Art for Justice

Jennifer Hodsdon, a 2008 graduate of the Stonecoast program who now coordinates the Maine SpeakOut Project, led this discussion of some of the rewards and challenges that come from using writing as a transformative exercise to effect social change. The panelists were three Maine-based writer-activists—Gary Lawless, Cathy Plourde, and Chiara Liberatore—whose experiences range from writing workshops with homeless youth, veterans, and immigrant populations to theatrical performance with incarcerated youth and adults. You may have seen Lawless at Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, which he co-founded in 1979. Plourde founded Add Verb Productions, and co-wrote that organization's play "When Turtles Make Love: Real Talk Between Parents and Teens" with Liberatore.

Please use this forum to weigh in on any of the issues raised by the panelists and facilitator.

Poetry Festival

Three events from the Portland Public Library's 2008 Poetry Festival
were captured for Humanities On Demand: the kick-off with Annie Finch and Patricia Hagge, a collaborative reading by three poets whose work has been published by Moon Pie Press, and a lecture by Shakespeare scholar David Kastan.

Ford in Focus

Michael C. Connolly and Kevin Stoehr are the editors of John Ford in Focus, a collection of essays that offers a comprehensive examination of Ford’s life and career, revealing the frequent intersections between Ford’s personal life and artistic vision, including his roots in Portland. Stoehr is associate professor of humanities at Boston University and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Connolly teaches History and Political Science at Saint Joseph’s College of Maine. He is the author of They Change Their Sky: The Irish in Maine. They spoke at the Portland Public Library in March, 2008. Please leave your questions about John Ford here!

"How Did You Get Here?"

Playwright Victoria Mares-Hershey’s “How Did You Get Here?” gives voice to Africans in Maine, during the period of slavery and beyond, by giving audiences a sense of their everyday lives. This reading of the play’s first act was recorded on March 21, 2008, at the Museum of African Culture’s new location on Brown Street in Portland. Museum Director Oscar Mokeme welcomes the audience and architect Stephen Oliver introduces the show, then volunteer actors join with Mares-Hershey to perform the excerpt.

Rachel Davis

Rachel Davis is the children's librarian at the Thomas Memorial Library in Cape Elizabeth. In April, 2008, she read aloud from some of her favorite children's books for Humanities on Demand. She also found some fingerplays to go along with the books.

Let us know what you and your kids think of the readings!

Barbara Boyd

Barbara Weiden Boyd is the Henry Winkley Professor of Latin and Greek at Bowdoin College, where she has taught since 1980. She earned her Ph.D. at Michigan and has written extensively on Latin literature, notably two books on the poet Ovid. In recent years she has prepared a series of school texts and teachers’ guides to Virgil’s Aeneid. She has also been a visiting professor twice at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. Her talk on "Translating Virgil" relies on a handout, which you can download in PDF format from our Humanities on Demand website.

Please let us know which translation of the Aeneid you prefer, and why...

Peter Aicher

Peter Aicher is Professor of Classics at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, where he frequently teaches courses on Homer and Virgil, in translation and in Greek and Latin. He combines these literary interests with a fascination with the city of Rome, which has resulted in several books and numerous articles and talks. He recently designed a course entitled “The City of Rome: Romulus and Mussolini,” which explores how an architectural language of power has evolved and persisted over the millennia.

This is only the first part of Professor Aicher’s talk on "The Rome of Augustus." In the second part, he uses maps of Rome and the ancient world to show where the events described in the Aeneid took place. This part of the talk will be available soon on video.