Dylan M. Harris is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography & Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. He is a broadly trained nature-society geographer with concentrations in political ecology, political economy, climate politics, experimental methods, and environmental/climate justice. He combines insights from multiple disciplines, connecting seemingly disparate threads. (e.g., folk studies and climate change). Learn more about Dylan M. Harris.
Ruha Benjamin
Viral Justice: Pandemics, Police Violence & Public Bioethics
6:00 p.m., Ostrove Auditorium, Diamond Building
Ruha Benjamin is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Founding Director of the Ida B. Wells Just DataLab, and author of the award-winning book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, among many other publications. Her work investigates the social dimensions of science, medicine, and technology with a focus on the relationship between innovation and inequity, health and justice, knowledge and power. Ruha earned a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Spelman College, MA, and Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at UCLA’sInstitute for Society & Genetics and Harvard’s Science, Technology & Society Program. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation 2020 Freedom Scholar Award, and the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton.
Sponsored by the Public Humanistic Inquiry Lab with co-sponsorship from African-American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs, Science, Technology, and Society, Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Film Screening: Alan Magee: art is not a solace Post-film Q&A with Artist Alan Magee and Co-Director David Berez 5:30 p.m., Maine Film Center
Join us for a free screening and post-film Q&A with artist Alan Magee and Co-Director David Berez.
Best known for his captivating realist paintings, artist Alan Magee also creates works that delve into the darkest aspects of human nature. His arresting images which comment on corporate greed, on cruelty and gun violence, and on civilian and military victims of war seem at odds with his serene paintings of nature and found objects, but through his distinctive visual language and interconnected themes, Magee suggests that these dual realms are inseparably interwoven.
Shot on location, from Pemaquid Point, Maine, to the streets of Berlin, Alan Magee: art is not a solace explores the artist’s subjects, locales, and the historical sources which have sustained his work for five decades. Through his paintings, sculptures, monotypes, music and short films, Magee invites viewers to travel with him through the veiled recesses of human experience—and back into the affirming light of day.
This event is organized by the Colby College Art Department, with additional support from the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Colby Arts Office, and the Colby College Museum of Art.
Two Cent Talks Series Colby Creative Writing Faculty Reading
5:00 p.m., Greene Block + Studios
A reading featuring Colby Creative Writing Faculty, Michael Burke, Adrian Blevins, Sarah Braunstein, Debra Spark, and Arisa White.
Celebrating the verbal arts in Maine. A literary and creative arts series of readings, lectures, and performances sponsored by Colby College’s Office of the President, Center for the Arts and the Humanities, English Department, and Creative Writing Program.
Cinema in Conversation: Food For Thought
The Goddesses of Food 2:30 p.m., Maine Film Center
Join us for a FREE screening of The Goddesses of Food, part of our series Cinema in Conversation: Food for Thought, sponsored by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities. In the male-dominated food universe, discover the women changing the game on all levels. Presenting the best female chefs, including multi-Michelin star chefs Dominique Crenn and Barbara Lync, and introducing rising new stars and those making incredible food in all corners of the world, The Goddesses of Food is a global journey exploring female strength in gastronomy. Post-film discussion with Associate Professor of French Studies Audrey Brunetaux and Assistant Professor of Italian Studies Danila Cannamela.
Sponsored by the Colby Center for Arts and Humanities
Cinema Explorations
Elizabeth (1998) 10:00 a.m., Maine Film Center
We’ve never had two classic films in one series. However, Cate Blanchett is a presumptive nominee for the Oscar for Best Actress for TÁR. Twenty-five years ago, Cate’s title role in Shekhar Kapur’s ELIZABETH about young Queen Elizabeth I earned Cate her first Oscar nomination as Best Actress. It also received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score as well as winning for Best Make-up. We hope you will join us for a rare big screen opportunity to watch this fabulous film and see a young star beginning her march into becoming a household name.
Cinema Explorations is a wintertime community-curated film series. Free admission is made possible by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Food for Thought: Lecture Series
Amanda Hilton: Living Landscapes of Loss and Love: Oliviculture in Sicily 7:00 p.m., Lovejoy 215
Amanda Hilton is a Research Scientist at the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) at the University of Arizona. She is an applied environmental anthropologist and political ecologist who works in Sicily, Italy and the US Southwest and Southeast.
