Charles A. Dana Professor of English and Africana Therí Pickens’ first volume of poetry, What Had Happened Was, published by Duke University Press in March, was the subject of a two-page spread in Down East magazine’s April issue. Headlined “Well Versed,” the article included an interview with Pickens and a reprint of one of the poems in the collection, “The Amateur Gardener Considers a Time of Death.â€� 

Pickens has had a busy spring. In conjunction with National Poetry Month, she appeared on Maine Public’s Maine Calling in April, as part of a panel of Maine poets and visited several universities to give talks and readings, including Rutgers (as the Clement A. Price humanities scholar in residence), the University of North Carolina Charlotte, and the University of Virginia. On April 3, she was celebrated by faculty, staff, and students at a book party in Commons. She also recently gave interviews to the online publication and .

In the Down East story, journalist Michaela Cavallaro reports that Pickens’ debut collection “showcases a distinctive knack for synthesizing diverse influences.”

She writes: “Pickens weaves together her academic training, her pop-culture interests, and her studies and experience of disability, among many other elements, in more than three dozen poems that are as readable as they are formally and linguistically inventive. Pickens traces her development as a poet all the way back to her New Jersey childhood (as a 5-year-old, she won a citywide writing contest for first to fourth graders on the subject of ‘Why I’m Proud to Be an African American’).�

The Maine Calling panel included Maya Williams, poet laureate of Portland, 2021–24, and Rose Lane, author of four poetry collections. 

Pickens told listeners what prompts her to start writing a poem: 

“There’s usually some sort of music, some sort of thought, some sort of observation that scratches my temple from the inside of my head, so to say, this urgent thing that’s begging to be let out on paper. I tend to think of myself a little bit in the vein of observational comedians. They see things and observe them and observe their absurdity and then tell you about it…. I’m always really gratified when I find an audience, in part because audiences can come from all over. Matthew Zapruder once said that he has to trust that, because he’s having a human experience, other people also having human experiences will find his work when they need it. And so I think I operate in that trust as well.â€�

At the end ofÌýthe Maine Calling show, a caller asked if the panelists had any advice for aspiring poets looking to publish their work. Pickens weighed in with this advice, referencing one of her faculty colleagues, Jessica Anthony ’96, a senior lecturer in English and a National Book Award–nominated novelist:Ìý

“One of the other writers here at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Jess Anthony, talked about poetry as a kind of punishing space because when you submit something, you don’t really get feedback,â€� Pickens said. “You get, ‘Oh, it doesn’t work for us.’ And so you see enough of that, you wonder whether or not the poems work for anybody. So publishing poetry is quite difficult for that reason. But Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance gives us a sense of community in Maine and a space to think through things with each other.â€�Ìý

At the campus gathering April 3, Pickens read a selection of poems from What Had Happened Was and was interviewed by moderator Samaa Abdurraqib, Ph.D., executive director of the Maine Humanities Council.

The book party also offered an opportunity to recognize Pickens’ recent appointment to an endowed professorship. In November 2024 the college announced she would serve as Charles A. Dana Professor of English and Africana from 2024 through 2034. 

Malcolm Hill, vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty, introduced Pickens at the packed gathering — which included an airing of pre-recorded messages of congratulations, accolades and gratitude from former colleagues across the country and many ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduates. Hill reminded the audience that the Dana Professorship is the first endowed chair established at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and recognizes professional excellence from professors working in any discipline.

“Dr. Pickens’ intersectional pathbreaking scholarship and pedagogy traverses the fields of race, identity and disability,� Hill said, and went on to describe her writing across mediums as “inventive, theoretically, and aesthetically attuned. She provides conceptual grammars and vocabularies that are of the present and for the future.�

“I would love it if folks could find something in the collection that resonated” — Therí Alyce Pickens

In March, Pickens described her hopes and aspirations for the collection in with poet Nefertiti Asanti in The Adroit Journal.

