community teams, educational resources, and much more. It has become a gateway, a jumping off point, and shared space where individuals and communities can explore their experience as part of broader narratives of Maine and U.S. history. The site receives 20,000 visitors per month on average and is recognized as a key piece of the state’s cultural, educational, and technological infrastructure.

Maine Memory Network represents a flood of local material, resources, and information. The contributors described above are essential to MMN’s identity and vitality: they are 270+ moving, contributing parts, continually adding new material that deepens MMN’s online content and enriching the site as a whole. Maine Memory Network collapses traditional geographic and institutional boundaries, and opens a vast new interpretive landscape. For example, Maine History Online (MHO), a major feature of MMN, provides a comprehensive introduction to key themes, topics, and events in Maine history through illustrated essays written by scholars, an extensive collection of online exhibits, and close study of hundreds of primary documents. MHO provides broad context for all MMN content and enables the public to explore history at multiple levels: work created by scholars is presented alongside, and provides context, meaning, and relevance for, the contributions of local historians, students, community volunteers and others. Maine History Online, like MMN itself, strives to continually plumb the connections between local, state, and national history.

Participation in MMN also creates opportunities for and encourages local organizations—historical societies, libraries, and schools in particular—to collaborate, share resources, and develop skills. Consider the 138

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following ways that local organizations contribute to the process of getting their history online, and to exploring, celebrating, and vastly expanding access to their community’s history. Each has unique resources to share: Historical Organizations: Local historical organizations have rich collections, extensive knowledge about the community’s history, and incredible stories to share.

Participation helps them to develop relationships and close working partnerships with schools and libraries; to increase awareness of and support for their organization within their community; and to learn to care for, digitize, interpret, and share their collections via the Internet.

Public Libraries: Public libraries are the center and crossroads of information in most communities and can play a key role in local history projects, convening people, organizations, and resources. They bring professional staff, consistent hours, and a strong orientation to the general public. Participation helps libraries to expand their capacity to provide information about local history; improves technology skills of staff; and extends their relationship with schools and historical organizations.

Schools: Schools offer technology-savvy students, up-to-date computer equipment, and high-speed Internet access. Participation provides students with opportunities to do research, think critically, write,

Artist Winslow Homer and Frank Coolbroth, ca. 1900, outside Homer’s studio in Prouts Neck. Homer moved to his family’s summer home, the Ark, sometime after 1882. He didn’t like his living arrangement at the Ark so had the stable redesigned to make a studio, with his living quarters on the second floor. Many of his marine paintings were done from this studio. Coolbroth was a family friend and legal adviser to Homer. (Collections of Scarborough Historical Society & Museum, Maine Memory Network Item 33655, scanned by a student from Scarborough Middle School) MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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The Maine State Building at the Poland Spring resort was built of various types of Maine granite, slate, and wood for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. At the end of the fair, the owners of Poland Spring bought the building, had it taken apart, and transported it on 16 rail cars. The building was reassembled and modified somewhat.

It was opened in the summer of 1895 and housed a library, the “Hill-Top” newspaper office, art gallery, and a museum.

(Collections of Poland Spring Preservation Society, Maine Memory Network Item 25525)

collaborate with people of all ages, and publish their work on a broad stage. Participation helps students to become actively engaged in their community; to develop research, critical thinking, writing, technology, and personal communication skills; and to achieve key academic goals and learning results. Students in many communities have been enlisted and trained to scan materials, under supervision, and in a number of instances students also do the narratrive write-up.

Students are not just worker bees, but are contributing significant skills in their own right, for example, training elders to use Skype and other digital tools.

Intergenerational collaboration is a key part of this.

Collaboration around MMN has helped organizations to think beyond their institutional purviews and to 139

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find common cause with each other and the communities they serve. Collaboration encourages participants to identify their own interests and needs; to find common goals with community partners; and to identify skills and resources that each has to share. The local history projects they undertake require civic engagement, selfassessment, planning, communication, sharing, compromise, and creativity as well as historical understanding and the ability to use technology.

Most importantly, MMN serves as a connector, bringing together diverse people, communities, and perspectives, all under the umbrella of Maine. Maine Memory Network enables users—both contributors and site visitors—to see and understand their own local, personal experience within the broader context of the state as a whole. Its content simultaneously emphasizes what is unique and distinctive about the contributions of individual Maine people, communities, and regions, and the characteristics and experiences that draw us together and define us as Mainers.

One of my favorite things to do is to watch how new users engage the site. Almost without fail, the first search term that a site visitor enters is either the name of a town with which they have a special connection, or a topic of personal interest (e.g. lumber, Civil War, diaries, clothes, cars). Many people who are not explicitly interested in history come to the site and get pulled in because they find and connect to places and stories that resonate with their own lives. The MHS has remained especially focused on the experience of end-users and on ensuring that the site’s content is presented in ways that make the content meaningful. Many other history sites feature more digitized items, but MMN provides descriptions, broad context for the historical items, and diverse tools for saving and using that material. Free accounts enable site visitors to save and annotate items and to create slideshow albums through which they can build and share their own exhibits. Maine Memory Network’s sister site, Vintage Maine Images (https:// www.vintagemaineimages.com/), enables site visitors to purchase digital or print reproductions. Sales of these items often provide a valuable source of revenue to MMN contributors. Finally, MHS is now developing new tools that will actually enable indviduals to become contributors to the site.

Our experience developing the MMN has been transformative for MHS. In the past, MHS had a difficult time reaching and serving audiences outside of southern Maine. Maine Memory Network is helping MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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reinvigorate the practice of local history in Maine, demonstrating its tremendous value, and defining new ways for historical organizations throughout the state to imagine their work. -

Stephen Bromage joined the Maine Historical Society in 2001 and has served as its executive director since 2012. Among other initiatives, he has helped guide the development of the Maine Memory Network. Previously, he helped found the online Disability History Museum and produce the award-winning National Public Radio documentary Beyond Affliction: The Disability History Project.

“Visit the Longfellow House and Garden” poster was created by the Works Progress Administration Maine Art Project. The Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland was the childhood home of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and was left to the Maine Historical Society by his sister Anne Longfellow Pierce following her death in 1901.

(Collections of Maine Historical Society, Maine Memory Network Item 7957) 140

Digital Humanities: NORTHEAST HISTORIC FILM AND THE DOCUMENTATION OF MAINE’S HISTORY

Northeast Historic Film and the Documentation of Maine’s History

by Jim Henderson and Karan Sheldon

The mission of Northeast Historic Film is to collect, preserve, and share moving images of interest to the people of northern New England. We secure the region’s movingimage heritage through archival storage of significant collections, while engaging the public in finding, using and enjoying audiovisual media.

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oving images are among the most important documents of twentieth-century life as they capture policy steps taken and not taken, infrastructure created and abandoned, politicians’ campaigns and public governance, citizens’ work lives, social and cultural attitudes, industries, natural resources and their use. “Unlike traditional paper records, these research materials move and talk. They provide multiple insights into historical events and engage the viewers’ imagination and emotions in a special way” (Sahli 1997).

Film is paradoxically robust. In cool and dry storage it can last for many decades, yet much of the film record is lost, and the surviving reels require expert attention and ongoing commitment of resources. All moving images including film, analog video reels, and born-digital video files are technology-dependent records, which require future migrations from one format to the next.

Film documents, millions of feet of them, were created by units of government, and by corporations, individuals, and educational institutions with specific intentions: to promote, inform, educate, record, entertain, persuade. Beginning in the early years of the last century, copies of films made in Maine were distributed in service of these missions. In the 1980s, as analog video replaced film, Maine’s circulating 16mm film collections for classroom and public use closed.

Moving-image media are, when discoverable and accessible, rich documents, supporting many areas of research. One example is the experience of tuberculosis patients in public health facilities as described in “Forced Fun and a Stiff Upper Lip: Glimpses of the MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Western Maine Sanatorium and Tuberculosis Treatment in Maine, 1909–1960,” a presentation given by Erik Jorgensen at the Northeast Historic Film Symposium, Time Out: Images of Play and Leisure, in 2007. The presentation drew from the Talbot and Barbara Hackett Collection’s 16mm film of the Western Maine Sanatorium in Hebron. Historian Libby Bischof of University of Southern Maine is an enthusiastic user of moving images with her students and in her research, recently using NHF’s archives to write about Harrie B. Coe, general secretary of the Maine Publicity Bureau and author of the five-volume Maine—A History (1928). (See Figure 1.)1 Film records such as Coe’s state-produced promotional pieces will survive to serve as primary source materials only if these conditions are met: (1) the records are recognized as having value; (2) physical storage is provided with stable cold and dry climate control and regular condition inspection; (3) the media are accompanied by descriptive records written in standards-based metadata so that they may be discoverable and understood; (4) the original content is made available through thoughtful and sustainable digitization so they may be Figure 1: Still from Harrie B. Coe Collection Film

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viewed and reused; and (5) planning and funding to meet essential standards of care stays ahead of deterioration and accommodates changing technologies.

Maine benefits from steps taken to meet these conditions with the 1986 establishment of the independent nonprofit organization Northeast Historic Film (NHF). Located in Bucksport, the moving-image archives—whose mission appears at the head of this piece—has invested approximately $15 million to collect, safeguard, and make accessible the region’s moving-image heritage. Northeast Historic Film’s conservation center consists of a three-story cold storage building, trained staff, and a 25,000-item database supporting findability and custodial care. (See Figure 2).

Along with serving scholars, NHF takes up diverse users’ needs by distributing media at low cost to teachers and students and by providing storage and technical services to institutions such as Maine Public Broadcasting, the University of Maine, and the Maine State Archives.