Cinema Explorations
Geographies of Solitude (2022) 10:00 a.m., Maine Film Center
GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE is an immersion into the rich landscapes and biosphere of Nova Scotia’s Sable Island and the life of Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who has lived over 40 years on this once-treacherous shipwreck-strewn remote strip of sand that is home to far more horses than people. This award-winning documentary from Canadian director Jacquelyn Mills shows both how easily the refuse from the mainland befouls this pristine place and the price of being dedicated to spending a lifetime keeping watch and chronicling it all. “A beguiling and poetic film.” –Wendy Ide, Screen Daily.
Cinema Explorations is a wintertime community-curated film series. Free admission is made possible by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Food for Thought: Lecture Series
Mary Beth Mills: Between Commensality and Coloniality: Cooking Schools and Culinary Tourism in Thailand 7:00 p.m., Lovejoy 215
Mary Beth Mills is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropology at Colby College. She teaches courses on contemporary Asia, gender and sexuality, political ecology, tourism, and food. Her research explores the dynamic effects of globalization in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia with a focus on rural-urban labor migration, gender, and most recently, culinary tourism.
She is the author of an award-winning book, Thai Women in the Global Labor Force: Consuming Desires, Contested Selves (Rutgers University Press) as well as articles appearing in American Ethnologist, Identities, Signs, Critical Asian Studies, Gastronomica, and Food, Culture, and Society, among other journals.
Cinema Explorations
Unrest (2017) 10:00 a.m., Maine Film Center
UNREST came to our attention when its US distributor sent out emails hyping its screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film was in the Wavelengths section which features the most avant-garde films in the festival. It defies being pigeonholed to a genre, and a description of the plot would be both needlessly tedious and inadequate in capturing the spirit that imbues the film. A visit to the 1870s watchmaking factory town of St. Imrie in the lush Swiss Jura Mountains reveals how advances in 19th century technology were setting the stage for increasing globalization and the political reverberations of the 20th and 21st centuries. “Precisely balanced between a delicate playfulness and a formal rigor, the historical and the modern, ‘UNREST’ heralds an exciting new talent in Swiss filmmaker Cyril Schäublin.” –Malin Kan, AFI Film Festival.
In Swiss-German, French, and Russian with English subtitles.
Cinema Explorations is a wintertime community-curated film series. Free admission is made possible by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Cinema Explorations
Clara Sola (2022) 10:00 a.m., Maine Film Center
Costa Rica’s submission for the 2022 Best International Feature Film Oscar CLARA SOLA is set in a remote village where Clara, a withdrawn 40-year-old woman, experiences a sexual and mystical awakening as she begins a journey to free herself from the repressive religious and social conventions which have dominated her life. “Cast with nonactors, led by a feral performance from dancer Wendy Chinchilla Araya, the drama occupies its own territory, tinged with magical realism and deeply immersed in the sensory world.”—Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter. “CLARA SOLA mixes religion, mysticism and sexuality in a way that feels simultaneously odd, disquieting and richly rewarding. It starts out beautifully restrained and ends up somewhere else entirely, but it’s all the more interesting for its split personality.”—Steve Pond, The Wrap.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
Cinema Explorations is a wintertime community-curated film series. Free admission is made possible by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Cinema Explorations
Amarcord (1973) 10:00 a.m., Maine Film Center
Federico Fellini’s AMARCORD (1973) has an English-language title of “I REMEMBER,” but that does not accurately capture the essence of the film. The translated definition of the word “amarcord” does a much better job: “a re-evocation of the nostalgic past and veined with irony.” Fellini’s Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film (Fellini also received nominations for both Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for the film) is set in his coastal hometown of Rimini during Mussolini’s fascist rule of Italy in the 1930’s and is full of vignettes drawn from adolescent memories and remembered fantasy. It is playful, ribald, and wild, yet never loses sight of the shadowy malevolence posed by the fascism lurking in Italian society. We are proud to present this classic film in celebration of its release 50 years ago.
In Italian with English subtitles.
Cinema Explorations is a wintertime community-curated film series. Free admission is made possible by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Student Wreath Decorating
1:00 p.m., Bobby Silberman Lounge, Cotter Union
Come join us for a Wreath Decorating Workshop! This workshop will be lead by Maine- based florist Joshua Steele.
Hot chocolate, cider, and cookies will be provided. Come get your festive spirit on.
Sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the Environmental Humanities Student Advisory Board.
Film Screening: 500 Years
Post-film discussion with film director, Pamela Yates and Oak Fellow, Lucia Ixchiu.