“I would love it if folks could find something in the collection that resonated and for folks looking to the collection, maybe for comfort?â€� Pickens told Asanti. “Folks looking to be read, in that, ‘Black, queer reading is fundamental’ kind of way, they could also find that. I don’t want the focus to be on how I, as a poet, put something or anything really autobiographical into the text. But rather that it’s a celebration of Black linguistic prowess and people can find something in it that speaks to them.â€�

For The Cafe Review piece, Pickens was interviewed by a former ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ colleague, Jefferson Navicky, who asked about her “wide-ranging and masterfulâ€� use of poetic forms, including the villanelle, the haibun, and the sonnet. Pickens offered the insight that she uses these forms almost as guideposts, because even though she has been writing poetry since the age of 8, she still feels “like a beginning poet.”

“So when I started practicing my craft in earnest in 2017, forms seemed like the best way to get into poetry…. They offer some degree of constraint, rules to follow, so that I don’t get too lost. What began as a way to practice — and shout out to Kiese Laymon, who said, ‘We’re not good enough to not practice’ — became more attractive once I saw other folks achieving loveliness with them.”

In the mid-1900s, George W. French, Class of 1908, was the official photographer for the tourism-focused Maine Development Commission, which placed him foremost among those who the visually interpreted the Maine slogan “Vacationland.�

Both as a student and later as a professional photographer, he did his part to interpret the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ campus through imagery.

This edition of Then and Now presents historical ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ images by George French and images taken this week during the waning days of a gorgeous fall foliage season.

Use your mouse to grab the slider (or swipe your finger if on a phone or tablet) to reveal more or less of each image.

Circa 1920

Hedge Hall (1890) was first a chemistry building, then a residence hall, and is now an academic building for environmental studies, religious studies, and philosophy. It was added onto twice, first in 1926 and then in 1950.

Circa 1920

Hathorn Hall opened in September 1857. The laying of its cornerstone the year before drew a crowd of 5,000, many of whom marched from downtown Lewiston to the grounds of the new Maine State Seminary for the occasion. At right, Muey Li ‘28 of Bazhong, China, walks a campus path that generations of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students before her have walked.

Circa 1938

The terrace and steps of Coram Library (1902), a fine spot for lounging throughout the decades, often draws skateboarders.

Circa 1942

At left, two students holding tennis rackets talk as they leave the Gray Athletic Building. At right, Krishna Kakani ’25 of Monroe, N.J. and Evan Migdole ’26 of Westbrook, Conn., leave the building after shooting hoops.

Circa 1920

At the opening of Maine State Seminary in 1857, Parker Hall was not quite finished, so the seminary leaders asked Lewiston citizens to open their homes to students as boarders. A shed behind Parker held firewood for the students’ use. Each student’s wood supply was placed in separate, labeled stalls.

Circa 1938

At left, two students walk from the Historic Quad through the Class of 1929 Gate. In the current photo, that’s Natalia Jacobs ’26 (left) of Shutesbury Mass., and Miriam Almzainy ’26 of Madaba, Jordan.

Almzainy is holding a box of ribbons that she was inviting students to write reflections upon, to be part of the next day’s Remembrance Service to commemorate one year since the October 2023 mass shootings in Lewiston.

Circa 1950

The stone of Gomes Chapel (1914) is known as seam-faced granite. Quarried near Hingham, Mass., it carries a distinctive and natural tone and texture, especially apparent when illuminated by the sun on a fall afternoon.

Circa 1941

Rand Hall (1905) was named for John Holmes Rand, a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ mathematics professor who oversaw its construction.

Circa 1938

At left, in 1938, a trio of students pose by the Class of 1932 sundial. At right, Andrew and Harrison, local high school students, pause for a portrait after skateboarding on the Coram Terrace.

Circa 1938

The walkway from the corner of Campus and College streets toward Hathorn Hall is traditionally one of the busiest on campus. Arguably, it also might provide the best foliage viewing.

Circa 1942

Like many ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ buildings, Roger Williams Hall (1985) has had a few identities, first as a divinity school, then a residence hall and administrative offices, and now is home to the college’s languages departments and programs.

