Assistant Professor of History, University of Southern Maine

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Ashley Towle is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Southern Maine. Her research and teaching interests include nineteenth century United States history, the history of enslavement and emancipation, and the history of gender and sexuality.

Dr. Towle's most recent scholarship uses death as a lens for examining shifting power relations in the post-emancipation South. Analyzing funerals, cemeteries, and monuments, Dr. Towle explores how white and Black Southerners made sense of the mortal losses of the Civil War era.

Talks

Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower in Fact and Fiction

How did the history of slavery and Jim Crow influence Octavia Butler’s groundbreaking book, Parable of the Sower? This talk explores the ways in which Butler drew on the history of enslavement and Jim Crow to craft the post-apocalyptic setting of her novel..

In exploring the connections between American history and Parable of the Sower, this talk also offers insights into how we can use the lessons of history to shape a more socially just future.

This talk is made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this presentation do not necessarily represent those of the NEH.

Maine in the Civil War and Reconstruction

While the experiences of famous men such as Hannibal Hamlin and Joshua Chamberlain are well-known to many, this talk explores the lesser-known stories of white and Black Mainers who influenced the Civil War and Reconstruction. Attendees will learn about Civil War nurses, self-liberating refugees from slavery, idealistic reformers, and an imperiled Reconstruction-era governor.

Confederate Monuments and the Memory of the Civil War

This talk contextualizes current debates around the status of Confederate monuments in the United States. Rather than viewing these debates as a recent development, this talk demonstrates that these monuments have always had a controversial and contested history. 

Through an examination of counter-memorials created in the South such as national cemeteries, and African-American monuments and cemeteries, this talk explores the complex and fraught historical memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Maine State Poet Laureate

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Julia Bouwsma is the sixth Maine State Poet Laureate (2021-2026) and author of two poetry collections, Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), both of which received Maine Literary Awards. She is the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME and also teaches intermittently in the Creative Writing department at the University of Maine at Farmington. Bouwsma lives and works on an off-the-grid homestead in the western mountains.

Talks

Our Arms Spread Out around It All: A History of Malaga Island through Poems

In 1912 the State of Maine forcibly evicted an interracial community of roughly forty-seven people from Malaga Island, a small island off the coast of Phippsburg that had been their home for generations. The erasure of the Malaga Island community included the removal of all dwellings and the island’s schoolhouse, the involuntary commitment of nine residents to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded, and the exhumation and mass reburial of seventeen graves. This atrocity was followed by a century of socially-enforced silence and as a result, many Mainers today still do not fully know the story of Malaga.

This talk will pair a discussion of Malaga Island and its residents with a reading of poems from Julia Bouwsma’s award-winning collection Midden, considering the history of this shameful event, the relevancy of this history to our current moment, and also the process and implications of writing poems based on historic research.

An Introduction to Maine’s Current Poet Laureate

Maine Poet Laureate Julia Bouwsma will introduce her poetry by presenting poems from her two books, Midden and Work by Bloodlight, as well as newer poems from projects in progress. This talk, which incorporates a Q&A, will focus on the arc and progression of her work thus far, provide insight into her poetic process, consider the vital role that Maine plays in her poetry and poetic development, and explore thoughts about the particular necessity and relevance of poetry in times of isolation and division. Bouwsma will also explore her vision for the Poet Laureate position, providing an overview of recent projects designed to help Mainers gain greater comfort with poetry and connect with one another through this powerful medium. 

Professor of History, University of New England

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Elizabeth DeWolfe is Professor of History at the University of New England where she teaches courses in women’s history, archival research, and American culture. Dr. DeWolfe is a historical detective: she hunts archives for the traces of ordinary women, piecing together their all-but-forgotten lives from faint clues.

Dr. DeWolfe’s book on the short life and tragic death of a textile mill girl, The Murder of Mary Bean, was named the Outstanding Book of 2008 by the New England Historical Association. She has also written on textile factory workers, the Shakers, and a Maine stenographer turned undercover detective.

Talks

The Great Turn-Out of 1841: Maine Textile Workers on Strike! 