7:00 p.m., Railroad Square Cinema
Focusing on universal themes of justice, racism, power and corruption, 500 YEARS tells the story from the perspective of the majority indigenous Mayan population, and their struggles in the country’s growing democracy. 500 YEARS tells the epic story that led Guatemala to a tipping point in its history, from the genocide trial to the citizen uprising that toppled President Otto Perez Molina. As witness to this heroic moment in Guatemalan history, 500 YEARS documents the beginning of the end of an unaccountable rule of law, and a society ready for change. Following the film will be a discussion with film director, Pamela Yates and Oak Fellow, Lucia Ixchiu.
Sponsored by the Oak Institute for Human Rights, the Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the History department.
Food for Thought: Lecture Series
Kim Upstill: A Report From The Mood Lit Field 7:00 p.m., Kassman Auditorium (Lovejoy 100)
Kim Upstill is a writer, artist, and cook based in Chicago, Illinois. She holds a BA degree from Evergreen State College and an MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Along with various smaller texts, Kim has published two books, Soft Work Kitchen and Night Rind. Kim is interested in partner dance, sculptural imagingings, romance and language in its varied forms.
Two Cent Talks: A Reading with Morgan Talty and Michelle Menting
5:00 p.m., Greene Block + Studios
Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation where he grew up. He is the author of the story collection Night of the Living Rez from Tin House Books, and his work has appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, and elsewhere. A winner of the 2021 Narrative Prize, Talty’s work has been supported by the Elizabeth George Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts (2022). Talty is an Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. Talty is also a Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review. He lives in Levant, Maine.
Michelle Menting is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Leaves Surface Like Skin (Terrapin Books), and two poetry chapbooks. Her poems, essays, and short stories can be found in Verse Daily, American Life in Poetry, The Cimarron Review, The Offing, The Southeast Review, New South, Harpur Palate, The Texas Observer, Fourth River, and DIAGRAM, among other places. A recipient of scholarships from Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers’ conferences and a Maine Literary Award finalist, Michelle has been awarded for her written work with residencies from Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Joseph A. Fiore Art Center, Crosshatch/Hill House, and the National Park Service, where she served as Poet-in-Residence on Isle Royale National Park, an International Biosphere Reserve.
Celebrating the verbal arts in Maine. A literary and creative arts series of readings, lectures, and performances sponsored by Colby College’s Office of the President, Center for the Arts and the Humanities, English Department, and Creative Writing Program.
Ruha Benjamin
Viral Justice: Pandemics, Police Violence & Public Bioethics
6:00 p.m., Ostrove Auditorium, Diamond Building
Ruha Benjamin is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Founding Director of the Ida B. Wells Just DataLab, and author of the award-winning book Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, among many other publications. Her work investigates the social dimensions of science, medicine, and technology with a focus on the relationship between innovation and inequity, health and justice, knowledge and power. Ruha earned a BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Spelman College, MA, and Ph.D. in Sociology from UC Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral fellowships at UCLA’sInstitute for Society & Genetics and Harvard’s Science, Technology & Society Program. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including from the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation 2020 Freedom Scholar Award, and the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton.
Sponsored by the Public Humanistic Inquiry Lab with co-sponsorship from African-American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, the Center for the Arts and Humanities, Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs, Science, Technology, and Society, Sociology and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Film Screening: Alan Magee: art is not a solace Post-film Q&A with Artist Alan Magee and Co-Director David Berez 5:30 p.m., Maine Film Center
Join us for a free screening and post-film Q&A with artist Alan Magee and Co-Director David Berez.
Best known for his captivating realist paintings, artist Alan Magee also creates works that delve into the darkest aspects of human nature. His arresting images which comment on corporate greed, on cruelty and gun violence, and on civilian and military victims of war seem at odds with his serene paintings of nature and found objects, but through his distinctive visual language and interconnected themes, Magee suggests that these dual realms are inseparably interwoven.
Shot on location, from Pemaquid Point, Maine, to the streets of Berlin, Alan Magee: art is not a solace explores the artist’s subjects, locales, and the historical sources which have sustained his work for five decades. Through his paintings, sculptures, monotypes, music and short films, Magee invites viewers to travel with him through the veiled recesses of human experience—and back into the affirming light of day.
This event is organized by the Colby College Art Department, with additional support from the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Colby Arts Office, and the Colby College Museum of Art.