Northeast Historic Film collaborates with scholars who build tools to help others to navigate the collections such as “Wabanaki Film Holdings at Northeast Historic Film: A Bibliography,” by Micah Pawling (2009). The Council on Library and Information Resources, Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives program helped fund the online selection of Moving Images of Work Life, 1916–1960.2 In the 1990s, NHF developed a plan to evaluate, rehouse, catalog, and make accessible copies of films from the Maine State Archives (MSA) that had been produced by units of Maine state government, starting Figure 2: Northeast Historic Film, Vault 5

Film Cans

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with 79 reels of film from the Maine Department of Agriculture. In addition to bills, reports, statistics, and other printed records of state government, film and now moving-image media on other carriers, constitute part of the MSA records mandate. Many units of state government used films for communicating their missions, persuading citizens, and reaching potential visitors and trade partners. The state produced films related to agriculture, health and safety, fish and wildlife, forestry, tourism, trade, among others. State-created film was produced by or for state agencies including the Department of Agriculture, Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, the Department of Tourism, Department of Education, Department of Transportation, the Department of Environmental Protection, and the Governor’s Office. The films are tangible representations of state priorities of the day.

The report “On the Condition of Historical Records in Maine,” sent to the Maine State Legislature in 2002 and based on surveys of public and private repositories, stated that Maine had at least 400 million historical records in many formats (text, graphic designs, still images, moving images, sound) on many types of recording media (paper, leather, glass, film, wood, acetate, mylar, vinyl) using various fixing techniques (printing, painting, drawing, chemical, magnetic, laser) (Henderson and Hollinger 2002). It noted that recording media may degrade and retrieval aids may become obsolete (e.g., Edison’s cylinder players, Dictaphone players, 8-inch floppy disc drives and related software). The report also noted the importance of an expert resource to deal with the Maine’s inaccessible and deteriorating collection of motion picture films, which were stored in boxes along with paper records of Maine state agencies and were in jeopardy.

Northeast Historic Film provided services essential to preserving and providing access to these records.

Executive Director David Weiss transported reels to Bucksport, assessing their condition and organizing them. Northeast Historic Film staff replaced old containers and created basic catalog records, containing the following: item number, collection name, title, silent/sound, color/black and white, length, negative/ positive, date, transfer, source of content notes, and an abstract. Cataloging provides access to the content, and the catalog records were delivered in a database to the MSA for reference purposes. Northeast Historic Film produces digital copies of selected archives material on request.

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In 2004 a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for Stabilizing Humanities Collections was awarded for NHF and Archival Storage Consortium partners, including the MSA. The funding helped with installation of climate control, fire suppression, and security systems for NHF’s three-story media storage building. Northeast Historic Film’s cold storage vault answers the 2002 report’s documented need for secure, climate-controlled environments for long-term storage of fragile materials. Maine State Archives transferred 252,000 feet of 16mm film to Bucksport and pays an annual fee for storage. This formal agreement is part of the archives’ practice of pursuing services from vendors as outlined in the 2002 report.

The Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) is the professional organization for those managing time-based media collections. Members are watching several recent large-scale initiatives dealing with digitization of analog holdings, including Indiana University’s Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative. The scope and scale of Indiana’s initiative is remarkable both for the details provided in the initial assessment plan and the resource commitment of $15 million. Indiana University Bloomington’s Media Preservation Survey: A Report (2009) is worth reviewing for its clear attention to format obsolescence and the downstream implications of content migration.3 What do we think of the relationship between the “Indiana Approach”—as it’s dubbed by the Library of Congress—and the planning and resource allocation necessary on the part of local, state and regional media custodians? We propose that the road map offered by Indiana is an inspiration and a challenge. Recognizing the significance of moving-image media to informed governance and to humanities disciplines is a starting place. We contend that Indiana University shows us that investment in our knowledge base is crucial. Northeast Historic Film’s vision for Maine’s moving images positions stakeholders and leaders to imagine a collaborative, efficient, forward-thinking “Maine Approach.” ENDNOTES 1. More information about the Talbot and Barbara Hackett Collection and the Harrie B. Coe Collection is available on NHF’s website: Talbot and Barbara Hackett Collection: http://oldfilm.org/collection/index.php/Detail/Collection /Show/collection_id/223. Harrie B. Coe Collection: http:// oldfilm.org/collection/index.php/Detail/Collection/Show /collection_id/8

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2. The Moving Images of Work Life, 1916–1960, collections are available at http://oldfilm.org/collection/index.php /Browse/HiddenCollectionsList 3. The website for Indiana University’s Media Preservation Initiative is http://www.indiana.edu/~medpres/. The full report may be accessed at http://www.indiana .edu/~medpres/documents/iub_media_preservation _survey_FINALwww.pdf

REFERENCES Henderson, James S., and Richard Hollinger. 2002.

Documenting our Heritage: Historical Records in Maine: A Report to the 120th Maine Legislature on the Condition of Historical Records in Maine. Augusta.

Pawling, Micah. 2009. Wabanaki Film Holdings at Northeast Historic Film: A Bibliography. Northeast Historic Film, Bucksport, ME. http://oldfilm.org/sites/default/files /Wabanaki%20Films.pdf Sahli, Nancy. 1997. “Foreword.” In The Administration of Television Newsfilm and Videotape Collections: A Curatorial Manual, ed. Steven Davidson and Gregory Lukow. American Film Institute and Wolfson Media History Center, Los Angeles.

Jim Henderson, Northeast Historic Film board president, was director of the Maine State Archives from 1987 to 2007.

He is publisher/author of Maine: An Encyclopedia at http://www .maineanencyclopedia.com.

He was advisor to the Council of State Archivists for its Essential Records preservation project.

Karan Sheldon is a cofounder and board member of Northeast Historic Film. With David S. Weiss, she was a recipient of the Silver Light Award from the Association of Moving Image Archivists. In Maine, she was honored with the Constance H. Carlson Public Humanities Prize.

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Data Curation Needed to Avoid a Digital Dark Age

by Desirée Butterfield-Nagy

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ew of us have escaped the inadvertent loss of data, whether through a computer crash, the evaporation of several hours’ worth of typing due to a power outage or an accidental keystroke, or discovering that files are trapped on storage formats no longer compatible with current systems. While the ephemeral nature of digital files may be no secret, most individuals and organizations could still do considerably more to better manage and preserve their digital resources.

For several years, scholars such as Jerome P. McDonough of the University of Illinois have been warning us of the potential for a “Digital Dark Age,” or the growing concern that unless more careful measures are taken, vast amounts of early twenty-first century information— indeed an era characterized by an evergrowing information-based economy—may be lost.

Even important national data sets have been overlooked until it was nearly too late. At one point, the 1960 U.S. Census could only be read by two machines, one in Japan and the other at the Smithsonian Institution. Some data

Figure 1: University of Maine Computer Center, 1965

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from NASA’s 1976 Viking landing on Mars were stored on magnetic tape in an unreadable format, and the original programmers had either died or left NASA. A culture’s emphasis on preservation, some scholars suggest, and the selection of durable formats and building materials, may go a long way toward explaining why we know relatively more about some ancient cultures, such as Egypt, compared to more recent civilizations where little may remain. As McDonough (2008) pointed out, “If we can’t keep today’s information alive for future generations, we will lose a lot of our culture.”

Unlike paper or clay records, which have been known to last without intervention for hundreds or even thousands of years, most recommendations are to test digital files every two to three years. Testing even 10 years can prove to be a significant threat to unmanaged files.

Archivists and librarians have long been entrusted with selecting documents thought to have enduring value and taking steps toward ensuring their preservation. An increasingly recognized need for digital curation, or the active selection of digital files and taking steps toward preserving them, has been a natural evolution in a contemporary environment where vast amounts of intellectual and cultural content is born digital and may not be represented in tangible form. While a first impulse may be to encourage the printing of copies, and even if physical space could be found to house a reasonable selection, this effort can fail to capture layers of code and properties that can greatly add to the understanding and value of complex digital objects, whether images, email messages, or relational databases.

Preservation has always required active, managed care, and 144

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many of the principles that apply to Figure 2: University paper-based formats still apply to digital objects. Selecting and providing ideal storage containers and environmental conditions apply to digital materials, but additional measures are needed. A variety of approaches has been suggested for the active management of digital content over time.

Some efforts essentially recreate the interface and the original technical environment, while others stress the need to continually migrate information to keep up with evolving file formats. More nuanced preservation programs maintain multiple copies in multiple locations and launch systems that automatically alert digital curators when copies no longer match one another, when file structure has changed, or when formats are at risk of becoming obsolete.

Now that many agreed-upon practices have emerged, perhaps the phrase Digital Dark Age most appropriately refers to the period between society’s widespread adoption of digital technologies and the development of techniques and infrastructure that have allowed the material to be kept safe for the long term. As noted in a 2012 article by Stuart Jeffrey, while many trusted repositories have emerged, barriers to digitally archiving outputs have “moved from the realm of the technical to the realm of the financial, political and practical” (2012: 554). Some estimates suggest that the cost of preserving electronic records will be as much as five times what has been needed for paper-based materials.

Companies, governments, educational institutions, and individuals all invest a tremendous amount of time and resources in creating digital content. Actively thinking about how best to select, manage, and preserve this information is an important part of making sure that the work and intellectual endeavors of today will be available for others to examine and build upon in the future. -

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of Maine Computer Center, 1980

REFERENCES Jeffrey, Stuart. 2012. “A New Digital Dark Age? Collaborative Web Tools, Social Media and Long Term Preservation.” World Archaeology 44(4): 553–570. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2012.737579 McDonough, Jerome P. 2008. “‘Digital Dark Age’ May Doom Some Data.” ScienceDaily (October 29). http:// www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081027174646 .htm

Desirée Butterfield-Nagy is an archivist in the Special Collections Department at the University of Maine’s Raymond H. Fogler Library. She has coordinated several digitization projects including those providing access to early university publications, photographs, postcards, and diaries through the DigitalCommons@UMaine institutional repository. She also teaches in the university’s digital curation certificate program offered through the New Media Department.