Circa 1942

The two men talking at left in front of Coram were likely part of the Navy V-12 program, which stationed 120,000 student sailors at 131 U.S. colleges, including ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, for officer training and accelerated college instruction during World War II.

The Historic Quad. In the right, a more modern version includes a swing, unauthorized, but in the fall of 2024, much appreciated by students.

Circa 1920

The less austere contemporary view (right) of Hedge Hall, still swathed in October’s brightness, with Hathorn Hall’s tower in the distance was taken from Professor of French and Francophone Studies Alex Dauge-Roth’s third-floor office in Roger Williams Hall.

Joe Hall, an associate professor of history at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ whose course offerings include Native American history broadly and also specifically — that of the Indigenous people of Maine — got a call for help in early August. His expertise was needed to correct, or deepen, the record about how two Maine landmarks came to be.

Both stories covered the history of places as they related to European settlers. And that caused concern for members of a group Hall belongs to, the Pejepscot Portage Mapping Project, which has been working to record the history of the Brunswick area as home to Indigenous people.

Concerned that the stories recounted history within a vacuum, leaving out the stories of the Wabanaki people, they asked Hall to write to the papers’ editors to provide more context. 

Two stories about the development of Brunswick had just appeared in the Portland Press Herald and Times Record, intriguing pieces explaining how a Brunswick swamp had been developed in the early 19th century, and why one of the town’s other claims to local fame, its (according to the author, to create a buffer “in case of an ambush�).

Hall, the volunteer historian of the group, quickly wrote two responses and within days of the first story (the one about the Brunswick Mall, as the town green is known), his guest column, “,” appeared on the papers’ sites. (His second response, about the origins of Maine Street, has not yet run.) 

For starters, the colonists found that swampy area unsightly and inconvenient — the cattle they had sold at the market on the shores of the Androscoggin River and were taking to Maquoit Bay to be loaded on ships for trade kept getting bogged down in the mud. Plus, mosquitos abounded. But for the people who came before them, who had walked the route of Maine Street before it became a street, that swamp had true benefits, Hall wrote:

In the centuries before Brunswick, Wabanaki lived in the area, fishing at Pejepscot Falls, farming along the banks of the Androscoggin, gathering blueberries on the pine barrens, and digging clams at Maquoit.

The swamp also provided for these residents and travelers. It fed a reliable stream of water that saved thirsty Wabanaki the trouble of a steep descent to the Androscoggin. It grew cattails, which have edible roots, leaves that can be woven into mats or bags and downy seed pods that can wrap infants for warmth. It grew fiddleheads, which are the spring shoots of ostrich ferns, providing food at the end of long winters. To be sure, it also bred swarms of mosquitoes that plagued Wabanaki as well as later colonists, but a swamp is more than its nuisances.

The Pejepscot Portage Mapping Project is working to create a digital map of the Brunswick area as the Wabanaki people used it.  For the last three years, Hall has been contributing his historical perspective to the group effort and finding it deeply rewarding. The group includes non-Indigenous and Wabanaki people from the Brunswick area who are interested in highlighting the Wabanaki history of the area.

“It’s a really interesting mix of people,� Hall says. “Which is a fun way to do scholarship. To be involved is really gratifying. I feel like I’m doing something that is not going to end up on a shelf. You won’t find it in a library. It’s not some big scholarly thing, but I hope people are going to read it and think, ‘Oh I didn’t realize that was part of the story.’�

These places, including Maine Street itself, are “fundamentally defined by Native history,� Hall says. It’s true that Maine Street was built “twelve rods� wide to avoid ambushes by Native people. But they were being blocked from using their traditional fishing grounds by settlers, who built a fort there to claim it.

Moreover, Maine Street also travels the same path the indigenous people used as a portage, walking from the falls to the waters of Casco Bay carrying their canoes. “There’s a Wabanaki foundation to all of this.� (On Oct. 6, Hall will participate in a historical walking tour centered around that portage with , which is in the process of completing seven guided walks of old Native areas in Maine this year.)