Two Cent Talks Series Colby Creative Writing Faculty Reading
5:00 p.m., Greene Block + Studios
A reading featuring Colby Creative Writing Faculty, Michael Burke, Adrian Blevins, Sarah Braunstein, Debra Spark, and Arisa White.
Celebrating the verbal arts in Maine. A literary and creative arts series of readings, lectures, and performances sponsored by Colby College’s Office of the President, Center for the Arts and the Humanities, English Department, and Creative Writing Program.
Cinema in Conversation: Food For Thought
The Goddesses of Food 2:30 p.m., Maine Film Center
Join us for a FREE screening of The Goddesses of Food, part of our series Cinema in Conversation: Food for Thought, sponsored by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities. In the male-dominated food universe, discover the women changing the game on all levels. Presenting the best female chefs, including multi-Michelin star chefs Dominique Crenn and Barbara Lync, and introducing rising new stars and those making incredible food in all corners of the world, The Goddesses of Food is a global journey exploring female strength in gastronomy. Post-film discussion with Associate Professor of French Studies Audrey Brunetaux and Assistant Professor of Italian Studies Danila Cannamela.
Sponsored by the Colby Center for Arts and Humanities
Cinema Explorations
Elizabeth (1998) 10:00 a.m., Maine Film Center
We’ve never had two classic films in one series. However, Cate Blanchett is a presumptive nominee for the Oscar for Best Actress for TÁR. Twenty-five years ago, Cate’s title role in Shekhar Kapur’s ELIZABETH about young Queen Elizabeth I earned Cate her first Oscar nomination as Best Actress. It also received Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score as well as winning for Best Make-up. We hope you will join us for a rare big screen opportunity to watch this fabulous film and see a young star beginning her march into becoming a household name.
Cinema Explorations is a wintertime community-curated film series. Free admission is made possible by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Food for Thought: Lecture Series
Amanda Hilton: Living Landscapes of Loss and Love: Oliviculture in Sicily 7:00 p.m., Lovejoy 215
Amanda Hilton is a Research Scientist at the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology (BARA) at the University of Arizona. She is an applied environmental anthropologist and political ecologist who works in Sicily, Italy and the US Southwest and Southeast.
Cinema Explorations
Geographies of Solitude (2022) 10:00 a.m., Maine Film Center
GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE is an immersion into the rich landscapes and biosphere of Nova Scotia’s Sable Island and the life of Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who has lived over 40 years on this once-treacherous shipwreck-strewn remote strip of sand that is home to far more horses than people. This award-winning documentary from Canadian director Jacquelyn Mills shows both how easily the refuse from the mainland befouls this pristine place and the price of being dedicated to spending a lifetime keeping watch and chronicling it all. “A beguiling and poetic film.” –Wendy Ide, Screen Daily.
Cinema Explorations is a wintertime community-curated film series. Free admission is made possible by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Food for Thought: Lecture Series
Mary Beth Mills: Between Commensality and Coloniality: Cooking Schools and Culinary Tourism in Thailand 7:00 p.m., Lovejoy 215
Mary Beth Mills is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Anthropology at Colby College. She teaches courses on contemporary Asia, gender and sexuality, political ecology, tourism, and food. Her research explores the dynamic effects of globalization in Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia with a focus on rural-urban labor migration, gender, and most recently, culinary tourism.
She is the author of an award-winning book, Thai Women in the Global Labor Force: Consuming Desires, Contested Selves (Rutgers University Press) as well as articles appearing in American Ethnologist, Identities, Signs, Critical Asian Studies, Gastronomica, and Food, Culture, and Society, among other journals.
Cinema Explorations
Unrest (2017) 10:00 a.m., Maine Film Center
UNREST came to our attention when its US distributor sent out emails hyping its screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film was in the Wavelengths section which features the most avant-garde films in the festival. It defies being pigeonholed to a genre, and a description of the plot would be both needlessly tedious and inadequate in capturing the spirit that imbues the film. A visit to the 1870s watchmaking factory town of St. Imrie in the lush Swiss Jura Mountains reveals how advances in 19th century technology were setting the stage for increasing globalization and the political reverberations of the 20th and 21st centuries. “Precisely balanced between a delicate playfulness and a formal rigor, the historical and the modern, ‘UNREST’ heralds an exciting new talent in Swiss filmmaker Cyril Schäublin.” –Malin Kan, AFI Film Festival.
In Swiss-German, French, and Russian with English subtitles.