In 1841, nearly 500 female factory workers walked out of Saco’s York Manufacturing Company and paraded up Main Street, chanting and singing. They gathered in a local church, formed a committee, and sent the factory owner a document articulating their complaints about wages, housing, and paternalistic rules. In this illustrated talk, we’ll explore the life of New England “factory girls,” the opportunities mill work brought, and the challenges of this difficult labor. We’ll examine the tense days that followed the “turn-out” and see how a strike in one Maine town connected to national agitation for women’s rights, including suffrage.

Dangerous Temptations: Textile ‘Factory Girls’ in Fact and Fiction

The 1849 "murder" of textile worker Berengera Caswell shattered the tranquility of life in Saco and Biddeford. In the wake of her death, authors published over a dozen tales set in Maine factory towns. To protect Maine's young, female workforce throughout the state, short stories and novellas reviewed the "dangerous temptations" young people found in Maine's cities, and offered advice on how to avoid Caswell's tragic fate. These sensationalized, gothic stories were eagerly read cautionary tales that offered young women (and their nervous parents) guideposts to safety. But did the factory girls take the advice?

Mourning Maine's Dead : Victorian Hair Jewelry and Crafts

In 19th-century Maine, death was ever present. To grapple with loss, Victorian Mainers could turn to art and craft to mourn and remember their loved ones. Their material of choice was human hair. Mary Baker made a good living crafting flowers, wreaths, and jewelry from human hair. Her Portland home-based business tapped into a national craze for Victorian hair jewelry which not only memorialized the dead, but also connected the living. From snips of a loved one's hair in a locket, to braided hair friendship rings exchanged between schoolgirls, to a large-scale wreath of flowers containing the hair of an entire family, Mainers embraced hair art as a symbol of mourning the dead and celebrating the living.

Founder and Director, Franco-American Women’s Institute

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Rhea Côté Robbins was brought up bilingually in a Franco-American neighborhood in Waterville known as the South End. Côté Robbins is the author of creative nonfiction, memoirs titled, ‘down the Plains,’ and Wednesday’s Child, winner of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Chapbook Award.

She is editor of Canuck and Other Stories, an anthology of translations of early 20th century Franco-American women writers who wrote about their immigration experience. Her poems and essays have appeared in many publications. She is the founder and director of the Franco-American Women’s Institute, FAWI.

Talks

Who Gets To Tell Story? 

Telling or hearing story while conscious of the human ecology—listening to story justly with social consciousness of equality. I would like to define what qualifies as “story.”  I believe essentially that every person, artifact, ritual, etc. is story.  Everything we know comes to us via story; we are surrounded by story.  Story is the microcosm of the macrocosm. Who, in the cultural milieu, gets to tell story?

Where Are the Franco-American Women in Your Community?

Using a Franco-American woman’s search and research as a model to address the issue of what, if any Franco-American woman wanted to know about Franco-American women and their history, where would they begin if they were not told or not allowed to know and value the contributions of the Franco-American women’s history? Who are the Franco-American women in the state of Maine in regard to the history of ethnic populations? What makes the Franco-American culture worth the focus in regard to ethnic diversity? The answers to these questions remain unknown in the history of Maine. Deeper review of the lives of the Franco-Americans, present and past, reflects this hidden history.

Franco-American Women, Suffrage and Political Activity

What was Camille Lessard Bissonnette doing to promote women’s suffrage in 1910-1911, and what barriers did she face?  What was happening across the border in the QC/Canadian women’s suffrage movement, which started in 1912?  And who were the Franco-American women of Maine who served in the Maine State Legislature starting in 1935?  The lives of these women illustrate the history of women’s suffrage here, connects the present, and helps us understand how we got here.

Historian, Educator

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Paul Buck is a Professor of History and Education at the University of Maine at Fort Kent. He has a doctorate in U.S. and Canadian history from the University of Maine, which he completed in 2008. Paul is proficient in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Wolof. 

He has either studied or taught over the course of four academic years in French Canada (Québec City), Russia (Voronezh), and Senegal (Dakar). Paul enjoys participating in his adopted community of St. Agatha, particularly in local organizations that promote and celebrate the French language and the Acadian and Franco-American culture of the St. John Valley.