Because the Pejepscot Portage Mapping Project seeks to highlight Wabanaki history of the region, the group has also consulted with a variety of Wabanaki educators over the years. Hall and his partners have found the conversations vital for framing their work. They have learned important information, and they have also gained a sense of which lessons Wabanaki find most meaningful.

The project is educational, but who knows where raising awareness might lead. “It’s a little humbling to feel like my partners and I are part of something with an unknown destination or end-point. Wabanaki history is interesting, sure, but what does it mean? Reparations in the form of giving land back? This work raises hard questions, fundamental questions. There’s a reason why it’s a lot easier if colonial peoples like me don’t know that Maine Street was a portage, and that an old swamp was actually a place of sustenance, as opposed to just an eyesore where cows got stuck in the mud. Which is what a newspaper article I read from 1853 was saying. Basically, ‘poor cows.’â€� 

Earlier: In 2019, during the celebration of Auburn’s 150th birthday, Hall , addressing Native history within a commemoration of the era of settlers.

Three survivors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi of Rwanda came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ this week to openly discuss with students the trauma that’s been woven into their lives and their country’s history for three decades. 

The intimate discussions offered students a powerful opportunity “to be confronted with a lived experience that is foreign to them,� said Alexandre Dauge-Roth, professor of French and francophone studies, who welcomed the guests to campus for a three-day event, “Rwanda 30 Years After: Trauma Healing of Genocide Survivors and Intergenerational Trauma.�

Beginning on April 7, 1994, and lasting 100 days, members of the Hutu ethnic majority, incited by local authorities, militia, and the Rwandan army, murdered upwards of a million people, most exclusively from the Tutsi minority. The massacre left behind open mass graves, family members unable to find and bury their dead, mistrust across the country, and sadness that a land full of natural beauty could be stained with such horror.

“Rwanda is so beautiful, but after ’94, I thought, ‘How could it still be beautiful?’� shared Esther Mujawayo to a gathering of more than 50 students from three different classes held in Roger Williams Hall on Monday.

Dauge-Roth is an expert in the literary, cinematic, and testimonial representations of the 1994 genocide and an internationally recognized authority on how educators can effectively teach students about the genocide.

He said that when students “engage and interact with people who have experienced radically different forms of violence and who come from different cultural backgrounds, you can no longer project your values and your judgments.ÌýYou have to start to really try to understand their perspectives, their aspirations, and sense of history as much as you can, as you engage in a transformative dialogue with them.â€�

Some of the dialogue surprised the students. Too often, victims are reduced to their sole status of survivor, viewed as passive and without agency, or unable to move beyond their trauma. But the three Rwandan guests, who all played key roles in the reconstruction of their community, sometimes laughed and told jokes as they demonstrated their resilience and continued love for their homeland and people.

“This is why we laugh a lot,� said Mujawayo of Essen, Germany, to students the next day in the course “The Politics of Memory,� taught by Professor of Politics Jim Richter. “We don’t want the killers, the death, to have the last word.�

Students dug deep into the two-way conversion, asking their guests — Mujawayo, joined by siblings Jean Bosco Rutagengwa of Amherst, N.H., and Chantal Kayitesi of Dedham, Mass., — how Tutsi survivors balanced the memory of their loved ones who were killed with the trauma that memory brought. 

Mujawayo, a psychotherapist and activist who has about the genocide, said they’ve tried to shield their children from the bad memories — while also continuing to retell the historic event so it never repeats. “But also, how do you find the right dosage, so that you don’t overwhelm them?â€� she asked in the gathering of three classes on Monday.

“We tried to shield them from hearing bad stuff,� added Rutagengwa, who helped to form (“Remember� in Kinyarwanda) an advocacy association for survivors’ rights and memory after the genocide. “But we also have made sure they know their history.�

Mujawayo used a metaphor to explain healing and storytelling: “Our story is stinking, but we use this smelling thing, this suffering, to tell a story. If you solely focus on the bad, you only have the stinking. But if you plant something good just next to it, you produce something good.â€� 

A manure pile is a stinking thing, she said, not a place where you want to gather and talk. Mujawayo suggested then to grow something around it, like banana trees, to make it more beautiful. “Grow your bananas,� she said. “Please don’t stay there, in the negativity. Grow something beautiful.�

Bora Lugunda ’25 of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, asked the Rwandans how outsiders should best approach interviews with survivors to help document the history of the atrocity. 