Cinema Explorations is a wintertime community-curated film series. Free admission is made possible by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Cinema Explorations
Clara Sola (2022) 10:00 a.m., Maine Film Center
Costa Rica’s submission for the 2022 Best International Feature Film Oscar CLARA SOLA is set in a remote village where Clara, a withdrawn 40-year-old woman, experiences a sexual and mystical awakening as she begins a journey to free herself from the repressive religious and social conventions which have dominated her life. “Cast with nonactors, led by a feral performance from dancer Wendy Chinchilla Araya, the drama occupies its own territory, tinged with magical realism and deeply immersed in the sensory world.”—Sheri Linden, Hollywood Reporter. “CLARA SOLA mixes religion, mysticism and sexuality in a way that feels simultaneously odd, disquieting and richly rewarding. It starts out beautifully restrained and ends up somewhere else entirely, but it’s all the more interesting for its split personality.”—Steve Pond, The Wrap.
In Spanish with English subtitles.
Cinema Explorations is a wintertime community-curated film series. Free admission is made possible by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Cinema Explorations
Amarcord (1973) 10:00 a.m., Maine Film Center
Federico Fellini’s AMARCORD (1973) has an English-language title of “I REMEMBER,” but that does not accurately capture the essence of the film. The translated definition of the word “amarcord” does a much better job: “a re-evocation of the nostalgic past and veined with irony.” Fellini’s Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film (Fellini also received nominations for both Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for the film) is set in his coastal hometown of Rimini during Mussolini’s fascist rule of Italy in the 1930’s and is full of vignettes drawn from adolescent memories and remembered fantasy. It is playful, ribald, and wild, yet never loses sight of the shadowy malevolence posed by the fascism lurking in Italian society. We are proud to present this classic film in celebration of its release 50 years ago.
In Italian with English subtitles.
Cinema Explorations is a wintertime community-curated film series. Free admission is made possible by the Colby Center for the Arts and Humanities.
Student Wreath Decorating
1:00 p.m., Bobby Silberman Lounge, Cotter Union
Come join us for a Wreath Decorating Workshop! This workshop will be lead by Maine- based florist Joshua Steele.
Hot chocolate, cider, and cookies will be provided. Come get your festive spirit on.
Sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the Environmental Humanities Student Advisory Board.
Film Screening: 500 Years
Post-film discussion with film director, Pamela Yates and Oak Fellow, Lucia Ixchiu.
7:00 p.m., Railroad Square Cinema
Focusing on universal themes of justice, racism, power and corruption, 500 YEARS tells the story from the perspective of the majority indigenous Mayan population, and their struggles in the country’s growing democracy. 500 YEARS tells the epic story that led Guatemala to a tipping point in its history, from the genocide trial to the citizen uprising that toppled President Otto Perez Molina. As witness to this heroic moment in Guatemalan history, 500 YEARS documents the beginning of the end of an unaccountable rule of law, and a society ready for change. Following the film will be a discussion with film director, Pamela Yates and Oak Fellow, Lucia Ixchiu.
Sponsored by the Oak Institute for Human Rights, the Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the History department.
Food for Thought: Lecture Series
Kim Upstill: A Report From The Mood Lit Field 7:00 p.m., Kassman Auditorium (Lovejoy 100)
Kim Upstill is a writer, artist, and cook based in Chicago, Illinois. She holds a BA degree from Evergreen State College and an MA in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Along with various smaller texts, Kim has published two books, Soft Work Kitchen and Night Rind. Kim is interested in partner dance, sculptural imagingings, romance and language in its varied forms.
Two Cent Talks: A Reading with Morgan Talty and Michelle Menting
5:00 p.m., Greene Block + Studios
Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation where he grew up. He is the author of the story collection Night of the Living Rez from Tin House Books, and his work has appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, and elsewhere. A winner of the 2021 Narrative Prize, Talty’s work has been supported by the Elizabeth George Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts (2022). Talty is an Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. Talty is also a Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review. He lives in Levant, Maine.
Michelle Menting is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Leaves Surface Like Skin (Terrapin Books), and two poetry chapbooks. Her poems, essays, and short stories can be found in Verse Daily, American Life in Poetry, The Cimarron Review, The Offing, The Southeast Review, New South, Harpur Palate, The Texas Observer, Fourth River, and DIAGRAM, among other places. A recipient of scholarships from Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers’ conferences and a Maine Literary Award finalist, Michelle has been awarded for her written work with residencies from Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Joseph A. Fiore Art Center, Crosshatch/Hill House, and the National Park Service, where she served as Poet-in-Residence on Isle Royale National Park, an International Biosphere Reserve.
