Humanities Symposium
2025-2026 MHC Annual Symposium theme announced!
Hard Copy: The Material Culture of Reading and Writing
The virtuoso Cuban poet and novelist José Lezama Lima lamented in a brief essay in 1954 the modern writer’s boredom with the stark and lifeless letterforms of his trade. It was the era of typewriters, inky daily newspapers, and carbon-copy forms; the written word had come to feel ordinary. But Lezama reminds us that, with their millenary history, at turns bright with heroism and intelligence and by equal turns shadowed by terror or fierce ignorance, the shapes and contours of our alphabet —not to mention myriad other forms of writing— harken back to the names of animals, fragments of forgotten faces, or the inscriptions on a lost colossus. Reading and writing resurrect these “corceles en la luz,” stallions in the light, miraculously reanimated and given solid form by our pens, our keyboards, our eyes, and our fingertips. The McGillicuddy Humanities Center’s 2025-2026 Symposium will delve into this uneven but continuous history, from the proto-writing of ancient commerce to modern graphic design and the autofill on our phones. We’ll welcome scholars, poets, and artists to UMaine throughout the academic year for lectures, screenings, workshops, and class visits to explore the rich material culture of reading and writing.
The 2025-2026 McGillicuddy Humanities Center Symposium will welcome scholars, writers, and artists to UMaine for talks, presentations, workshops and class visits throughout the academic year. These events will revolve around the theme, “Hard Copy: The Material Culture of Reading and Writing.” Considering the rich and long history of alphabetic systems, book arts, typography, and graphic design, and extending from the origins of written expression to our present digital landscape, the Symposium will find and trace connections between myriad fields of knowledge and artistic practice.
Contact mhc@maine.edu or MHC Director Zach Ludington at zachary.r.ludington@maine.edu for more information.