“It’s not that hard,� Rutagengwa said. “Survivors want to tell their story. It’s good when they share the details, because it helps in the healing process.�

Associate Professor of History Patrick Otim, who next year while on sabbatical in East Africa will pursue research on survivors of the war in Uganda that took place between 1986 and 2008, appreciated this question — and the Rwandans’ responses. Otim said the three guests taught the students in his that historians have to be transparent — and also to conduct interviews with empathy and respect.

“The question for me as a historian is always: How do we treat historical actors like survivors of genocide? When we write history, we have to be respectful of their experiences and portray them in the most accurate way,� Otim said. “I wanted my students to learn how to work with or get information from survivors. This talk was a lesson in oral history.�

On Monday, as the trio talked with students from two French courses and one history course gathered in Roger Williams Hall, they detailed how they’ve lived with the trauma of living through the genocide in frank, raw terms.

They explained about the Gacaca courts (2002–2012), a system of restorative justice aimed at helping rebuild the country through public confessions and testimonies about the atrocity to put an end to decades of impunity and allow survivors to know the fate of their loved ones. 

Mujawayo, who lost her husband, parents, and hundreds of relatives in the genocide, said the open, public discussion about the details of the genocide helped many to find, if not forgiveness, a certain sense of accountability and closure as they were morning their deads.

“After my sister was killed, I at least knew where her body was thrown. So we could bury her in dignity,� she said. “It was not an easy process, finding the latrines where they threw them, but it gives some comfort to restore their dignity.�

After the genocide, Mujawayo helped found AVEGA () with 50 other widows to provide assistance to Tutsi and Hutu widows and children of the genocide. The approximate meaning of “agahozo� is “to dry your tears.�

Chantal Kayitesi, who lost her husband, parents, siblings, and relatives, pointed out that the children of the killers too have had a difficult path moving forward by having to accept their intimate connection to the genocide. While many Rwandans want all of their people to move forward, it’s vital to keep retelling the history, “so that it never happens again.â€� 

After the genocide, Kayitesi was also a founding member of AVEGA and has contributed to a collective testimony written by women survivors, Entendez-nous! (Hear Us). “There are always people who try to deny there was a genocide,â€� she said. “But it really happened.â€� 

In a culture with a deep tradition of oral history, Rutagengwa said that Rwandans have turned to writing down in detail the events of the genocide, so that they can make certain to pass on a true account of it. “We lost great people, but we didn’t want to lose them forever,� he said. “We needed to record who they were. So we made lists of the survivors.�

Dauge-Roth said many students were struck by the compromises that Tutsi survivors were asked to embrace in the reconciliation process, such as moving away from a punitive desire of implementing justice, embracing the restorative justice model of the Gacaca courts, and coping with the return of the vast majority of the perpetrators within their communities as necessary steps to work toward national unity. 

“This was a huge shift for most,� he said. “But they were also in a situation where there was no other choice for them and for the country. The vast majority of them accepted what was demanded from them for their own country and future generations in this historical context without precedent.�

After the visit, Lily Ritch ’25 of Cincinnati, Ohio, gave to Mujawayo and Kayitesi a hand-written thank-you note that read, in part: “This conversation was rough, and I am walking away with a deep respect and admiration for you. I am inspired by your ability to feel and recognize your trauma as a necessary step toward moving forward towards progress and future prevention.�

When Anelise Hanson Shrout was in graduate school at New York University, she read an account about how the Choctaw Nation donated to Ireland during the Great Famine, not long after the U.S. federal government expelled Choctaws from their ancestral homelands in the American Southeast and forced them to resettle west of the Mississippi, the migration known as the “Trail of Tears.�

Reading that historical account of philanthropy in the 1800s led Shrout on a quest that spanned 15 years as she researched the international aid that came to the Irish people during the Great Famine, when thousands of people sent millions of dollars to suffering strangers in Ireland.