Celebrating the verbal arts in Maine. A literary and creative arts series of readings, lectures, and performances sponsored by Colby College’s Office of the President, Center for the Arts and the Humanities, English Department, and Creative Writing Program.
As Long as Grass Grows with Dina Gilio-Whitaker 7:00 p.m., Ostrove Auditorium, Diamond Building
Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and an independent consultant and educator in environmental justice policy planning. At CSUSM she teaches courses on environmentalism and American Indians, traditional ecological knowledge, religion and philosophy, Native women’s activism, American Indians and sports, and decolonization. She also works within the field of critical sports studies, examining the intersections of indigeneity and the sport of surfing. As a public intellectual, Dina brings her scholarship into focus as an award-winning journalist as well, contributing to numerous online outlets including Indian Country Today, the Los Angeles Times, High Country News and many more. Dina is co-author with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz of Beacon Press’s “All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans (2016), and her most recent book, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock, was released in 2019.
Sponsored by: Environmental Studies, the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Oak Institute for Human Rights, and the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs.
Faculty Book Launch: Lydia Marie Fairchild: A Radical American Life 4:00 p.m., Brewster Reading Room, Miller Library
Celebrate Lydia Moland’s new book: Lydia Marie Fairchild: A Radical American Life. Professor Lydia Moland will discuss her new book and give a brief reading.
Refreshments and food will be served.
Sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Philosophy department, and the Humanities Division.
Cinema in Conversation: Food for Thought
What’s Cooking
2:30 p.m., Maine Film Center
On Thanksgiving day, four ethnically diverse families — Vietnamese, Latino, Jewish, and African American — gather for the traditional meal. Each family has its own distinct way of cooking the traditional holiday meal and its own set of problems.
Join us for a discussion after the screening with Bowdoin Assistant Professor of Sociology Shruti Devgan.
Free and Open to the public. This series is programmed and sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities with co-sponsorship from the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Maine Film Center, and the departments of Cinema Studies, Religious Studies, and Spanish.
Food for Thought: Lecture Series
Roundtable Food Justice in Maine
7:00 p.m., Kassman Auditorium (Lovejoy 100)
Annual Basket Making Workshop with Penobscot Basketmaker Paula Love 1:00 p.m., Pugh Center
Fall Shabbaton with Batya Levine and Sandra Lawson Colby College
The Center for the Arts and Humanities is delighted to be one of the supporting partners of the Fall Shabbaton. This annual event brings together the Maine Jewish community and friends from farther afield for a weekend of Torah study, soulful music, Shabbat meals, and invigorating connection. What started out as a Friday-night dinner and concert has evolved into a full Shabbat of learning and singing, with intergenerational programs for college students, children and teens, synagogue members from across the state. Past guests have included Nefesh Mountain, Deborah Sacks Mintz, Neshama Carlebach and the Glory to God gospel singers, and Joey Weisenberg, as well as Talmud scholar Ruth Calderon. The Shabbaton has grown into a partner program to the Maine Conference for Jewish Life, sustaining our community with Jewish learning and music as we enter the winter months.
Cosponsored by the Center for Small Town Jewish Life, the Religious Studies Department, Music Department, Jewish Studies Department, Pugh Center, SGA, and the Cultural Events Committee.
The James M. Carpenter Lecture: Serving History with Faux Food and Artists’ Games: Works by Angela Lorenz 5:00 p.m., Given Auditorium, Bixler Art and Music Center
Angela Lorenz, a visual artist whose interests are voraciously polymathic, will be presenting the 2022 Carpenter Lecture. Lorenz’s conceptual approach in research-driven art projects fosters data visualization: any artistic process or material is ripe for use to express an idea. Her work centers on material culture, visual culture, and language. She infuses humor whenever possible to leaven the tragic nature of lives lived, and as a mnemonic to aid memory.
This event is supported by the James M. Carpenter Lecture Fund in the Department of Art at Colby College and cosponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Colby Art Office, and the Colby College Museum of Art.
Cinema in Conversation: Food for Thought
The Hand that Feeds, Conversation with Mahoma López
2:30 p.m., Maine Film Center
Shy sandwich-maker Mahoma Lopez unites his undocumented immigrant coworkers to fight abusive conditions at a popular New York restaurant chain. The epic power struggle that ensues turns a single city block into a battlefield in America’s new wage wars.
