Lecture to Focus on Humanities and the Land Grant Mission
Contact: UMaine Center for Teaching Excellence, 581-3472
ORONO — Jay Mechling, professor of American studies at the University of California, Davis, is scheduled to discuss the importance of the humanities at a land grant university, in a lecture Wednesday, Feb. 20, from 2:30-4:30 p.m. in the Bangor Room of the UMaine Memorial Union.
The talk is free and open to the public.
Mechling’s perspectives are based on his experiences chairing the California Council for the Humanities and the committee that successfully competed for a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to establish the Pacific Regional Humanities Center at the University of California, Davis.
He will outline the role of the humanities in:
– Providing resources for living in communities, the workplace and the increasingly complex, transnational world;
– Imagining how new ways of thinking bring value to the social sciences and sciences;
– And the land grant mission to bring knowledge and understanding from the university to the community, build partnerships and understand how communities think, converse, work and play.
Mechling, a past editor of Western Folklore and president of the California Folklore Society, has published more than 80 essays and articles on a wide range of topics. His books include: On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth (2001), Children’s Folklore: A Source Book (co-editor 1995) and American Wildlife in Symbol and Story (co-editor 1987). He is one of the three senior editors for the four-volume Encyclopedia of American Studies (Grolier, 2001).
His lecture is sponsored by the Cultural Affairs/Distinguished Lecture Series, Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, Margaret Chase Smith Library, Center for Teaching Excellence, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Department of Communication & Journalism.
Further information is available by calling the UMaine Center for Teaching Excellence at 581-3472.