Eve LaPlante

Samuel Sewall, the only judge to publicly repent his decision to condemn twenty people to death as witches in 1692, is the subject of Eve LaPlante’s new biography, Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall (HarperOne, 2007). LaPlante counts Sewall as her sixth great-grandfather, a family connection that gave her access to rare documents not previously available. Through these documents, as well as Sewall’s extensive personal diaries and letters, she vividly recreates Sewall’s life and times. LaPlante is the author of two previous books, Seized (a multidisciplinary exploration of temporal lobe epilepsy) and American Jezebel (a biography of Anne Hutchinson), and essays for The Atlantic, the New York Times, Ladies’ Home Journal, Gourmet, and Boston.

Schair Memorial Lecture

The 2008 Douglas M. Schair Memorial Lecture on Genocide and Human Rights was a dialogue for Muslim-Jewish understanding, presented in cooperation with the Islamic Society of Portland and the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine. The featured speakers were Judea Pearl and Akbar Ahmed. Pearl, a computer scientist from Israel, and Ahmed, a social scientist from Pakistan, share a concern about the deterioration of relationships between Muslim and Jewish communities around the world. They have become partners in a dialogue project in memory of Pearl’s son, journalist Daniel Pearl, under the auspices of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. Through their public dialogue, they aim to inspire ongoing conversations in the communities they visit that are similarly honest and respectful. They were recognized for this project in 2006, with the first annual Purpose Prize.

The Schair Memorial Lecture took place at the University of Southern Maine on April 8, 2008. The Lecture Committee is already planning next year's lecture! Please leave your feedback here.

Linda Greenlaw

Linda Greenlaw's three books about life as a commercial fisherman—The Hungry Ocean (1999), The Lobster Chronicles (2002), and All Fishermen Are Liars (2004)—have climbed as high as #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. Her first novel, Slipknot, began a mystery series whose second installment is Fisherman’s Bend (2008). Before becoming a writer, Greenlaw was the captain of a sword boat, the career that earned her a prominent role in Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm and a portrayal in the subsequent film. She now lives on Isle au Haut, where she captains a lobster boat. She stopped at the Portland Public Library in August to promote her new mystery and accept Q&A. What would you have liked to ask her if you'd been there?

Emerson Baker

Emerson ‘Tad’ Baker of York, Maine, is a former chair of the Maine Humanities Council. An author and Professor of History at Salem State College, he directs several archaelogical excavations in New England and also served, from 2002 until its premier in 2004, as a lead consulant for the Emmy-nominated PBS TV series, “Colonial House.” In August, 2008, Baker visited Cousins Island to read from his 2007 book, The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England. His appearance was sponsored by the Yarmouth Historical Society.

Vietnam in Context

Patrick Rael is Associate Professor of History at Bowdoin College. His areas of interest include antebellum America, Civil War and Reconstruction, and comparative slavery. Among other publications, he has edited a volume of scholarship on African-American Activism Before the Civil War (Routledge, 2008). In this talk, Rael places the Vietnam conflict in a continuum of U.S. military engagements, considering the impacts of war on society, and vice versa.

Margaret Sweat

Connie Burns is a school librarian in South Portland with a hidden passion: the lives of Victorian women. In pursuit of her passion, Burns researched Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat (1823-1908) for her Master’s thesis in the American and New England Studies program at the University of Southern Maine. Sweat is best remembered for her bequest of the mansion that would become the Portland Museum of Art, but she was also a published author and an influential member of Portland’s elite during her life. Here, Burns reads from Sweat’s diary and letters (held in the Maine Women Writer’s Collection) and discusses her role in Victorian society.