Professor of Political Science, University of Maine at Farmington

Jim Melcher teaches a wide range of courses on American politics, government, and political thought at University of Maine at Farmington. He has a strong interest in the interactions between American politics, geography and history.

Melcher has become known throughout the University of Maine system for his work on the Maine Public Policy Scholars program, and has become a frequent “voice of the University” in his numerous interviews as a political expert with media both within and outside Maine.

Talks

The Warren Court and the 14th Amendment

The Warren Court did much to expand the power of the 14th Amendment and of the national government in the areas of civil rights, voting/districting, and rights of those accused of or convicted of crimes. The impact from this court era is still with us today. 

The Electoral College and Maine

How does the Electoral College work, and why does Maine have a plan for choosing its electors that only one other state–Nebraska–follows? Nothing confuses students of American Government more than the Electoral College, and no section of the Constitution has seen more proposed amendments for change than it.

Poet, Writer, Archivist

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Jefferson Navicky is the archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection. He is the author of four books, most recently Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands (2023) as well as Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments on Short Prose (2021), which won the 2022 Maine Literary Award for Poetry.

Talks

The Offshore Islands Belong to Themselves: Ruth Moore & Her Poetry

Ruth Moore was one of Maine’s most beloved 20th century writers. Jefferson’s presentation includes highlights from the Ruth Moore collection at the Maine Women Writers Collection. This talk touches on some of her most well-known books as well as her often-neglected poetry. Jefferson will share a variety of Moore’s poems and invite audience participation. 

Elizabeth Coatsworth & Kate Barnes: Processing the Literary Archives of Mother & Daughter

Jefferson Navicky had the rare good fortune of processing the extensive archival papers of Elizabeth Coatsworth, one of the most accomplished children’s book authors and poets of the mid 20th century, as well as the papers of her daughter, Kate Barnes, Maine’s first Poet Laureate.

Together, their papers present an intimate glimpse into the makings of a matriarchal line of Maine writers. Jefferson will speak about his experience processing these collections, as well as present illustrative work from each writer, and provide historical and biographical context. 

A Day in the Life of Maine Women: Diaries of Everyday Life

The Maine Women Writers Collection has numerous diaries spanning the 19th and 20th century kept by Maine women across the state whose lives were remarkable in their unremarkableness. In the quotidian passing of their days – from weather to chores to historic moments – the accumulation gives shape and significance to their lives.

By sampling and discussing a selection of these diaries across time, we will all connect with the common struggles and small triumphs of what it’s like to be human and to live day by day. 

Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, Colby College

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Dr. Hong Zhang teaches both Chinese language and Chinese culture courses. Her research interests include changing family life and marriage patterns, gender and intergenerational relations, impact of one-child policy and new eldercare patterns, the development of civil society and NGOs and the politics of satire and humor in contemporary China. 

She has published book chapters and top-tier peer-review articles in Signs, China Quarterly, China Journal, Journal of Contemporary China, Asia Anthropology and Journal of Long Term Home Health Care.

Talks

China’s One-Child policy

Globalization

Women’s Rights and Women’s Legal-Aid NGOs in China

Politics of Satire in Authoritarian China

Professor in Philosophy, Social Theory, and Peace Studies, College of the Atlantic

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Gray Cox is a professor of political economics, history and peace studies at College of the Atlantic where his teaching includes courses designed to prepare students to collaborate effectively in interdisciplinary projects dealing with human ecological problems in a wide variety of complex contexts and cross-cultural settings.

Cox has collaborated in a variety of projects in community organizing, peace work, election observation and sustainable development. His most recent research has focused on developing conflict resolution approaches to the problems of ethics and addressing the national security and environmental threats posed by potential breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence. 

Talks

​​Nonviolent Alternatives in National Struggles and International Relations 

Since their initial use in South Africa and India in the early 20th Century, nonviolent methods of struggle and social change have developed in a variety of forms and have brought about dramatic transformations in Eastern Europe, Latin America, the United States, the Middle East and elsewhere.

What does current research suggest are the strengths and limitations of such methods compared with violent methods of social change and military methods of settling international disputes — and what roles may they play in the future?

Artificial Intelligence: Making ‘Smart Systems’ Wiser

How can our local and global systems of defense, health, food, education, etc. become resilient, secure, life enhancing and wiser amidst the rush to ever “smarter” and relentless pursuit of limited goals like military dominance, profit, or high test scores?