“The Irish famine went viral in ways that other crises had not. I thought at some point it might be more of an international relations story, but, ultimately, I kept coming back to the fact that this is really an Irish story, and I wanted to tell it as an Irish story,� said Shrout, an assistant professor of digital and computational studies and history.

In her newly published book, (New York University Press, 2024), Shrout looks at how eight different groups in Europe and America supported Irish famine relief in the 1840s, often as an expression of solidarity and empathy, but also as a way to advance their own political agendas.

Shrout argues that in many ways these examples of famine relief launched the modern era of international humanitarian aid, examples of which are familiar to us now, whether 1971’s Concert for Bangladesh or Hope for Haiti Now in 2010.

In her book, Shrout looks at Quaker abolitionists in Pennsylvania, tenant farmers in rural New York, the Black congregants of a Baptist church in Virginia, the Cherokee and Choctaw nations, poor laborers in England, and more. But, oddly, in the examples of humanitarian aid Shrout researched, she found no previous connection between Ireland and the groups that donated to famine relief. 

“This was one of the first times that so many people from so many different places sent money to people with whom they had no connection. And I think it changed people’s imagination of what international philanthropy can look like,â€� Shrout said.

In the 1840s, when the entire island of Ireland suffered from a blight on the potato crop, which was a chief food source for the working class and poor, an estimated one million people died and another two million emigrated, reducing the Irish population on the island by nearly a fourth.

But the famine and disease that resulted happened at a time when people traveled the world by schooners, news spread slowly, largely via newspapers, and cultures around the world were not as interconnected as they are today. There was no precedent for large-scale international philanthropy, making the relief efforts Shrout documented odd for the time — and the first notable instances of global relief.

The flow of funds to the island wasn’t by chance or random. Instead, it seems, individuals and groups “picked Ireland because Ireland helped them to make some political points that were really useful to them,” Shrout said.

“I think we need to say out loud that these were people who were interested in helping distant suffering strangers, but at a time when they could have picked from a number of potential causes, some more local,â€� Shrout said. “You didn’t need to send money all the way to Ireland to help people.

“I understand why Irish people in the diaspora sent money back home. To be hundreds of miles away from your home and know that you might not ever see it again is traumatic. So I understand that. But when I got into this, I just kept finding these examples of people where I thought: ‘I don’t understand why you would’ve picked Ireland in this period?’â€�

As the great-great-great granddaughter of famine immigrants, Shrout had a personal interest in digging into the untold story of those who helped the Irish during the Great Famine. And her history acumen was matched in her research by her digital acumen. While writing the book, Shrout created a massive database listing thousands of donors, where they were from, and how much they gave — an extensive trove of information she hopes to use for a future project.

“I want to do something with that in a digital and computational studies mode, trying to think of them as a community using data visualization,â€� Shrout said. 

As she researched Aiding Ireland, Shrout began to see how the flow of funds to the island wasn’t by chance or random. Instead, it seems, individuals and groups “picked Ireland because Ireland helped them to make some political points that were really useful to them.â€� 

One unexpected philanthropist she researched was a slave owner in Alabama. Shrout makes the case that his intentions were politically motivated. She said that by donating funds he was suggesting that the people of Ireland were worse off than the enslaved people on southern plantations. As it turns out, a lot of famine relief came from landowners in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. Shrout said those donations supported enslavers’ claims that they were treating Black slaves better than the English landowners treated the Irish tenant farmers in Ireland. 

“So they felt the fact that they sent money there proves that the slavocracy is a really benevolent system and the Irish are worse off, which is a wild idea,â€� Shrout said. “And then even more wild, they said, ‘Actually we are more like the Irish in this system because we are also oppressed by a centralized government that doesn’t have our best interest at heart.’ So the enslavers are saying the United States government is to enslavers as the British government is to the Irish.â€�

Another example of those giving for political reasons were tenant farmers in rural New York who wanted to build solidarity against a landlord class.

