Monica Wood Photo courtesy of Authors Unbound

The University of Maine at Augusta and the University of Southern Maine are partnering to host “One sun rose on us today: Stories from Maine’s Long 20th Century,” a virtual half-day conference set for noon to 6:30 p.m. Friday, June 4, online via Zoom.

This conference is to include three panels — Wabanakiscapes, 20th Maine Jewish Culture, and 20th Century Queer Maine — concluding with a keynote by Monica Wood, award-winning author of “When We Were the Kennedys.”

The conference will explore some of the many peoples who have claimed Maine as their home, bringing together scholars from across the state to discuss aspects of Maine’s 20th century, which has received relatively little sustained critical attention to date. The panel discussions will seek to illuminate and articulate not only how we want to understand Maine’s past and present, but also how we want to configure our future.

This event is part of UMA’s Maine’s Mid-Century Moment events, which explore the artists, writers and innovators who shaped and chronicled Maine’s mid-century cultural evolution. Maine’s Mid-Century Moment has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and it received financial support from the Maine Bicentennial Commission.

Conference schedule and panels:

• Noon-12:30 p.m.: Welcome and opening remarks

• 12:30-2 p.m.: Wabanakiscapes
Wabanakiscapes is a conversation with citizens of the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Micmac nations and their allies about profound, as well as everyday, events of the 20th century that have shaped Wabanaki lives, then and now.
Featured speakers include Micah Pawling, Donald Soctomah, Richard Silliboy, Maulian Dana, Anthony Sutton, Suzanne Greenlaw, Jason Brough, and Natalie Dana.
Introduced and moderated by Lisa Neuman and Darren Ranco of the University of Maine.

• 2:15-3:30 p.m.: 20th Century Maine Jewish Culture
Abe Peck, USM. “Between a Haven and a Home: The Historic Journey of Maine’s Jewish Community”
Natasha Goldman, Bowdoin College. “William Zorach’s Model for Holocaust Memory (1949)”
David Freidenreich, Colby College. “College attendance among Jewish Mainers during the interwar years”

• 3:45-5 p.m.: 20th Century Queer Maine
Cathleen Miller, UNE. “‘What a lot o’ queer folks there used to be about here’: Artistic community in Mid-Century Maine”
Erica Rand, Bates College. “Queer Indirections in the Maine 1990s”
Wendy Chapkis, USM. “Queering/Querying Maine: the LGBTQ Oral History Project”

• 5:30-6:30 p.m.: Keynote with Monica Wood
Wood is a novelist, memoirist, and playwright. Her most recent novel, “The One-in-a-Million Boy,” has been published in 22 languages in 30 countries and won  a 2017 Nautilus Award (Gold) and the New England Society Book Award. She is also the author of “When We Were the Kennedys,” a New England bestseller, Oprah magazine summer reading pick, and winner of the May Sarton Memoir Award and the 2016 Maine Literary Award.

The conference is free and open to the public, but registration is required at maine.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wT4SfCU3RO-PT2si78Cr0Q.