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Maine in the Global Age

Where does Maine fit in the global age, when both transportation and information technologies can make geographic distance between people nearly meaningless? How can the humanities help Maine to better fit in this new global age? The three articles in this section reflect on these questions from various vantage points. Sheila Jans looks at the St. John Valley in Aroostook County, a region dominated by its existence on the border between the United States and Canada, with a long French-speaking tradition. She examines how the humanities can help with challenges such as outmigration, strained resources, and loss of identity in rural communities. Jane Smith argues for the importance of world language education in preparing Maine for the global age. She provides a brief overview of the state of world language education in Maine and offers suggestions for steps we can take to increase the number of proficient speakers of other languages. Reza Jalali closes out the issue with a discussion about Maine’s Muslim communities and wonders about the issues that could determine the sustainability and future of these largely invisible communities.

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The Role of the Humanities in Rural Community Development

by Sheila Jans

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t was a simple question. A community leader of a small rural town in Maine asked, “How can the humanities help us with challenges like outmigration, strained resources, consolidation, and loss of identity?”

Answering the question may not be so simple, but striving to do so is essential. Maine is considered the nation’s most rural state with close to two-thirds of its population of 1.3 million living in rural areas.1 Rural living can be immensely satisfying, but it would not be an exaggeration to say that many of Maine’s rural communities face a slow erosion of a way of life, their knowledge and wisdom, and sustainable means to build wealth. Parts of Maine share what other rural areas in North America face: stagnant economy, dwindling population, inability to retain and attract youth and talent, and diminishing resources. Add cutting arts and humanities in schools, along with a general atmosphere of apathy, and the result is communities in decline.

Tackling these challenges takes a lot of work and resources, including capable leadership, cooperation, and insightful development approaches. Placing art, culture, and the humanities at the center, rather than on the margins, is one of those insightful approaches.

Communities that recognize these as a source of wealth and value, inevitably experience greater prosperity and a higher quality of life. Moreover, being short in artists, writers, designers, intellectuals, or engineers, means that the knowledge base for success is lacking, resulting in a dependence on ideas produced elsewhere (Venturelli 2003).

The humanities are considered the study and interpretation of literature and poetry, history, philosophy, jurisprudence, civics, and languages. Ultimately, they reflect the deep and enduring human expression of art, culture, tradition, and creativity. To effect change in our communities, we need to better understand these expressions, encourage dialogue, explore alternatives, and design insightful solutions. This is where the humanities provide enormous capacity. They are “that area of knowledge that helps us live better, not just

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longer” (Indiana Humanities 2015: 6). They help develop more creative and open minds, which inspire deeper understanding, critical thinking, and the generation of ideas. In fact, the humanities are ideas. It would be irresponsible and unimaginative, let alone a lost opportunity, to leave challenges in rural Maine for “someone else” to figure out.

The role of the humanities in helping build better places to live is underscored in the Heart of the Matter, a seminal report about the humanities in American society. It explains that the humanities “remind us where we have been and help us envision where we are going.” They are central to shaping a stronger, more vibrant civic society, a “more adaptable and creative workforce, and a more secure nation” (AAAS 2013: 9).

Let us take a look at one of the rural areas of Maine—the St. John Valley, situated at the northernmost point of Maine next to the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Québec. Locally known as “the Valley,” the Maine side of the border has a population of approximately 14,000 people, mostly of French heritage (Acadian and French-Canadian). Though a distinct, independent, and culturally proud region with abundant assets and a strong sense of identity and place, it struggles with its fair share of challenges, such as isolation from the rest of Maine, outmigration, aging population, declining economy, and lack of diversity. And yet, emerging from these challenges and strengths are innumerable opportunities. The Valley, like anywhere, must generate its own ideas, find solutions that emanate from within, and create an environment conducive to creativity and innovation.

Several examples of initiatives and experiences in the region illustrate the significant role of the humanities. In 1998 the French Heritage Council at the University of Maine at Fort Kent wanted to understand how the French language, still widely spoken locally, could be leveraged for economic development and trade opportunities with Canada and other Frenchspeaking countries of the world. The result was a daylong conference called Connexions Affaires (business 147

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connections), which brought together business people, nonprofits, government agencies, artists, and scholars, from both sides of the international border. Certainly before and since this conference, the French language in the Valley has been studied, written about, and celebrated. Nevertheless, language, perhaps the most fundamental human expression, can sometimes be overlooked and taken for granted. For Connexions Affaires, the focus was on language as a powerful, inherent asset with practical applications. (See Smith 2015.)

One of the speakers at this conference was historian Don Cyr, the director of the Musée culturel du MontCarmel, situated in Lille, a charming agrarian village along the St. John River (http://www.museeculturel .org). For over 30 years, Cyr has led the restoration of a former Catholic Church, which functions as a museum and cultural center (Figure 1). It is here, in this so-called isolated and remote part of the United States, that the humanities are generously present. It comes alive with the museum’s collection and presentations about folk traditions and vernacular architecture; classical music by a New York City ensemble; a film discussion by a Canadian experimental art filmmaker who lives minutes from the border; foot-stomping Irish music by a trio from Portland; an award-winning theatrical performance about Maine and taxes; and a national exhibition about the history and glory of barns.

Figure 1:

It was here that Maine’s poet laureate read his poetry on a chilly autumn evening to an international audience and where original French songs were sung by a world-renowned Acadian singer from Moncton, New Brunswick. Though audiences tend to be small and the lack of funding is always an issue, the Musée culturel du Mont-Carmel represents something that every rural community needs—a place where one can directly experience the past and the contemporary, blended with the everyday and the sublime of human creativity and expression.

Indeed, it is the unexpected, the seemingly unremarkable, that can most often inspire and motivate us.

Such is what happens during a scholar-facilitated book discussion, called “Let’s Talk About It,” designed by the Maine Humanities Council.2 Once a month about 20 people sit together for a couple hours to discuss a book at the library in Ste. Agathe, a little town nestled beside beautiful Long Lake. In fact, all kinds of books, from The Maine Woods to All Quiet on the Western Front have been read and discussed in this free program. Something interesting happens during those two hours—the book’s narrative becomes the starting point for thought-provoking and illuminating discussions between people of varying ages with different life experiences.

Conversations around a book series about wilderness, for example, stretched beyond theoretical concepts of caring for place and the way of the wild, to Performers at the Musée culturel du Mont-Carmel relevant issues affecting the Valley, or elsewhere in current events, such as the disastrous oil spill affecting the southern United States at the time. The significance of this kind of humanities program is that rarely do everyday people sit together with intention to explore profound and universal issues like racism, war, labor unions, love, environmental threats, economic disparity, or cultural identity.

There is immense value in a facilitated format that provides something close to a sacred space to discuss what composes our lives that may be inspiring, divisive, or deeply troubling, all in the quest for greater understanding. People

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stretch their minds; they learn and unlearn.

Understanding happens, and from that, possibilities for growth and cooperation. Who sits in on a book discussion? Retirees, educators, legislators, community leaders, conservationists, homemakers, hairdressers—people from all walks of life, from their twenties to their nineties. A new community emerges.

One of the more sensitive matters facing the St. John Valley is particularly inescapable and omnipresent: the international border. In 1842 the St. John River was established as the boundary between the United States and Canada, dividing families and changing the way of life. Maine’s St. John Valley was originally part of a three-area geographic family, which included the Témiscouata region of southeastern Québec and the Upper St. John River Valley of northwestern New Brunswick. This was the Madawaska Settlement, home to native peoples, French-Canadians, Acadians, and Scots-Irish. At first, and for many decades, the presence of the border was bothersome, but tolerable. Today, it has become more of a barrier and emotional concern.

On the one hand it negatively affects the Valley’s transnational economic, social, and cultural fiber, but on the other, it could be a means for social, cultural, and economic integration and progress.

It is precisely this paradox that was explored in a 2011 community discussion organized by Valley residents and the Maine Humanities Council called “What Do Borders Mean?” It is not uncommon for people living on the border in northern Maine to become mired in the frustrations of crossing over—the restriction of a natural interface between people, numerous laws and regulations, an oppressive Orwellian feeling.

Without sublimating these real feelings, the conversation was shaped more about how borders are created in all parts of life, literally and figuratively.

The three-hour conversation started with a presentation by a scholar, followed by a reading of poetry, and a facilitated discussion. The diverse and international group of about 25 people explored what it means to live along the border, and how borders in general—from geopolitical to gender or cultural ones—affect lives, test tolerance, or create the feeling of other. This effective civic engagement employed a humanities approach to gain new perspectives and seek insight into the complexity of an intensely felt and shared regional experience.

A couple years after this community discussion, an initiative took shape that examined more deeply what living along this international border means to the MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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people who call it home. The National Endowment for the Humanities’ (NEH) Summer Institute called “Borders and Borderlands: the Acadian Experience in Maine,” organized by the Maine Humanities Council, was held in the St. John Valley shortly before the Congrès mondiale acadien (World Acadian Congress), an event that attracted tens of thousands of Acadians from around the world to northern Maine and the provinces of New Brunswick and Québec in August 2014 (http://cma2014.com/en/).

Among the many visitors were 25 teachers (K–12) from across the United States who had been selected to participate in the NEH’s Summer Institute. Their program began with three weeks of scholar-led lectures, readings, and discussion in Orono, Maine, then Moncton, and concluded in the St. John Valley on the eve of the Congrès mondiale acadien. They read history, literature, saw films, heard from scholars and artisans; they enjoyed local cuisine, danced to traditional music, and listened to personal stories of people who live in the Valley.3 For example, in a panel called “On the Border in the 21st Century,” four people from both countries talked about what it means to live on the border today. Of varying ages and backgrounds, they shared their perspective about how the international boundary has shaped their personal sense of identity and place—how it makes its presence felt to them.