Other groups that sent aid donated funds as a show of true solidarity, although these also may have been politically motivated, Shout said.

“I think for the Cherokees and the Choctaws, there are these resonances about being subjects of colonialism and wanting to find ways to create a bridge between people who had experienced really similar things at the hands of the government. Certainly, that feels like a more reasonable claim,â€� than those made by enslavers, Shrout said. 

Another example of those giving for political reasons were tenant farmers in rural New York who worked on small parcels of land on large estates around Albany. These poor farmers wanted to build solidarity against a landlord class.

“They talk about their donation to the Irish as being about building this transnational workers movement against landlords,� Shrout said.

As with the tenant farmers in rural New York, the names of donors in many of the groups Shrout researched were listed in newspapers at the time  — but not always.

Congregants of the First African Baptist Church in Richmond, Va., which included both enslaved and free Black people, gave to famine relief in Ireland, yet newspapers didn’t list the names of the Black donors or the reasons for their donations, since most newspapers at the time were owned and run by white people. Shrout provides a compelling argument in her book that the donations from the Black congregants allowed them to make a public statement about their humanity, to juxtapose the barbaric, inhumane treatment of Black people in the South at that time. 

“From the church’s founding around 1830 up until the (Great Famine), the congregants would occasionally raise funds for other church members. At no other point did they raise money for any group outside of the church — let alone a group outside of the church in another country,â€� Shrout said.  

One of the more surprising acts of famine relief Shrout uncovered came from poor laborers in urban centers in England and Scotland, such as Manchester and Liverpool, where there was widespread anti-immigrant bias against Irish laborers who fled the famine in their homeland.

Shrout said the famine relief in this case was an effort to protest the so-called “corn laws’ at the time, which enhanced the profits of landowners and unfairly inflated food prices on the poor.

“Irish people were flooding into the cities,â€� Shrout said. “But then there’s also this political campaign to say, ‘We need to aid Ireland because the reason Ireland is starving is because of these laws called the corn laws.’ So there’s this moment of solidarity.â€� 

Shrout launched Aiding Ireland at New York University’s Glucksman Ireland House last month. She also spoke about her book recently in an interview on The Irish History podcast. Among other places, she will present her research this June at the American Conference for Irish Studies in Limerick, Ireland.

The COVID-19 pandemic was raging worldwide when Grace Acton ’24 of Harvard, Mass., arrived at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ for her first year. Like her peers, she faced myriad pandemic protocols — universal masking, twice weekly testing, social distancing, and limited extracurricular fun. 

But unlike many of her fellow students, Acton was at high risk for COVID due to preexisting immune and respiratory issues, making for an awkward and sometimes lonely entry into college. So she reached for a pastime she learned in childhood: sewing. 

“I couldn’t really do much besides go to class and be in my room. So I brought my sewing machine with me and I had various sewing projects. It was nice to not just be bored and alone,â€� Acton said.

But what started simply as a way to pass time led Acton to a supportive community in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ costume shop, to mentors who proved kindred spirits, to a senior honors thesis on ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™ historical clothing collection.

For this month’s installment of the “What It Tookâ€� series, which explores how ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ people find resilience, we wanted to celebrate the joy in doing the things you love — whether it’s to help you get through winter, help you get through finals, or simply help you smile — with Grace Acton as an example.

To be sure, Acton is not unique in exploring a new hobby or pastime in the early years of the pandemic. Many crafts exploded in popularity during COVID-19. But what sewing provided to Acton outlasted the pandemic, giving her the resolve to make time for herself, and a deeper understanding of how important that is.

At first, Acton said, sewing was just something to do. “Then sewing became this really therapeutic hobby for me. It’s also very tactile, and something totally different from my very digital academic work,� she said.

Acton first learned to sew at age 8 when her mother helped her make drawstring bags for her gymnastic team. It was several years later before she decided on a whim to try her hand at making her prom dress by herself. Then COVID hit and canceled everything, including the prom.

