New UMaine Humanities Center Grants Support Faculty Research, Teaching and Community Engagement
Six new faculty grant projects, including two based in the community, have been funded by the University of Maine Humanities Center (UMHC).
Jordan LaBouff, assistant professor of psychology and honors, is collaborating with the Penobscot Theatre on the play End Days, opening in March as part of the Maine Science Festival. The collaboration will include panel discussions with the creative team, local faith leaders, audiences and undergraduate researchers who will measure changes in attitudes toward science and the humanities as a result of this work.
The second UMHC-funded public engagement project is led by Kirsten Jacobson, associate professor of philosophy, who has gathered a large group of Orono High School faculty and students, as well as UMaine faculty, staff and students to develop shared humanities programs in the area.
A third UMHC-funded project supports the joint work of Jennifer Moxley, professor of English, and Beth Wiemann, professor of music, who have co-authored the chamber opera Until the War Is Over, adapted from an autobiographical novel by the American poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), and set during air raids on London in World War I.
Two summer research projects also have been funded: Josh Roiland, assistant professor of communications and journalism and honors, will examine extensive manuscript material by the pioneering nonfiction and creative writer David Foster Wallace at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin; Carlos Villacorta, assistant professor of Spanish, will do archival work in Lima, Peru, on that metropolis’ distinctive poetry during an era of rapid political and economic change in the 1970s.
In the History Department, Mazie Hough, associate professor of history and director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, and Howard Segal, the Adelaide C. and Alan L. Bird Professor of History, will convene a series of discussions about pedagogy that will culminate with an end-of-semester conference to highlight the work of undergraduates, graduate students and faculty, and will include online publication of the best research papers by history majors in the senior seminar capstone course.
The UMaine Humanities Center, established in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 2010, advances exceptional research and teaching by humanities faculty and works to share our rich resources through meaningful collaboration with communities across the state. UMHC’s next grant deadline is Jan. 26, 2015. More information about UMHC is available online or by contacting director Liam Riordan, riordan@umit.maine.edu; 207.581.1913.