Chace Jackson was one of the panelists. He grew up in Allagash, a small town in the western part of the Valley, renowned for its Scots-Irish heritage, deep forests, and wild rivers. Jackson is passionate about the place he calls home. Thanks to the NEH’s institute, “we sent excited scholars back into the world eager to talk about our diverse and unique cultural heritages,” he exclaims.

“I’ll always appreciate the chance I had to peel back the obvious of the Valley and speak to what might need deeper observation.”

The panel discussion set the stage for more intimate conversations with local residents. Through oral history interviews conducted in French or English, teachers immersed themselves into the lives of people from both sides of the border. Rachelle DeFarges from the small community of St. David, Maine, was one of the 30 people interviewed. She considers telling her story “is a way to share a perspective and sense of humanity about living within the larger events of our times and the resulting cultural reverberations.” Being interviewed was about connection: “It was an interesting experience being the one telling a story; to be listened to with such 149

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care.” For Diane Pelletier of the Malécite First Nations across the border in Edmundston, New Brunswick, she was reminded about how special it was to grow up along the St. John River. For her, the interview was like a pathway to “give thanks for what is here and to always remember where you come from.” Home for these rich and diverse oral history interviews is the Acadian Archives at the University of Maine at Fort Kent (https://www.umfk.edu/archives/).

The voices of the local residents who participated in the NEH’s Summer Institute are the truth of the St. John Valley. They helped shape a genuine learning experience with long-lasting impact. The significance of this initiative is that through the humanities, these teachers breathed in this place and culture. They gained intimate insight into a world they knew little about. Understanding moved beyond the theoretical to the perceptible and immediate. Returning to their classrooms in Louisiana, California, Maine, and other states, their learning will benefit the students they teach.

This sense of breathing in a culture and place is the foundation for the Voici the Valley Cultureway, an international cultural touring experience that follows roads on both sides of the St. John River where northern Maine meets New Brunswick.4 An 80-minute audio cultural documentary tells a story about the international region’s history, culture, traditions, and French language, through narration, music, and the voices of local residents. In addition, a guidebook shares details about points of interest in communities as one travels along the 100-mile cultureway.

The Voici the Valley Cultureway built upon efforts of many local individuals, historical organizations, cultural groups, and ethnographic studies by the National Park Service. It also inspired extensive research on the region’s creative economy, the designation of the region as a State Scenic Byway, and many other initiatives.5 Upon first impression, the cultureway sounds like an exciting and experiential place-based cultural tourism product.

And it is. But it grew out of something even more foundational, and that was to address the slow erosion of traditions, raise the value of arts and culture, link communities through intrinsic assets, and foster economic growth. It also recognized that the French language is of this region. Voici the Valley is a tangible and accessible manifestation of the humanities through its interpretation and celebration of history, art, culture, and place.

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the St. John Valley of northern Maine. They emerged from the source, initiated by the people of the Valley, and were made possible through the support of various national and state agencies. Though substantive and successful, these examples represent the exception, not the norm. The Valley, not unlike many rural communities throughout Maine, experiences a shortfall when it comes to humanities programming, which tends to be sporadic, inconsistent, and vulnerable to a scarcity of funding and lack of leadership at all levels.

Regardless of these and other obstacles, the humanities can still strategically address societal, cultural, and economic challenges across Maine and especially in its rural communities. The door is wide open for those of us working in the humanities-related field to take an intentional and decisive step forward. A great place to lead is to design a humanities-based program for rural areas that strategically merges theory, research, and best practices, with adaptive, on-theground, and practical application.

For example, Project Cultivate, an initiative that grew out of research of the St. John Valley’s creative economy, is about cultivating creative thinkers, supporting great ideas, and building a more prosperous region through culture and place. One of its components focuses directly on the cultivation of a creative mindset. Besides the urgent need to deal with the retention and attraction of youth and talent, negative attitudes associated with making a living in the region need to be tackled. Opportunities must be created. Through an intensive educational series for grades 9–12, principles of innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurialism, would be taught, along with concepts of quality, value, good design, and how to evolve an idea into a tangible form. The aim is to nurture a shift in mindset from “there are no jobs here, so I can’t stay or can’t come back” to “anything is possible here.”

Since humanities can be somewhat of an elusive term, I suggest we work on making it more understandable, accessible, and visible. The humanities sector must also endeavor to overcome false perceptions that it operates in a collective silo, elite and unattainable, separate from everyday lives and from other disciplines and activities. Further, we should reward and support those individuals and entities that have been working tirelessly and vigorously to promote and integrate the arts, culture, and humanities into rural communities. It is crucial to recognize those on the ground who have been part of the journey for the long haul. And finally, 150

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restrain expectations for immediate results and recognize the enduring benefits from a rural-focused humanities strategy.

It would not be a stretch to say that something transformative will happen when the humanities is integrated more deliberately into our communities.

Some short-term results in our rural towns would include more cooperation, active listening, and constructive discourse. Over time, we would see a greater ability for people to find solutions to seemingly entrenched problems, more productive town meetings, forward-thinking comprehensive plans, and the resolution of tensions between townspeople, school boards, town offices, and police officers. In the long term, we can expect to keep and attract talent, inspire visionary leadership, shape insightful policy, and foster a more vibrant economy by leveraging intrinsic assets.

Ultimately, we would savor and reap the profits of transformative creativity and expression unleashed by valuing and prioritizing the humanities.

If we can agree that the humanities “embrace the great and enduring human values of justice, freedom, equality, virtue, beauty, and truth,” then hopefully what follows is to heed the sober advice that “without deliberate cultivation of the humanities in the public sphere, we risk losing sight of these values” (Adams 2015). The humanities offer unlimited ways to shape a new dialogue and can redefine our rural communities. They can be used as a tool to help with challenges by being on the ground with sleeves rolled up to tackle everyday problems; being present enough to help us grapple with larger conceptual issues, and by soaring with us to explore what it means to be human. Living better, striving to live better, and organizing our thinking to live better—are what the humanities help us to do. ENDNOTES 1. 2010 census from “Census, Maine Most Rural State”, Mainebiz, March 27, 2012. http://www.mainebiz.biz /article/20120327/NEWS0101/120329959/census:-mainemost-rural-state 2. More information about the Maine Humanities Council’s Let’s Talk About It program is available on its website: http://mainehumanities.org/program/lets-talk-about-it/ 3. More information about the NEH’s Summer Instititue can be found at this website: http://mainehumanities .org/program/borders-borderlands-acadian-experience -maine/

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4. Voici the Valley means “here is the valley,” a name that reflects the region’s bilingual nature (http://www .voicithevalley.org).

5. The St. John Valley is home to the state’s first cultural byway under the Maine Scenic Byway program. For creative economy research, see Jans, Hunt, and Noblet (2010).

REFERENCES Adams, William. 2015. “The Common Good: The Humanities in the Public Square.” Presentation to the National Press Club Newsmaker Luncheon, Washington, DC, January 25.

American Academy of Arts & Social Sciences (AAAS). 2013.

The Heart of the Matter. Cambridge, MA. Indiana Humanities. 2015. Humanities at the Crossroads: An Indiana Case Study, Executive Summary. Indiana Humanities, Indianapolis, and Tufts University, Medford, MA. http://www.indianahumanities.org/pdf/HAC-ICS -Executive-Summary.pdf [Accessed April 21, 2015] Jans, Sheila, Kathryn Hunt, and Caroline Noblet. 2010. St. John Valley Creative Economy Project, Strengthening Our Communities and Economy Through Culture and Place. Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, Orono, ME. http://mcspolicycenter.umaine.edu/2010/08/27 /publicationstjohnvalley8_27/ Smith, Jane. 2015. “A Role for World Languages in Improving Maine’s Economic Climate.” Maine Policy Review 24(1): 152–158.

Venturelli, Shalini. 2003. From the Information Economy to the Creative Economy: Moving Culture to the Center of International Public Policy. American University and the Center for Arts and Culture, Washington, DC.

Sheila Jans is a cultural development consultant and founder of CultureWorth, a consultancy rooted in the idea of culture as a powerful force to build better places to live. She was a board member of the Maine Humanities Council and also served on the the New England Task Force of Culture and the Economy, the Maine Arts Commission, and the Maine Creative Economy Council.

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A Role for World Languages in Improving Maine’s Economic Climate

by Jane Smith

INTRODUCTION

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anguage is intrinsic to being human. It is a means of communication, a medium for self-expression and transmission of culture, and important in creating identity. It is through language that we create and build relationships, share ideas, tell stories, write literature, conduct commerce, and make and record history. Languages must be a fundamental component in educating Mainers for the global society of the twenty-first century. The following discussion provides a brief overview of the state of world language education in Maine and offers suggestions for steps we can take to increase the number of proficient speakers of other languages.

WORLD LANGUAGES IN K–12 PUBLIC SCHOOLS

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he Maine Learning Results “identify the knowledge and skills essential to prepare Maine students for work, for higher education, for citizenship, and for personal fulfillment.”1 Originally formulated in 1997 and revised in 2006 to better align with the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines and the National Standards, the Learning Results for World Languages outline standards and performance indicators for K–12 classesWith world language education beginning in kindergarten, the goal is to have all Maine students achieve at a minimum intermediate proficiency in at least one language in addition to English by graduation.2 In passing the Act to Prepare Maine People for the Future Economy (LD 1422) in May 2012, the Maine Legislature enacted a law calling for proficiency-based education; beginning with the class that graduates in 2018, students graduating from public high schools in Maine must demonstrate proficiency in several content areas including world languages.” Through a formal extension process, a school may be allowed additional time to prepare for implementation, with some schools planning to meet the proficiency requirement by 2020.

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Most language programs in Maine’s elementary and secondary schools include Spanish and/or French, with some schools offering classes in Chinese, German, Ancient Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Japanese, Passamaquoddy, and American Sign Language. In fall 2013, Deering High School in Portland became the first public school in the state to offer classes in Arabic, with a view to preparing students for today’s global world and eventually starting an international studies program.