Threats to National Security Posed by Artificial Intelligence and Robotics 

Entrepreneur Elon Musk has said: “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that." Scientist Stephen Hawking has noted: “success in creating AI could be the biggest event in human history,” but cautioned that “it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks,” warning before long this technology may be “outsmarting financial markets, out-inventing human researchers, out-manipulating human leaders, and developing weapons we cannot even understand”. He commented further, with others, in a HuffPost column that: “If a superior alien civilization sent us a text message saying, “We’ll arrive in a few decades,” would we just reply, “OK, call us when you get here — we’ll leave the lights on”? Probably not — but this is more or less what is happening with AI. Although we are facing potentially the best or worst thing ever to happen to humanity, little serious research is devoted to these issues outside small non-profit institutes . . . “What are the range of security issues at stake and how can they best be addressed?

Chair, Native American Programs and Director of Native American Research, University of Maine

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Dr. Ranco serves as Chair of Native American Programs and Coordinator of Native American Research at the University of Maine. His research focuses on the ways in which indigenous communities in the United States resist environmental destruction and how state knowledge systems, rooted in colonial contexts, continue to expose indigenous peoples to an inordinate amount of environmental risk.

A member of the Penobscot Indian Nation, he is particularly interested in how better research relationships can be made between universities, Native and non-Native researchers, and indigenous communities. 

Talks

Wabanaki Climate Justice & Adaptation 

Dr. Ranco examines current and future climate change impacts to the Wabanaki Tribal Nations and their climate adaptation priorities and activism.

Emphasis will be on how climate change is threatening indigenous livelihoods such as agriculture, hunting and gathering, fishing, forestry, energy, recreation, and tourism, and in turn how these threats are already impacting the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of Wabanaki and other indigenous people. 

Native Americans, the 14th Amendment, and Voting in Maine

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Education, Bowdoin College

Chuck’s research into the history of education investigates the civic functions adopted by and ascribed to centers of early childhood education, public elementary and secondary schools, and colleges and universities in the United States.

His most recent book, Patriotic Education in a Global Age, is a history of how schools have taught students to be patriotic. From the community college to the elite research university, Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation’s founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good? 

Talks

Public Education and the Common Good

The History of Childhood Education in the United States

The History of Higher Education in the United States

Cultural Historian, Penobscot Nation

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Carol Dana works to preserve, share, and teach Penobscot language and storytelling.

She was born in Bangor in 1952 and attended school on Indian Island until the fifth grade. She later attended college in Machias, got married in 1971, and had her first child in 1972 before moving to New York and working on Akwesasne Notes.

Dana returned to Maine to raise a family on Indian Island and started working on the Penobscot Dictionary in 1982. She currently works in the Cultural Historical Preservation Department for the Penobscot Nation. Available for speaking December - March 

Talks

Atlohkewe: Tell Me a Story 

Dana has researched 189 stories from the Folger library that were oral tradition stories told in winter. Dana’s talk also features stories from In Indian Tents by Abby Alger, Algonquian Legends of New England by Charles Godfrey Leland, Gluscabe the Liar and other Weird Tales by Horace P. Beck, and Silas T. Rand’s Legends of the Micmacs. Dana is winner of the Maine Humanities Council’s 2022 Constance H. Carlson Public Humanities Prize

Journalist, Historian

A former newspaper reporter and editor, Kanes likes libraries and dusty archives, doing research, writing about history and related topics, reading many genres of books, hiking, biking, cooking, walking the dog, playing with the cats, and going on adventures with friends. 

She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism, a master’s in American and women’s studies, and a doctorate in American history. Kanes worked for a number of years as curator of Maine Memory Network at the Maine Historical Society, led numerous MHC book discussions, and curated a variety of museum exhibits. 

Talks

Speak Out, Stand Up, Organize: Maine’s Fight for Women’s Rights 

Starting in the early 19th century, women – along with men – began organizing to gain rights for enslaved persons and for all women. This brief look at some of those efforts in Maine will highlight a few of the people, some of the arguments, and some of the methods used into the twentieth century to gain equal rights.

Bias, Objectivity, and Newspaper History

From Slavery to Maine

Anti-Slavery, Women’s Rights, Race, and Gender

Early Leaders of Woman Suffrage in Maine

Woman Suffrage in Maine: A Brief History 

Independent Historian

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Gass is a frequent lecturer on suffrage history, and is active in promoting women’s history and equality. She volunteers with the Maine Suffrage Centennial Collaborative and serves on the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women in Maine. She is the founder and principal of ABG Consulting LLC, and serves as Vice-Chair of the Gray Town Council. 

In the spring of 2021, Gass published We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip, a historical novel based on the true story of a 1915 road trip for the suffrage cause. Her first book was Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine’s Fight for Woman Suffrage, published in 2014.

Talks

Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine’s Fight for Woman Suffrage

We Demand: America’s First Cross-Country Automobile Trip for a Cause

Patriotism, War, and Woman Suffrage

Women’s History, Women’s Future