Free and Open to the public. This series is programmed and sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities with co-sponsorship from the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Maine Film Center, and the departments of Cinema Studies, Religious Studies, and Spanish.
Food for Thought: Lecture Series
Lisa Heldke: Aesthetic Value of Disgusting Experiences: Ruminations on my Compost Bucket 7:00 p.m., Kassman Auditorium
Lisa Heldke is the author of Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer (Routledge), and the co-editor of two anthologies in the philosophy of food: Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food, co-edited with Deane Curtin (Indiana) and The Atkins Diet and Philosophy, coedited with Kerri Mommer and Cindy Pineo (Open Court). She is the coeditor of Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research.
Heldke holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Northwestern University. She is currently Professor of Philosophy, Sponberg Chair in Ethics, and member of the Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies Program at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter Minnesota.
Maine Lit Fest
After extended time apart, the Maine Lit Fest addresses the need for a welcoming large-scale series of gatherings that celebrate diverse experiences and stories and bring Maine’s communities together through the power of the written and spoken word.
The Maine Lit Fest includes a week of readings, conversations, and happenings, beginning in Waterville and then heading down to Portland, including a final day full of free outdoor events in Downtown Portland, and a bookfair featuring Maine publishers and author collectives.
For more information about the schedule of events, please visit here.
The Maine Lit Fest is made possible by a long list of Community Partners and Sponsors.
Food for Thought: Lecture Series
Kim Thúy and Lam-Thao Nguyen: Food is Politics
7:00 p.m., Kassman Auditorium (Lovejoy 100)
Kim Thúy was born in Vietnam in 1968. At the age of 10 she left Vietnam along with a wave of refugees commonly referred to in the media as “the boat people” and settled with her family in Quebec, Canada. A graduate in translation and law, she has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer and restaurant owner. She lives in Montreal and devotes her life to writing. Kim Thúy has received many awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2010, and was one of the top 4 finalists of the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2018. Her books have sold more than 765,000 copies around the world and have been translated into 29 languages and distributed across 40 countries and territories.
Lam-Thao Nguyen’s (Associate Professor of Instruction, Northwestern University) research centers on the theatrical, performance, props, objects, and things, in seventeenth-century French literature and in the film and literature of the twentieth (and twenty-first) century. His current project explores the role and use of hats and headdress as mediators of rivalry between characters in Early Modern theater. His other project examines the shaping and/or affirming of diasporic identity through objects – or rather the absence or loss of things – in French-Vietnamese literature and cinema.
Food Writing with Local Cookbook Writers, Journalists, and Bloggers 4:00 p.m., Greene Block + Studios
A collection of local cookbook writers, food journalists, and bloggers will share what it means to be a food writer and how they came to their respective professions. Panelists include Margaret Hathaway (Maine Community Cookbook and The Year of the Goat), Kate Shaffer (owner of Ragged Coast Chocolates), Peggy Grodinsky (Food Editor and Books Editor at the Portland Press Herald), and Karen Watterson (a former food editor and freelance writer). All are contributors to Breaking Bread: Essays from New England On Food, Hunger, and Family, an anthology co-edited by Deborah Joy Corey and Debra Spark.
Debra Spark (author of Unknown Caller, co-editor of the Breaking Bread Anthology, and Colby College creative writing professor) will facilitate.
This event is free.
Books will be sold by Devaney, Doak & Garrett.
The Maine Lit Fest is made possible by a long list of Community Partners and Sponsors.
Maine Lit Fest Kickoff Event A Conversation with Carmen Maria Machado 7:00-8:15 p.m, Given Auditorium, Bixler Art + Music Center
Please join us for the Maine Lit Fest Kickoff Event, a FREE conversation between author Carmen Maria Machado and Colby Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and novelist, Sarah Braunstein (author of The Sweet Relief of Missing Children).
One of today’s most ground-breaking young writers, Carmen Maria Machado creates haunting and genre-defying work that blends sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and literary criticism and grips readers from beginning to end. For this Kickoff Event, Machado, best known for her memoir In the Dream House and her award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, will discuss breaking literary molds, writing queer relationships, embracing the weird, and her writing process and projects.
Registration details to be announced.
Doors open at 6:30 PM, and the conversation starts at 7 PM.