WORLD LANGUAGES AT MAINE’S POST-SECONDARY INSTITUTIONS

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mong the campuses of the University of Maine System, the University of Maine (UM) and the University of Maine at Fort Kent (UMFK) offer a B.A. in French. In addition to French, UM offers a B.A. in Spanish, as well as an M.A. and M.A.T. in French and an M.A.T. in Spanish. Other specializations that include language study, such as global studies or international affairs with an emphasis on language or area studies, are available in B.A. programs at UM and the University of Maine at Farmington (UMF). The University of Maine at Presque (UMPI) and UMFK offer French for education. Several campuses offer a smattering of courses, most of which are at the elementary level, in one or more of the following languages: Arabic (UM), Chinese (UM, UMF, UMPI), German (UM, USM), Irish Gaelic (UM), Italian (UM, USM), Japanese (UM, UMF), Latin (UM, USM), Brazilian Portuguese (UM), Russian (UM), Spanish (UMPI), and Wabanaki (UM).

American Sign Language is offered at UM and USM. In recent years, the state’s public universities have seen a number of language programs cut. In fall 2014, the B.A. in French at the University of Southern Maine (USM) was eliminated, as were the self-designed majors in French studies, Spanish studies, and the B.A. in classics, leaving that university without any degree programs in world languages. Over the last decade and a half, B.A. programs in Latin and Russian have been eliminated from UM, and the B.A. program in German remains 152

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suspended, with elimination likely. At USM, bachelor’s degrees in German studies and Russian studies were eliminated two or three years ago. Courses in German once offered at UMF and UMPI disappeared several years ago, as did courses in Russian at UMPI. Within the Maine Community College System, Central Maine Community College (CMCC), Kennebec Valley Community College (KVCC), and Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) offer beginning courses in French and Spanish. SMCC also offers beginning German, and CMCC and Washington County Community College (WCCC) offer courses in American Sign Language (ASL). WCCC offers Spanish in addition to ASL. Eastern Maine Community College does not offer classes in world languages.

Among Maine’s private institutions, Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby Colleges each have majors in French, German, Russian, and Spanish. Minors in Arabic, Chinese, Italian, and Japanese are also available. Of course, majors in classical studies, including Latin and Ancient Greek languages and literatures, are also available.

Husson University is in the early stages of language program development, offering beginning courses in French, Spanish, and Chinese.

To be sure, specializations in French and Spanish are indeed wise choices, especially if combined with a second major in business, education, nursing, social work, or engineering, to list just a few disciplines that lend themselves well to a double major with language.

In light of Maine’s strong historical and cultural connections with French-speaking Quebec and New Brunswick, not to mention current economic ties in trade and tourism with those Canadian provinces, French is a useful language to know. Given recent immigration trends from Central and South America, Spanish is becoming more important even in Maine. On a global scale, Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world (44 countries, with approximately 421,500,000 native and second language speakers) after English. French comes in at number 11, (54 countries, with approximately 212,000,000 speakers who use French every day).3 That being said, with bachelor’s degree programs at Maine’s public universities limited to only French and Spanish, language programs at Maine’s post-secondary institutions are inadequate. High school graduates who wish to specialize in any other language (and who are unable to afford one of the three private liberal arts institutions) must go out of state to do so. Moreover, the MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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lack of majors and minors in other languages makes UMS campuses less attractive to students from out of state, an important population it seeks to attract. In today’s global society and in a state seeking to educate its citizens for the future economy, the current state of affairs is untenable.

THE BENEFITS OF KNOWING A SECOND LANGUAGE

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ike most Americans (68 percent according to the 2008 Global Social Survey [Brecht et al. 2013]), Mainers recognize the benefits of learning another language and consider the ability to speak more than one language a lifelong benefit. Through its linguistic structure, another language provides access to another way of organizing reality and opens the door to a better understanding of the ideas, perspectives, and practices that can only be fully understood within the context of that language. By learning another language, the individual is able to contextualize and understand better the products of another culture, from the artistic and folkloric to the mundane. Another language gives us different perspectives on familiar topics such as current

…language programs at Maine’s post-secondary institutions are inadequate. events, history, and literature, and allows us to interpret them with greater insight. Equally important, knowledge of another language and culture gives us a different perspective of our own language and culture, sometimes challenging us to change the way we view the world.

In addition to these social and intellectual benefits, a number of researchers have found cognitive benefits resulting from bilingualism, particularly for older adults and especially with respect to delaying the onset of dementia (Bialystok, Craik, and Luk 2012). Cognitive benefits have also been found in early second language learners in immersion programs (Nicolay and Poncelet 2011). Language learning helps to develop the ability to interact with others and sharpens critical thinking skills (Sanders 2007).

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Yet, since the 1960s, the overall percentage of students studying world languages has been on the decline in higher education (Sanders 2007), and the number of programs in elementary schools has also diminished (Pufahl and Rhodes 2007): Americans seem to shy away from learning another language in spite of the obvious benefits it would afford them. One can only speculate as to why this is so. Clearly, the fact that English has spread around the globe as a lingua franca accounts for some of the continuing monolingualism: many Americans assume that because speakers of other languages are learning English, there is no need for them to learn other languages. This perspective is naïve and short sighted.

Many Americans seem to place little importance on the fact that speakers of other languages who also speak English have a clear advantage in the global marketplace, for they are able to conduct business in two or more languages and have access to a whole host of knowledge (literature, research, ideas, concepts) that is available only to the speakers of the languages that created them (Harper 2011). Moreover, as Lindenfeld and Hoecherl-Alden (2008) rightly point out, monolingual Americans in the global marketplace are dependent upon the good will of those who can speak English and are potentially vulnerable. Unlike their bilingual and multilingual counterparts from other countries, they are unaware of what is being discussed around them and are ill prepared to meet prospective business partners half way. They are less able to interact in a culturally appropriate manner with business partners. After the deal is sealed, they are unable to strengthen the business relationship through the camaraderie that grows out of shared cultural experiences. Furthermore, as more speakers of other languages learn English and become increasingly influential in the global economy, English itself becomes a global language. Speakers of English in countries where it has long been spoken can no longer hold a claim of ownership as the language evolves to reflect the cultures of all who now use it.

One also can reasonably argue that the covert language policy within the United States, whereby immigrants must assimilate by learning English and adopting American ways combined with the vast distance between borders, has made it easy for Americans to remain linguistically isolated, at least in how they think about language. Consequently, some Americans view non-English-speaking immigrants as un-American, a threat to their values and way of life. Anti-intellectualism MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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no doubt plays a role, as well, in down playing the value of learning other languages and studying their literature, culture, history, and ideas.

The net result is that American culture, broadly speaking, does not value the knowledge of languages other than English. For all the enrichment knowing another language can bring, it does not seem to sway many English-speaking Americans away from monolingualism. The following section approaches language from a different direction, one that may help shift the downward trend in language learning upward.

LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY AS A DESIRABLE WORKFORCE SKILL

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hortly after his election as governor of Maine in 2010, Paul LePage declared Maine “Open for Business.”

Despite efforts to improve the business climate, Maine is still ranked at the bottom among U.S. states, coming in at 49 in the Forbes 2014 annual ranking of best states for business (Portland Press Herald, November 12, 2014). This is in sharp contrast to Utah, which has topped the Forbes list in four out of the last five years (Forbes, November 12, 2014).

One of the factors behind Utah’s favorable business climate is its workforce, 33% of which is able to speak a second language according to the Economic Development Corporation of Utah (EDCUtah) language information sheet (2014). This figure ranks 8 percent above the national figure of 25 percent of Americans who can speak a second language according to a Gallup Poll taken in 2001 (EDCUtah 2014).

EDCUtah states that 77 percent of Brigham Young University’s 33,000 students speak a second language and the university is home to business language courses in nine different languages according to (2014).

EDCUtah further indicates that the University of Utah offers courses or programs in 17 different world languages. Clearly, Utah’s universities are educating a linguistically prepared and culturally sensitive workforce.

As further testimonial to the value of a workforce proficient in other languages, the Forbes article goes on to cite E-Bay Vice-President for Global Customer Experience Scott Murray, who praised Utah’s workforce for the availability of returning Mormon missionaries who speak other languages.

Maine’s public universities’ offerings in world languages are meager by comparison. And although “foreign language competency is much more than a liberal 154

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arts talent; it is a highly desirable workforce skill” (Ward 2010: 14), the Comprehensive Evaluation of Maine’s Economic Development Incentive Programs (ICA 2014) makes no mention of world languages, second language proficiency, or cross-cultural preparedness of Maine workers. One of few references to workforce readiness includes the following suggestion gleaned from interviews with the public sector: “Develop workforce skills and provide better transferrable skills” (ICA 2014: 9).

Based on the example of Utah, the development of a workforce conversant in other languages would go far toward improving Maine’s prospects in attracting new businesses and strengthening the competitiveness of existing businesses. Mainers are a practical people, proud of their independence and self-sufficiency, who seek the practical application of skills and knowledge.

An appeal to their practical nature may prove helpful in the effort to prepare Maine people for the future.

languages are also recognized by the Indian constitution.

To illustrate the depth of the connection between language and identity, in South India, where Hindi is not widely spoken and state languages prevail, a few individuals have died as a result of self-immolation for linguistic rights (Mitchell 2009). Because of this binding force between language and identity, Maine’s heritage speakers of French, Somali, Spanish, Khmer, Arabic, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Micmac, to name several of the more than 60 languages spoken in Maine, should be encouraged to maintain their home language.

The different French-speaking communities of Maine kept their language alive for several generations, particularly through the 1960s and 1970s. Some continue to do so, though the infrastructure that was once in place and helped maintain their language— bilingual parochial schools, French-speaking parishes, and neighborhoods populated by communities of

RECOMMENDATIONS

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o see an increase in the study of world languages and the number of Mainers proficient in other languages, knowledge of languages other than English must be valued within society. The best way to demonstrate their value is to promote and invest in them in a manner comparable to the investment in time, money, and policy that has gone into increasing the competence, read competitiveness, of Maine’s workforce in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics).

