Diamond-Stanic, whose research focuses on the evolution of galaxies and the growth of supermassive black holes through cosmic time, was joined on panel by Sarah Tuttle, host and producer of Maine Public Classical and Jessica Miller, host of Weekend Edition and radio operations announcer for Maine Public. His job? Explaining the science.

But he also spoke on the way the approaching solstice is celebrated in his native Serbian culture. He described Slava as a way to celebrate something that we are all experiencing but do not have control over. “Coming together in moments of otherwise darkness to bring light is really human [tendency],” Diamond-Stanic says.

“One woman told me she could still feel her mother’s hands over hers when she wove,” Bennett told EL PAÍS reporter Ana Rodríguez Álvarez. “That is the spirituality behind the textile.”

Bennett, who chairs the Anthropology department, has done extensive research on Maya women in Guatemala, tracking their attempts to protect their traditional weavings through intellectual property rights. The National Women’s Weaving Movement of Guatemala has been pushing back on the way national and international manufacturers, often fast fashion brands, have reproduced traditional designs without recognizing their creators or paying them for their designs.

“Global fashion wants inspiration,” Bennett told EL PAÍS.  “But what it often does is extraction. They take designs that have been collectively protected for centuries and register them as their own. It is a silent but devastating violence.” 

In August, Deadline covered Gonzalez Valencia’s&�Բ�����;, which supports filmmakers in developing their pitches, and invites them to present their works in progress to a panel of funders and distributors at Camden International Film Festival. The film, which is being shot in the U.S., Colombia, and Mexico, is a “hybrid documentary” in which a domestic worker and her filmmaker daughter co-create the fictional character of a writer to uncover the slippage between truth and fantasy. It tells a story about immigration, labor, dreams, and the power of fiction to spark emancipation.

 “Conspiracy Rhetoric,” which Kelley-Romano is teaching again this fall, focuses on the ways that rhetoric — the art of effective (and often persuasive) communication —  shapes conspiracy theories. Kelley-Romano explains that “when students understand how things function rhetorically, then they can see and create rhetorical campaigns.” She told the Chronicle that the course often helps students understand that “when more people have more rights and more support, the entire society does better.” 

Tieken studies rural education and students; her book Educated Out: How Rural Students Navigate Elite Colleges—And What It Costs Them, published by the University of Chicago Press and released in May, is a study exploring the ways that geography impacts the experiences of first-generation students from rural communities — from access to higher education, experiences during college, and postgraduation opportunities.

In August, Tieken, who received the 2024 Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, was , the publication of Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she received both her master’s in education and her doctorate.

“Homeless people find themselves in what we might call a state of internal exile — cast out of, and excluded from, the society in which they physically remain,” Schofield writes. 

The people he interviews speak of horrific, rat-infested, living conditions, the lack of response from law enforcement to violence committed against homeless people, and the double-edged sword of government-provided transitional housing. “If they can tell us we’re not allowed outside, then where are we all supposed to go?” one man Schofield interviewed asked, framing the central question of the article. 

Where can people go when the left and right alike are uncomfortable coexisting with them? How can our society fix a problem that we have attempted to resolve using both extreme sympathy and extreme shame? Schofield offers a solution: “What’s needed is a broad, sustained transformational effort designed to bring those pushed to the margins back into the fold and to prevent people from being pushed out in the first place. What’s needed is a politics that is focused not just on keeping people alive, but on enabling everyone to flourish as the social beings they are.”

Hardy finished writing “Threshold with Fog” about a year ago. It’s a busy time for him, poetrywise.  “I’m currently writing poem after poem,” he says. As yet, he doesn’t have a new collection in mind. “I don’t know if a new collection is forming. This usually takes years to discover.” HIs inspiration, he says, was, “thinking about being lost in the Leuthold Forest Reserve. And what it may mean to be found and guided by a stranger.” (Leuthold Forest Reserve is in the wilds of Maine, southwest of Jackman.)

Hardy’s most recent poetry collection, Aurora Americana (2023), was called “a clear-eyed vantage of America” by Rebecca Morgan Frank in her review for the Poetry Foundation.

Associate Professor of Education Mara Tieken recently offered a sand a in The Daily Yonder, a national news outlet dedicated to reporting on rural people and places. Tieken, who studies rural education and previously worked as a third grade teacher in rural Tennessee, detailed how school closures and consolidations harm students and their communities. “Every year, hundreds of thousands of children are displaced when their schools are permanently shuttered,” Tieken writes.