Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center

Welcome to the Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center!

Advancing Research in the Humanities, Linking Scholars to One Another and the Broader Maine Community

The Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center (MHC) promotes the cultivation of cultural knowledge, intellectual curiosity, and critical and creative reflection. It fulfills this mission by providing funding for innovative humanities research and forums for meaningful conversations among scholars, students, and the public.  The Center supports the Public Humanities, broadly construed, for the benefit of UMaine and the State of Maine.

There are always exciting humanities related events going on at UMaine or in the region. Check out our calendar of upcoming events, Facebook page, ongoing programs, and announcements below to find out what’s happening!

Statement from President Ferrini-Mundy

The study of the humanities, and the understandings and insights it produces about people and the experiences of being human, are a foundation of our existence as a society, and essential to a thriving, comprehensive research university. At the University of Maine, we are fortunate to have robust programmatic offerings across the humanities and the arts, spanning the mission of the Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center (MHC): to “promote the cultivation of cultural knowledge, intellectual curiosity, and critical and creative reflection.”

Through scholarship in history, philosophy, languages, literature, and the arts, we learn about others and we learn about ourselves — learning that is critical for all of our students, today and tomorrow. These foundations provide the base for everything from engaging in civil discourse and appreciating the unbounded creative contributions that define our cultures, to shaping the ways people and technologies will share tomorrow’s world.

As someone whose background and experience have been primarily in the science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) fields, I recognize that advances in these disciplines only will occur to the extent they are integrated with the understandings that come from the humanities. For UMaine students, no matter what their field, developing the habits of mind, argumentation, empathy, communication skills, and perspective, based in their humanities experiences, is key to the improvement of our workplaces, our lives, and our society.

As the McGillicuddy Humanities Center believes, the study of the humanities “develops the emotional and intellectual agility needed to brilliantly navigate an increasingly interconnected and complex global landscape.” MHC is dedicated to keeping the humanities disciplines vital in our community through its extensive work in providing a wide variety of forums through which we can all explore our lives to the fullest.

I am delighted that MHC is such a central part of our culture at the University of Maine. We all need and depend on what it brings us.

Sincerely,

Joan Ferrini-Mundy
President

Announcements

Starting July 1, 2018 Professor Margo Lukens began a two-year term as the fifth director of the McGillidcuddy Humanities Center.

Professor Lukens’s professional experience, research interests, and community projects are manifold. For English she teaches colonial to 19th-century Anglo-American and a variety of Native American literatures. She does extensive work with Native American and First Nations plays and playwrights, including Wabanaki literary and storytelling history. 

Lukens has been involved in the startup of many projects, including The Radcliffe Pitches, Orono Community Theatre, the Penobscot Players (of Indian Island), the Stillwater Community Arts organization, and most recently True North Theatre. She also has extensive administrative experience, having served terms as chair of English and of New Media. She was also a Founding Director of Innovation Engineering Academic Programs (2007-2017).

With such a passionate humanist at its head, our Center can’t help but thrive and grow in many meaningful new directions.

Welcome Margo!

Letter from outgoing Director Jennifer Moxley.

Click here to read her goodbye note.