Americans would place higher value on knowledge of another language if they truly understood to what extent language is tied to identity. While monolingual speakers of English no doubt understand the connection, they may not fully comprehend its importance. By being part of the majority language group in the United States, until recently their identity as speakers of English has gone largely unchallenged and unthreatened.

Despite English-only movements (and legislation) in a number of states, the marketplace has long forced immigrants to the United States to lose their first language by the third generation. In many countries, however, populations are often bilingual or even multilingual. Such multilingual situations often work quite well, such as in Switzerland, where there are four official languages. In other cases, speakers of minority languages feel their identity threatened by the majority language.

In India, for example, where Hindi and English are official languages, another 22 state or scheduled

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…knowledge of languages other than English must be valued within society.

French speakers known as P’tits Canadas—has all but disappeared. More recently, several communities in the St. John Valley have been able to extend the vitality of French thanks to the proximity of French-speaking New Brunswick and the federally funded bilingual program L’Acadien du Haut Saint-Jean. Immersion programs should be encouraged and, whenever possible, supported within heritage language communities, whether through weekend, after-school, or other linguistic and cultural programs. Speakers of heritage languages are a natural asset for business, social services, education, and cultural tourism, not to mention national security.

Maine’s institutions of higher education should require one or two years of high school language study as an admissions requirement. A language requirement for admission to a community college or university would underscore the importance of proficiency in a language other than English that is part of the Learning Results. Moreover, if colleges and universities require particular fields of study, that tends to assure their delivery in the preK–12 system.

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This raises the question of the dearth of qualified language teachers. Some districts are unable to find teachers certified to teach a world language and have resorted to drafting teachers certified in other disciplines to obtain an endorsement in French or Spanish. The problem here is that oftentimes these individuals do not have the proficiency level necessary to teach language courses. In some cases, schools have had to resort to the use of commercially available language learning programs. While it is possible to learn something of a language from this type of program, they are no substitute for live interaction with a teacher, other students, and members of the target language community.

One possible solution to the language teacher shortage is to offer incentives to Maine’s graduates if they become language teachers. The incentive might be a partial tuition waiver in exchange for four years’ service as a language teacher in Maine. Alternatively, private funding for language education scholarships could be found to attract students straight out of high school to the profession.

Some districts are unable to find teachers certified to teach a world language.…

A different type of challenge arises in some schools, particularly in rural districts: low student motivation with respect to learning languages. In homogenous communities, families have few opportunities to interact with people from diverse cultural backgrounds, and the likelihood of travel or study abroad may be remote. As a result, some students may have little external motivation for learning another language. In this case, crossdisciplinary programs similar to Cultures and Languages across the Curriculum, which take language and culture outside the language classroom, would help language learners to see connections between the language they are learning and other disciplines from a different cultural perspective. For example, students of French could, with the help of their French teacher, read about the history of Maine from French or French-Canadian sources, thereby gaining insight into their own history from the perspective of another culture. Students MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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preparing to enter the world of business might work with Junior Achievement Worldwide, comparing JA projects elsewhere with JA projects here in Maine and working together to understand projects, business culture practices, and approaches to problem solving different from their own. Even when taught in English, this type of program offers new perspectives by taking the learner outside of their American frame of reference.

The University of Maine System should make expanding language study a priority and develop more language programs. In the twenty-first century, delivery of bachelor’s degrees in only two (commonly taught) European languages does not go far enough toward meeting the needs of a state looking to increase economic development and educate its citizens in language proficiency. While many students will likely continue to study French and Spanish, courses that satisfy the 24-credit-hour minimum for a state endorsement to teach should be available in Arabic, Chinese, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Hindi/ Urdu or Telugu in Maine’s public universities. Several of these languages will also help prepare Maine people for work in the area of renewable energy and sustainability, fields in which China and Germany, for example, currently play a leading role. With Maine’s desire to attract high-tech companies, it also makes sense to have a workforce that can speak at least one of the languages of India.

At the state level, policymakers should consider establishing a magnet school for languages and cultures similar to the Maine School for Science and Mathematics in Limestone. It could be located in southern Maine, where the densest, most ethnically diverse population lives and could serve as a resource for planning and programming within the school and where students could engage in service learning within the community.

Wherever there is a community of speakers of another language, community members should be invited to be a part of school and after-school programming, even exploratory language classes offered for credit. After all, it takes only one positive cross-cultural experience to inspire a lifelong language learner.

Some of the recommendations outlined above are no doubt already happening in some schools. Others represent significant change from current practices: tuition incentives for future language teachers, the expansion of language programs within the University of Maine System, and the establishment of a magnet school for world languages. If implemented, they will 156

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no doubt yield an increased number of proficient speakers of other languages. To assure greater success, however, we propose the establishment of a world languages task force for the state of Maine.

ESTABLISHING A WORLD LANGUAGES TASK FORCE

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he University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Languages and other collaborators led a year-long study of what it would take to fully support language education and increase the number of speakers of other languages across the nation (Abbott et al.

2014; Brecht et al. 2014). Their proposed five-yearlong project will eventually be expanded to include 20 states. A similar group (language educators, community members, policymakers, and business people) dedicated to the educational well-being of Mainers and the state’s economic development could be effective here in Maine.

The task force could plot out a course of action that will truly help us to prepare Maine’s workforce for today’s global society and the future economy. As an advocate for languages in all arenas, it could act as a coordinating body in recommending best practices and providing guidance in their implementation. Developing workplace language education programs (perhaps as internships for college majors) and organizing ongoing professional development for language educators could also be a part of its mission. In addition, it could seek out private and government funding to support different language- and culture-related initiatives. Such a task force would need to include representatives from the Maine Department of Education, preK–12 schools, universities and community colleges, and the Foreign Language Association of Maine. It could act as a liaison between educational institutions, policymakers, translators and interpreters, business owners, and Maine’s various linguistic communities. A coalition of language stakeholders could provide the necessary strength in numbers that will make efforts on behalf of language learning a priority and more effective than they currently are.

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ENDNOTES 1. More about the Maine Learning Results is available on the Maine Department of Education’s website: http:// www.maine.gov/education/lres/ 2. The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines are based on the U.S. government’s Interagency Language Roundtable Skill Level Descriptions. The scale includes five levels: novice, intermediate, advanced, superior, distinguished.

The National Standards for Language Learning for Language Learning were revised in 2011 to include Common Core State Standards, College and Career Readiness and 21st Century Skills. More about the world language proficiency standard for Maine students is available at this website: http://www.maine.gov/doe /worldlanguages/diploma.html 3. Figures are from Ethnologue.com, Nationsonline.com, and Francophonie.org.

REFERENCES

he decline in language study in Maine, particularly at the post-secondary level, is representative of a nationwide trend. While the state legislature has passed forward-looking legislation in the proficiency requirement for world languages, the primary challenges to its

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implementation are longstanding: insufficient school budgets and a lack of qualified language teachers.

Extensions and exemptions to implementation of the Learning Results for World Languages must, therefore, be provided for school districts without the means to implement them. What is unusual, however, is the low number of languages, only two, in which one can obtain a bachelor’s degree at a public university.

The preceding discussion offers several suggestions for the promotion of world languages both in the community and in education. By suggesting an emphasis on the economic benefits of a linguistically prepared and culturally sensitive workforce, our goal is to encourage policymakers and state government officials to consider language education from a different perspective and to view it as an asset, as well as an enrichment. The ideal outcomes from our recommendations would entail a long-term, concerted effort on the part of numerous stakeholders in world languages to promote language learning, educate new teachers, support the maintenance of heritage languages among immigrant and indigenous communities, and provide opportunities for in-depth study of more world languages at Maine’s public institutions. -

Abbott, Marty, Richard D. Brecht, Dan E. Davidson, Hans Fenstermacher, Donald Fischer, William P. Rivers, Robert Slater, Amy Weinberg, and Terrence Wiley. 2014.

Languages for All? Can All U.S. Residents Have the Opportunity to Learn a Second Language? University of Maryland, College Park.

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Bialystok, Ellen, Fergus I. M. Craik, and Gigi Luk. 2012.

“Bilingualism: Consequences for Mind and Brain.”

Trends in Cognitive Sciences 6(4): 240–250.

Sanders, Ruth H. 2007. “Focus on Form: Foreign Language Study and Cognitive Development.” ADFL Bulletin 38:40–44.

Brecht, Richard, Martha Abbott, Dan E. Davidson, William P. Rivers, Robert Slater, Amy Weinberg, and Anandini Yoganathan. 2014. Languages for All? The Anglophone Challenge. White Paper, University of Maryland, College Park.

Ward, Shakoor A. 2010. “The Road to Foreign Language Competency in the United States: A Leadership Perspective.” Journal of Leadership Studies 4(3): 6–22.

Economic Development Corporation of Utah. (EDCU). 2014.

Utah Language Skills. EDCU, Salt Lake City. http://www .edcutah.org/documents/Section6_LanguageSkills_001 .pdf Harper, Stephen M. 2011. “Counting the Costs of a Global Anglophonic Hegemony: Examining the Impact of U.S. Language Education Policy on Linguistic Minorities Worldwide.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 18(1): 515–538.

Investment Consultant Associates (ICA). 2014.

Comprehensive Evaluation of Maine’s Economic Development Incentive Programs. ICA, Newton Highlands, MA. http://www.maine.gov/decd/reports -pubs/pdfs/Maine%20 Comprehensive%20Econ %20Dev%20Evaluation%202014 .pdf

Jane Smith is an associate professor of French and chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Classics at the University of Maine. Her research interests include sociolinguistics, code-switching, information structure, and regional varieties of French. From 2001 to 2005, she co-led a sociolinguistic project funded by the National Science Foundation, to build a corpus of the French spoken in New England.

