Fall 2021 Faculty Grant Awardees

Hollie Adams (English),
“Morley Callaghan and Canadian Literary Modernism”

Hollie Adams’s research on Morley Callaghan, one of Canada’s best-known modernist fiction writers, will comprise part of her larger study of Canadian literary modernism. Adams will travel to York University in Toronto, to research in the Morley Callaghan archive, and while in Toronto she will also conduct research at the Modern Literature & Culture Research Centre at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University).

Joseph Arel (Philosophy)
“Philosophy in Maine”

Joseph Arel was awarded a grant in support of his “Philosophy in Maine” project. “Philosophy in Maine” will produce an online magazine of philosophical writing aimed at a general (public) readership. This project is “devoted to developing and sharing philosophical ideas that are applied specifically to the state of Maine.” Arel, who previously directed a public philosophy program at Northern Arizona University, is the founder and General Editor of localphilosophy.org, a nonprofit public philosophy organization that focuses on engaging philosophers and philosophical thinking within particular communities.

Margaret (Mimi) Killinger (Honors, Rezendes Preceptor for the Arts)
“Joanna Paul: The Otago Years, 1977-1983”

Margaret Killinger, associate professor of Honors and Rezendes Preceptor for the Arts, will apply her McGillicuddy Humanities Center Faculty award towards travel and research for her “Joanna Paul: The Otago Years, 1977-1983” project. Killinger’s immediate research will focus on the years Joanna Margaret Paul (1945-2003) spent as artist and poet in Dunedin, New Zealand, from 1977 to 1983. Paul is remembered in New Zealand as “one of our most original (and most unsung) poets, a painter who’d never really received her due, an artist in the fullest sense of the term,” and Killinger’s work will investigate Paul’s coming of age as a public artist and an intriguing figure within the New Zealand women’s art movement.

Brian Pitman (Sociology)
“Addressing Homelessness and Building Community in the Greater Bangor Area”
Brian Pitman, assistant professor of sociology, was awarded a grant for his “Addressing Homelessness and Building Community in the Greater Bangor Area” project. The grant will be used to “initiate community conversations – both inside and outside the classroom and university, based on shared reading experiences — that raise awareness amongst different stakeholders in the Greater Bangor area about how to care for each other during this worsening housing crisis. The project includes a community reading group to develop more comprehensive understandings of homelessness and the housing crisis, and community and university forums on homelessness that amplify the experiences of those directly impacted by this crisis.” Pitman is collaborating with several community partners, including the Greater Bangor Housing Coalition, on the reading groups and events.
Beth Wiemann (School of Performing Arts Division of Music)
Guerilla Opera Residency
Professor Beth Wiemann of the School of Performing Arts was granted an award to support performances of a new work by the Boston opera company Guerilla Opera at the University of Maine. Professor Wiemann’s project is a collaboration with Guerilla Opera and the Nichols Museum in Boston on a site-specific chamber opera for premiere in 2022. The new work is based on the life of Rose Standish Nichols, a suffragette and WWI-era Peace activist, with a libretto by Wiemann based on materials in the Museum collection and its publications. As part of the development process for this work, Wiemann and Guerilla Opera have planned a residency for the company at UMaine in March 2022, both to present scenes of the new piece in workshop form, and to record parts of the score for use in the multimedia performances later in the year.