Talks

Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842) and Maine’s Northern Border 

Paul’s presentation examines the different perspectives of Maine statehood and of Maine culture as seen through the prism of the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, which definitively established the boundary between British North America and the United States.

Paul explores the treaty itself and its impact on the singular Acadian and Francophone community of the St. John Valley, which found itself split into two countries. He gives historical context as well, most certainly commencing with the long-standing Maliseet and Mi’kmaq communities of the region, along with Scots-Irish and, by the 1820s, of Maine Yankee residents

President, Board of Directors, Abyssinian Meeting House

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Pamela Cummings is President of the Board of Directors and Director of Education Programs for The Abyssinian Meeting House. She is also the writer of two books and the founder of A Walk Back in Time, a theatrical walk retracing the footsteps of enslaved people in Portland, Maine. She is proud mother of Lindsey Alston DAndrea and Douglas Alston. 

Photo: PORTLAND, ME - Pam Cummings, the head of the Committee to Restore the Abyssinian, in the upstairs of the meeting house which is currently being restored. The historical place of worship built by African Americans in the 19th century fell into disarray and a committee to restore the building has been working toward the goal for 20 years. (Staff photo by Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer)

Talks

The Underground Railroad: Retracing the Tracks

An illustrious walk back in time to discuss the history of the Underground Railroad and its relevance and significance to Maine’s total and accurate history. Pamela explores the places that are hidden all around us in plain sight, each with its own story begging to be told and lessons waiting to be shared.

What’s in Your Hand? 

Use readily available resources to create your underground railroad–your escape from slavery to freedom. 

Founder and Executive Director, Atlantic Black Box

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Meadow Dibble, Ph.D. is a researcher and antiracist historical recovery advocate organizing to surface New England’s suppressed narratives. In 2018 she founded Atlantic Black Box, a grassroots public history project that empowers communities throughout the Northeast to take up the critical work of researching and reckoning with the region’s complicity in the slave trade and the global economy of enslavement. Meadow serves as Project Lead on the Place Justice project in collaboration with the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous, and Tribal Populations. 

Talks

Whitewashing the Diseased Ship: New England’s Role in the Slave Trade 

On August 1, 1819, a majestic Maine-built ship docked at Boston’s Long Wharf, completing a nearly year-long voyage to West Africa and the West Indies that only a few crew members were fortunate enough to survive. When customs officials descended into the hold to examine the precious cargo for which so many had died, what they found instead were clouds of mosquitoes playing host to a deadly yellow fever virus.

This dramatic story features a prominent Yankee sea captain, a tragedy on the high seas, a viral outbreak, a major political cover up, and a conspiracy of silence that has lasted two centuries surrounding New England’s involvement in the slave trade. Following these historical threads into the present day allows us to consider the ways in which our region’s suppressed history of complicity in slavery relates to our current national conversations about racial justice and healing

Hiding in Plain Sight: New England's Complicity in Slavery

New England has long suppressed the memory of its involvement in slavery, just as it has concealed or failed to center the stories of the region’s free and enslaved Black and Indigenous populations. How could we have gotten the story so wrong for so long? This interactive presentation will contrast the cherished narrative of Northern exceptionalism and innocence with recent scholarship that reveals a long history of exploitation with which our communities have barely begun to reckon.

Place Names in Wabanakik/Maine

Place names have a lot to teach us about our history, values, and present-day relationships with one another. Even when these names fade into the backdrop of our lives, they continue to inform our sense of place in subtle but important ways, communicating ideas about who belongs and what matters. Here in Maine, racist and problematic place names have long marred the landscape and continue to impact our communities. By examining trends in toponymy, we can gain insight into whose perspectives have been privileged and, by contrast, whose experiences have been dismissed and forgotten.

In this presentation, participants will gain foundational knowledge about Maine’s place names profile in relation to those of other states in New England and across the U.S. They will also learn to identify problematic place names in their area and develop approaches to understanding the historical context behind them. Together, we will explore ways to make the commemorative landscape more welcoming, inclusive, and reflective of the breadth of experiences of the people who have made these places what they are today.