Lindenfeld, Laura, and Gisela Hoecherl-Alden. 2008. “The Role of Language Education in Maine’s Global Economy.”

Maine Policy Review 17(1): 55–67.

Mitchell, Lisa. 2009. Language, Emotion, and Politics in South India: The Making of a Mother Tongue. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

Nicolay, Anne-Catherine, and Martine Poncelet. 2013.

“Cognitive Advantage in Children Enrolled in a Second-Language Immersion Elementary School Program for Three Years.”

Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16: 597–607.

Pufahl, Ingrid, and Nancy C. Rhodes.

2011. “Foreign Language Instruction in U.S. Schools: Results of a National Survey of Elementary and Secondary Schools.” Foreign Language Annals 44(2): 258–288.

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Maine has been home to speakers of many different languages for quite some time.

According to the Portland Schools Annual Report, by 1924 the Junior Americanization class at the Woolson School in Portland included 35 students of 11 different nationalities: Armenian, Canadian, Chinese, Danish, Greek, Italian, Jewish, Lithuanian, Norwegian, and Russian. This photograph was published in the Portland Sunday Telegram on February 26, 1924. (Collections of Maine Historical Society/MaineToday Media, Maine Memory Network Item 48821) 2015

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Muslims in Maine: Eid Mubarak!

by Reza Jalali

To God belongs the east and the west; wherever you go there will be the presence of God.—Qur’an 2:115 Islam is a part of America.—U.S. President Barak Obama in a speech addressing the Muslim world in Cairo in 2009

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he neon sign display mounted outside the Portland Exposition Building, the well-known sport venue in Portland, Maine, flashed the message: “Eid Al-Fitr 2010. Welcome,” as police officers wearing orange vests directed the early morning traffic, letting the vehicles stop at the curbside in front of the building to unload passengers. Maine’s Muslims arrived individually and in groups, shaking hands and embracing one another and wishing each other, “Eid Mubarak, Happy Eid.” African women in colorful dresses followed the elders inside the building as South Asian women in Shalwar kameez that were embroidered with zardozi and sequins, laughed with joy on meeting friends they had not seen in months. The festive air inside the lobby of Expo, as the facility is known locally, resembled a large wedding reception where the attendees included most of Maine’s Muslims: Men in white long robes, bearing a resemblance to the early Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula, hugged and kissed each other on cheeks. “Eid Mubarak,” said an elderly African man, pressing a crisp dollar bill into the tiny hand of a shy boy, as a gift, eidi.

“Please go inside and find a place to sit. We plan to start the prayer soon,” a young volunteer said in English, repeating the same in Somali and Arabic. The crowd moved toward the double doors—the women going to the far end of the cavernous hall and the men to the front.

“Sit tightly to make room for others,” the middle-aged Afghan man said in English and Farsi. “Look at the size of the crowd, Masha’ullah, God be Praised!” the man added. In no time, as if by magic, neat rows of men and women were formed, with the worshippers facing east, in the direction of Mecca, the spiritual magnet and the birthplace of Islam, located in today’s Saudi Arabia.

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“Allah O Akbar, God is Great,” the imam sang into the microphone. In unison, the nearly 2,000 worshippers repeated the Arabic words, sacred to Muslims everywhere. “Allah O Akbar,” the imam repeated. Soon, the segregated rows of men and women, bowed, kneeled down, prostrated to bring their foreheads to the floor as a sign of humility. Thus the annual Eid Al-Fitr (Festival of Ramadan) communal prayer, marking the end of Holy Month of Ramadan, was held on September 10, 2010, in Portland. Across Maine on the same day, similar communal prayers, though smaller in size, took place in Lewiston, home to a thousand or so Muslims mostly from Somalia, and Augusta and Orono, a college town located outside of Bangor.

For American Muslims, whether born and raised for generations here in the United States or having arrived in recent times as immigrants, attending the communal prayer to celebrate Eid-Al Fitr, can be a norm and no longer a new phenomenon in most larger urban centers across the country. However, the gathering of a few thousand Muslims in different cities in Maine can be news, given that Maine is one of the whitest and least diverse states in the country.

THE SILENT MUSLIMS

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he irony of the 2010 Eid falling so close to the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks was not lost on those Mainers who are biased against Muslims.

The front-page story in the September 11 edition of the Portland Press Herald covered the Eid prayer held at Expo. The article was entitled “A Show of Faith and Forgiveness” and featured accompanying photos showing smiling Muslims celebrating one of the two most important religious holidays in Islam. It did not please some of the newspaper’s readers. Their comments, which appeared with the online version of the story, included confrontational language and negative remarks directed at the Maine Muslims and the newspaper’s publisher. In the Sunday edition of the same newspaper

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(Maine Sunday Telegram, September 19, 2010), the publisher offered a written apology to the public: We made a news decision on Friday that offended many readers and we sincerely apologize for it. Many saw Saturday’s front-page story and photo regarding the local observance of the end of Ramadan as offensive, particularly on the day, September 11, when our nation and the world were paying tribute to those who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks nine years ago.

The public apology by the newspaper’s publisher and editor, in turn angered many of Maine’s non-Muslim residents, newspaper’s subscribers or not. For instance: I was angered and offended by the letter of apology written by Richard Connor on the front page of the Sunday paper. What was the horrible offense for which Mr. Connor saw fit to apologize? The publication of an article about a large (and peaceful) celebration of the end of Ramadan on the front page of the newspaper while 9/11 anniversary coverage was inside the paper.

All we hear from critics of Islam is that it is a warlike religion that is a threat to the United States. Maybe the offense was the presentation of all of the peaceful Muslims who live among us, with lives no different than our own.1 The publisher, Richard Connor, in response to the mounting public displeasure offered another apology to counter the first one. Throughout the ordeal and the media coverage that followed, Maine’s few thousand Muslims remained silent. For the following week, Muslims in Maine celebrated the 2010 Eid by visiting each other, having dinner parties, and attending the Eid receptions at local colleges—Bates and Colby, and the University of Southern Maine for instance—and getting together at rented halls, school cafeterias, and each other’s homes to break bread, offer gifts to children, and find security in each other’s company.

THE PATELS IN PORTLAND

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he same evening, in a hall at Wilkinson Park, a middle-class residential neighborhood in South Portland, a few families of Indian origin came together to celebrate the Eid. Once again, when the time for the evening prayer came, the men in the group formed a

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row facing Mecca to pray. Most present were of Gujarati origin, a community and a province in India that is home to many Muslims. Most shared the same last name, Patel, even though only a few were related to each other.

An elderly gentleman, led the evening salat, prayer, standing in front of the congregation, which was made up of Muslim doctors, engineers, and academics, employed in local hospital, banks, insurance companies, and universities. “la ilaha ila llah, there is no God but God,” he recited, quoting a verse from the holy Qur’an.

We stood on mats spread over the floor, facing a wall with the framed black-and-white pictures of somber-looking mustached men—the founding members of the club that rented the hall. A cloth had been thrown over the framed photos as an afterthought since displaying images in a place of worship is forbidden in Islam.

In the kitchen, the caterer, a young Bengali Muslim man, was putting the final touches to the halal Indian dinner. At the back of the hall, the children were getting restless. Once the buffet-style dinner was served, the women lined up to fill paper plates, first for the elderly and the young children in the room, before helping themselves to the spicy dishes.

In the post-dinner conversation, I learned the Indian Muslims, arriving in Maine as professionals or university students, had better chances of overcoming the usual barriers that immigrants from Muslim countries face as they start a new life in the United States. For instance, unlike those who arrived in the United States from Muslim-majority countries, Indian Muslims, Gujarati or otherwise, having lived as minorities in the Hindumajority India, were skilled and better-prepared to live as a member of a religious minority in a place such as Maine.

I asked Hanif, an IT engineer, about his previous life as a Muslim in India.

“I experienced no problem. In [the state of ] Orissa, we got along well with our Hindu neighbors,” he said.

“Of course, it helped that majority of the city’s population where I lived was Muslims. There was total harmony.

When the Hindus organized noisy and joyous religious processions passing through the town’s streets, the drummers accompanying the procession were all Muslims.”

Hanif added. According to him, at times the town’s Hindus respected their Muslim neighbors’ fasting during Ramadan by not eating in their presence.

“All that changed in 1992 when the BJP activists showed up in our neighborhood one day. I could hear them from our apartment on the third floor. They were yelling at Muslims, ‘if you want to live in India, say 160

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Rama, Rama,’” Hanif said, referring to the rise of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India and the beginning of the contemporary Muslim-Hindu sectarian tension.

For Muslim immigrants, most arriving in Maine as refugees fleeing wars, political conflicts, and religious and political persecution, America can promise safety, better economic opportunity, and a greater chance to succeed, just as it offered the same in the past centuries to the Catholic, Jewish, Armenian, Greek, and Russian Orthodox immigrants and millions of others who came to start a new life in America. Ironically, today’s Muslim immigrants face the same level of suspicion, mistrust, and occasional covert hostility to which past immigrants who belonged to nonmainstream religions were subjected.

AMERICAN PLURALISM

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y most accounts, Islam has been present in the Americas in one form or another, going back to the period before the birth of the republic. Contrary to the common belief that Islam came to the United States with the arrival of refugees and immigrants from Muslim countries, Islam has been part of the American narrative for a long time. Muslims came to the Americas in four different waves: first the explorers; then those escaping the Spanish Inquisition, which took place after the Muslim rulers of Spain were defeated and Spain was ruled

by Christians; as slaves; and by immigration starting in the mid- to late-1870s and continuing to the present time.

It is estimated there are five to seven million Muslims living in the United States. In addition to immigrant Muslims from Asia, Africa, and parts of Europe, America has always had a large indigenous Muslim population, most of them African Americans: some the descendants of Africans who were brought to this country as slaves, and others being new converts.