The Maine Lit Fest is made possible by a long list of Community Partners and Sponsors.
Havel and Our Crisis
An International Conference of Scholars and Leaders
Colby College
The Center for the Arts and Humanities is delighted to be one of the supporting partners for this conference at Colby, which will include lectures, talks, discussions, film screenings, and theater performances honoring Václav Havel. Havel (1936-2011) was one of the 20th century’s greatest champions of freedom, democracy, human rights, European integration, and transatlantic cooperation.
The conference organizer is Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Milan Babik. This conference is supported by Knihovna Václav Havel Library, Colby College, Havel Albright Transatlantic Dialogues, Czech Center New York, Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union, and the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs.
Food for Thought: Lecture Series
Carol Adams: Misogyny on the Menu: Female Reproduction and Food Production
7:00 p.m., Live Zoom Webinar
Carol J. Adams is a feminist-vegan advocate, activist, and independent scholar and the author of numerous books including her pathbreaking The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory, now in a Bloomsbury Revelations edition celebrating its 25th anniversary. It has been translated into German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Portuguese, Spanish, and French. She is the co-editor of several important anthologies, including most recently Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth (with Lori Gruen). The Carol J. Adams Reader: Writings and Conversations 1995-2015 appeared in the fall of 2016.
She has a Masters of Divinity from Yale University. In the 1970s, she and her spouse, the Rev. Bruce Buchanan started a Hotline for Battered Women in upstate New York. She is the author of Woman-Battering (1995) in Fortress Press’s Creative Pastoral Care and Counseling Series. With Marie Fortune, she edited Violence Against Women and Children: A Christian Theological Sourcebook (1995). She is the author of the training manual, Pastoral Care for Domestic Violence: Case Studies for Clergy – for Christian Audiences – Training Manual (2007) published by the FaithTrust Institute. She wrote one of the earliest articles theorizing why batterers harm animals, “Woman-Battering and Harm to Animals” (in The Carol J. Adams Reader).
Cinema in Conversation: Food for Thought
Voices from the Barrens, Q+A with Director, Nancy Ghertner
2:30 p.m., Maine Film Center
This migration is part of their traditional sustenance life-style, a way of gathering from the earth. Families and extended families arrive at company owned camps and live in cabins on the remote barrens of Washington County. During the weeks of the harvest they hand rake the blueberry gullies and fields and at day’s end share camp activities.
Conversations in the cabins and the fields are interspersed with stunning views of the glacial barrens of Down East Maine as the film follows the rakers’ lives. In interviews with the tribal owned company and elders from the Canadian Wabanaki the film documents the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s struggle to find a necessary balance between traditional work and the realities of tribal financial independence.
Free and Open to the public. This series is programmed and sponsored by the Center for the Arts and Humanities with co-sponsorship from the Oak Institute for Human Rights, Maine Film Center, and the departments of Cinema Studies, Religious Studies, and Spanish.
Food for Thought Lecture Series
Cherie Scott: From Mumbai to Maine
4:00 p.m., Lovejoy 100
Mumbai-native Cherie Scott left India at the age of 16 and moved to Vancouver, BC. After a few stops in New York City and New Jersey, Cherie has been anchored in Boothbay, Maine now for over a decade. In 2015, she launched her culinary blog, MumbaitoMaine.com to share her signature recipes and nostalgic anecdotes of her youth in Mumbai. In 2018, Cherie was invited to join a lineup of notable guest chef instructors at Stonewall Kitchen Cooking School where she curated an exclusive, regional Indian cooking series for 4 years. Additionally, Cherie is a guest chef instructor at the Milk Street with Christopher Kimball Online Cooking School, Boston. Cherie is the host of “Talking Food In Maine” a series of intimate one-on-one conversations with notable culinary pioneers who have made a substantial contribution to the culinary arts in the state of Maine. To celebrate Maine’s bicentennial and gastronomic talent, Cherie hosted and produced Mumbai to Maine’s podcast in 2020 showcasing some of Maine’s most accomplished culinary tastemakers. In the heart of the pandemic, Cherie launched her signature line of gourmet Indian simmer sauces: Makhani, Saag and Caldine. Inspired by her family’s heritage recipes, these simmer sauces are masterfully crafted in small batches and simmered for hours with an infusion of freshly roasted and ground spice blends. Mumbai to Maine is Maine’s first Indian-inspired culinary brand, available nationwide on www.mumbaitomaine.com and across several specialty stores in Maine.
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