Bringing people together

with expert guides to think expansively about a really big question

Really big questions are the questions that all of us find ourselves asking in the course of our lives, and that we have to keep on asking, because there isn’t just one answer. Each year, we find one of these questions and invite a handful of guides with very various expertise and interests to get us all thinking by sharing how they ask and answer it.

February 9, 2023

Auburn

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What if we go on this way?

The Guides

Past Questions

2023 Guides

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Maya Williams

Portland, Maine Poet Laureate

Ashley Towle

Assistant Professor of History, University of Southern Maine

Rivers Solomon

Author, An Unkindness of Ghosts

Julia Bouwsma

Maine State Poet Laureate

Craig Saddlemire

Raise-OP Housing Cooperative

Cuba Jackson

Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition

Ayesha Hall

Lewiston Public Schools

Namory Keita

Master Drummer

Tracey Hair

Executive Director, H.O.M.E, Inc.

Robert Morrison

George Lincoln Skolfield, Jr. Professor of Religion, Bowdoin College

Elizabeth DeWolfe

Professor of History, University of New England

Michael Johnson

Professor of Literature, University of Maine-Farmington

Wendy Allen

Coordinator, Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition

Skylar Bayer

What if we knew and shared more about shellfish reproduction, with less concern for money?

Samara Cole Doyon

Poet/Author

Rhea Côté Robbins

Founder and Director, Franco-American Women’s Institute

René Goddess Johnson

What if we could all really see who we are?

Dr. Regina Hamilton-Townsend

Assistant Professor of English, University of Kentucky

Paul Buck

Historian, Educator

Pamela Cummings

President, Board of Directors Abyssinian Meeting House

Meadow Dibble

Founder and Director, Atlantic Black Box

Michael Kamorski

Assistant Professor, School of Legal Studies, Husson University

Marpheen Chann

Writer, Educator

Maine Developmental Disabilities Council

What if we were all valued?

Lindsay Tice

Staff Writer, Sun Journal

Libby Bischof

Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, University of Southern Maine

Liam Riordan

Professor of History, University of Maine

Elder Akewi

Poet, Writer, Organizer

Katherine Gaudet

Scholar of Cultural Narratives

Kate McBrien

Historian, scholar, independent museum professional

Judith E. Rosenbaum

Assistant Professor of Media Studies, University of Maine

Judith Casselberry

Associate Professor of Africana Studies

Joyce Kryszak

Journalist

Jo Radner

Storyteller and oral historian

Jim Melcher

Professor of Political Science, University of Maine at Farmington

Jefferson Navicky

Poet, Writer, Archivist

James Ford

Community Support Coordinator, Lewiston Public Schools

Jacquelyn Lowman

Associate Professor, Professional Communication and Journalism

Ian-Khara Ellasante

Assistant Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Bates College

Hong Zhang

Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, Colby College

Gray Cox

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

Flynn Ross

ETEP Coordinator, University of Southern Maine

Darren Ranco

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

Dana Sawyer

Professor of Religion and Philosophy, Maine College of Art

Cody Mower

Writer, Veteran

Charles Dorn

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

Cavenaugh Kelly

Occupational Therapist, Writer, Teacher

Carol Dana

Cultural Historian, Penobscot Nation

Candace Kanes

Journalist, Historian

Arisa White

Associate Professor of Creative Writing, Colby College

Anne Gass

Independent Historian

Aaron Kingsbury 

Assistant Professor of Arts and Sciences, Maine Maritime Academy

Robert W. Glover

Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Maine

Virginie Akimana

Educator, Community Interpreter

No Speaker for this Selection

This is such a fantastic idea—to have a multidisciplinary approach to these issues to encourage collaboration.”

—PARTICIPANT

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Past Questions

What if…?

Our Big Question in 2022 was What if…? The year’s asynchronous event jump-started our engagement with Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism. See the guides’ presentations and work through the whole program, ask and keep asking what if…?

How should life be?

One way we engaged with Maine’s bicentennial was to ask How should life be? through four lenses: Many Maines, Migration & Borders, Race & Ethnicity, and Wabanaki Voices.  And to broaden our perspective even further, we heard from Lisa Margonelli, author of Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology.  From a termite’s perspective, how should life be?  Smooth-walled and a little stinky.

Who is we?

The question “Who is we?” is urgent and political: we the people… we hold these truths to be self evident… who is we?”  But it is also timeless, and both smaller and larger than politics: we friends… we family… we who have suffered… we who breathe the air, bask in the sunshine, swim in the sea… every time we can stop and pay attention. We can say, “Wait, Who is we?”

We heard from an astrophysicist, a printmaker, the founder of the Portland Food Security Council, an economist in UMaine’s Forest & Landscape Management program, and the director of USM’s Center for Compassion.

How can we know?

Expert guides shared how they seek answers when they want to know:

  • how can we know what our prognosis is when we’re ill?
  • what a cookbook can tell us about a place?
  • how to transmit emotions through dance?
  • what’s making spots on this blueberry leaf?
  • how to talk about it all?

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