There are 2,300 mosques, Islamic schools, and organizations in the United States. Though Muslims live in every corner of the country, New York, Chicago, Detroit/ Dearborn, and Los Angeles, have the largest concentration of Muslim-Americans. Accordingly, California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Virginia, Texas, Ohio, and Maryland are the states with the largest Muslim population in the country.2 American Muslims have integrated well into American society. One explanation can be that the American Muslims are the most educated of all Muslims in the world (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/483 /muslim-americans). A higher percentage of U.S.

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Muslims have a college degree compared to other Americans as a whole, which helps them to earn higher incomes. There is also a strong concentration of Muslims in professional, managerial, and technical fields, especially in information technology, education, medicine, law, and the corporate world (Haddad 1987).

It is estimated that in a few years, Islam would become the second largest religion in the United States after Christianity. The story of immigrants bringing their faith traditions with them to their new home is as old as America itself. Thanks to immigration, America, once a Christian nation, and still a Judeo-Christian society, is now home to millions of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and others. It can be argued that the American story draws its magic and beauty from its religious pluralism and the ease and freedom with which the hyphenated communities live, for most part, in harmony.

Seemingly, the magic continues.

MUSLIMS IN MAINE: SAMOSA OR SAMBOSA?

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he first group of Muslims arrived in Maine in the 1900s. Mostly from Albania, they were recruited

by Pepperell Textile in Biddeford. The “Turks,” as they were known, numbered a few hundred. Some claim their mosque in Biddeford was the first one established in North America (http://pluralism.org/). The community of the Albanian Muslims was mostly wiped out by the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918. Two dozen gravestones in the city-owned cemetery in Biddeford that bear Islamic names and signs is all that remains of this community. In some cases, the names of the towns where the immigrants were born or came from are etched in the stone.

The current Muslim population of Maine, estimated to total between 5,000 and 6,000, falls mainly into four groups: refugees and asylum seekers; immigrants lured to Maine for its colleges, safety, quality of life, and recruited by the state’s largest employers in need of skilled and highly qualified foreign-born professionals; local converts; and indigenous African-American Muslims who have moved to Maine from the other parts of the United States.

The majority of Maine Muslims are refugees and secondary migrants who have come to Maine to begin a new life. Most are from Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, Ghana, Afghanistan, Iran, Kenya, Bosnia, Kosovo—countries that have been, and continue to be, in the headlines because of conflicts. The immigrants, who have left their homelands to come to Maine for jobs, higher education, 161

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family ties, love, and other reasons, represent some 35 countries that include Turkey, Russia, Malaysia, Libya, Indonesia, Syria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Morocco, India, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Jordan. Muslim converts and African-American Muslims make up the smaller share of Maine’s growing Muslim community.

Most Maine Muslims are Sunni Muslims, with a small Shias community, mainly from Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon. In Portland, Lewiston, and Westbrook, food stores owned and managed by Muslim Mainers cater to the needs of the local Muslim community members. The stores sell teas, mango pickles, date and fig jams, nuts, spices, herbs, falafel powder, Turkish delight, Basmati rice, prayer rugs, feta cheese, olives, phone cards, satellite dishes, halal samosa, a triangle-shaped snack popular in the Indian subcontinent (or sambosa as it is called by African immigrants), and halal chicken nuggets. A practicing Muslim can find halal meat in such stores, as Muslims obey certain strict dietary requirements that detail practices for how the animal is slaughtered and how the food is handled. There are also bakeries and restaurants making and marketing halal food.

One of the first barriers that Muslim children attending schools in Portland faced was the presence of pork and pork products in the school lunch menus. This posed a problem for Muslim and Jewish parents, whose school-aged children were served food items that violated religious dietary restrictions. Once the parents protested, the local schools began to offer alternative menu items on the days when pork was being served. In some cases, more religiously conservative parents, distrustful of the school’s menu, encourage their children to take home-made food to school. At times, this could cause tension between the younger students who want to fit in with their peers and their parents who struggle to raise children in accordance with their religious and traditional constraints.

the local mosques, no public financing or large-sum grants or external funding have been received by any of Maine’s mosques.

The locations of the mosques has been a function of availability, zoning convenience, and cost. Though the mosques in Maine have been established with little public opposition, the Portland Masjid located on Washington Avenue, or Afghan Mosque, called so because it is visited mostly by members of the local Afghan community, faced zoning difficulties initiated by the city’s Planning Board. The office of the Maine Civil Liberty Union supported the Muslim community in their search for a compromise to stay open until zoning issues could be addressed (Portland Press Herald, July 28, 2010).

Attendance at Maine’s mosques varies from month to month, with the highest number of attendees visiting during the Holy Month of Ramadan, or on Fridays, when practicing Muslims are encouraged to visit a mosque to participate in the communal Friday prayer, or joma, and listen to the Friday sermon, delivered by the mosque’s imam or a guest speaker.

Community members visit mosques where their fellow countrymen and -women go; Afghans, most South Asian, and some Arabic-speaking Muslims go the Portland Masjid. Most Somalis, depending on their tribal and linguistic affinity, plus Arabs, pray at the other three mosques in Portland. The mosques in Orono and Augusta are frequented by the smaller Muslim communities there, regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, or language differences. Lewiston’s two mosques are visited by the African residents of the city and surrounding areas.

With the exception of the Holy Month of Ramadan, few Muslim women go to mosques to pray on a regular basis, as Muslims women most often pray at home due to their family obligations,

HOMESICK MOSQUES

MUSLIM STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS (MSA)

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here are eight mosques in Maine: four in Portland, two in Lewiston, one in Augusta, and one in Orono.

The mosques, with the exception of one or two, are best described as makeshift, since prior to being purchased or leased to be turned into a house of worship, they were used as retail spaces or warehouses. Because Muslims are forbidden to receive and pay interest, the community has to raise funds or borrow interest-free funds from fellow Muslims to purchase or remodel a building that would house the mosque. According to leaders of

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ith the arrival of early Muslim exchange students at Maine’s colleges and universities, particularly at the University of Maine in Orono, Muslim students have formed student groups in campuses across the state. Such student associations have made it possible for Muslim students to gather, socialize, meet their spiritual needs, advocate for halal food in the cafeterias, create prayer spaces for Friday prayers, bring Muslim speakers to the campus, and organize Eid receptions. Currently, there are a dozen of such student associations, some 162

Maine in the Global Age: MUSLIMS IN MAINE

more active than others, at the University of Maine in Orono, Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby colleges, and the University of Southern Maine.

MAINE MUSLIMS IN POSTSEPTEMBER 11 AMERICA

I

n the days and weeks following September 11, 2001, Maine’s Muslim community experienced some level of hostilities. Maine’s Muslims seem to have fared better than Muslims living in other parts of the United States, however. In a few cases reported to law enforcement agencies, Muslim women wearing veils were spat on and called names. Muslim children and those presumed to be Muslims or Middle Eastern were harassed by nonMuslim Americans. In addition, offensive, anti-Muslim graffiti was spray painted on the wall of a mosque and halal market in Portland.

Agents from the FBI visited some Muslims, particularly those from Afghanistan, or required them to go to their offices for interviews. None were detained, but a Somali man, suspected of transferring funds illegally came under close scrutiny. He was engaged in a practice known as havala, common among many immigrant communities, whereby a person residing in the United States sends money to friends and families in overseas by handing over the funds plus a fee to have it delivered. In post-September 11 America, such a practice, with its potential for use to transfer of funds to terrorists, has come under close scrutiny by the FBI and other government agencies. FBI agents met with Muslim community leaders to assure them of legal protection against potential hate crimes. At the same time, the agents asked local Muslims to report any suspicious activities or unusual behavior by their fellow Muslims.

about Islam. Needless to say, such efforts have become more urgent since September 11 terrorist attacks in this country. In terms of civic engagement, Maine’s Muslims have done well. A few have run for political office, including the mayor’s office, with two noteworthy examples of success: a school board member elected in Portland and another in Lewiston. The relationship between Muslim community members and members of other faiths who call Maine home is positive and free of tension.

Looking ahead, there seems to be questions that could determine the sustainability and the future of the somewhat invisible Muslim Mainers. Though time only will tell, they are significant enough to be thought about: Will Islam, as a religion of Maine’s newer residents, change and undergo reforms just as religions of past immigrants did? How will Maine, as a white state, make room for the followers of Islam? Will conflicts and acts of terror committed by fanatics in the name of Islam affect the well-being and integration of Muslim immigrants in Maine? Finally, will attendance in the annual Eid celebrations in years and decades to come be larger, or will it shrink, as a result of loss of interest in part of the future generations? ENDNOTES 1 http://www.pressherald.com/opinion/letters/same-day -different-views-eid-and-sept_-11_2010-09-16.html 2 http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/publication /2008/12/20081222090246jmnamdeirf0.4547083 .html#axzz3ZOnxJ44w

REFERENCE Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck.1987. Islamic Values in the United States. Oxford University Press, New York.

CONCLUSION

A

s part of their outreach to the larger community, Maine’s Muslims have organized mosque open houses, Ramadan iftar (the evening meal that breaks the fast) inside a mosque, Eid receptions, and educational workshops and conferences. In reaction to natural and human-caused disasters at home and abroad, Maine’s Muslim community has organized public events to raise funds for the victims.

The new leaders of Maine’s mosques are involved in community projects including outreach to schools and libraries as ways to educated the non-Muslim communities

MAINE POLICY REVIEW

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Vol. 24, No. 1

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2015

Reza Jalali is a writer, educator, and a community activist who has taught at the Bangor Theological Seminary and the University of Southern Maine (USM). He coordinates the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs at USM and advises Muslim students at Bowdoin College. Jalali wrote the Foreword to New Mainers, and has also published a short story collection and a play. His children’s book, Moon Watchers, received a Skipping Stones Honor Award for Multicultural Books in 2011.

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