But that navy gown turned out so well, Acton rode the wave of success and decided to create a historic dress in the summer before coming to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. When she finished it, she wore it for photographs her sister Lily took at the public library in their hometown. 

Acton thought the ornate, brick Harvard Public Library looked so much like the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter movies, she goofed around in front of it in her period-style dress as her sister took photographs to capture the moment.

Then it was on to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, for an unusual first year, with all those pandemic protocols.

During her first semester, Acton took the course “Fashion: A Survey of Western History,� taught by Associate Professor of Theater Chris McDowell, and wore a coat she had made to class. McDowell took one look at it and said Acton would be a valuable addition to the student team in the theater department’s costume shop. Acton joined the shop that winter and never left, fitting her shifts in around academics and sports as a member of the varsity golf team.

“At the end of it, I would just feel relaxed,â€� Acton said. “Everybody at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has a busy schedule. I am not unique in this. Every student and faculty member is always go, go, go, go. And it’s nice to make time in the day for myself.â€�

Costume shop supervisor Carol Farrell is a champion of this philosophy, as illustrated at 2 p.m. each day when she stops work in the shop to invite everyone to gather for tea.

“We think of this as the good-vibe zone,â€� Farrell said. “Sometimes people just want to stop in because they need to not feel crazy. People who don’t work in the shop just come by saying how crazy busy they are. I feel we all benefit from spending a little time getting to know each other and creating a community. Because when is creating community not important?â€�

Acton called Farrell an important mentor at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. Farrell, who is retiring in May, called Acton a rare gem, one who is skilled and creative and brings a zeal for solving puzzles. 

“Grace is super bright and super capable. She loves to figure stuff out,â€� Farrell said. “And she has the hand-to-brain connection. Increasingly people don’t have the hand-to-brain connection — except for working their phones.â€�

Several weeks after joining the costume shop, Acton showed her flair for creativity and problem solving when faced with a surprise lockdown due to a spike in COVID cases at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. That came at noon on April 1, 2021, with an email instructing students to return to their rooms by 2 p.m. Acton had just enough time to visit a nearby fabric store. She had a plan.

The week before, the massive container ship Ever Given got stuck and blocked the Suez Canal for six days, launching memes all over social media. With material purchased in the moments before the lockdown, Acton sewed a green “boat dressâ€� that resembled the container ship, complete with colorful squares on the top that represented the many containers. 

When she finished it, she went with her friend Diana Rodriguez ’24 of Houston to photograph the dress on April 6 by Lake Andrews. (At that point, contract tracing was completed and students were allowed to move about outside as long as they wore masks.) 

“The reason that the boat dress project sticks with me more than my many other lockdown sewing projects is the connection and collaboration with my housemates,â€� said Acton, who lived in a single room in Stillman House (which was converted to first-year housing during COVID).

“We were all stuck together in this scary and isolating time, but we all got a big kick out of this silly project and it was a great distraction. Sewing has helped me make connections with so many people at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and this was one of the first examples of that.â€�

Located just downstairs from the lobby of Schaeffer Theatre, the costume shop has sewing machines lining one wall, large tables for ironing, and, on one Thursday, a clothing rack full of hippie-style clothing on hand for a performance. It’s an open, bright, white gathering space with splashes of color throughout. Accessories from past theater productions hang on the wall. All around the ceiling, several black decorative crows look down from above, as if inspecting the hands-on work.

It’s where Acton enjoys what she calls her “focus time,â€� a place where she created many elaborate outfits for the college’s annual Trashion Show — simply for the fun of it.  

“What I love about working in the shop and the kind of space that Carol creates in there is it’s a place where I don’t look at my phone,� Acton said. “I feel like I’m always looking at a screen. Even my history work, which normally you’d think of as being such an analog field, even that work is super digital. And my texts come through on my laptop, and my texts come through on my phone. It’s really hard to disconnect from the screen.�

Acton came to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ envisioning she would major in mathematics and politics. But after taking McDowell’s fashion history class, she changed her mind. “I have always been a math brain and I love math,â€� she says. “But I particularly like the application of math to other things.â€�

And that’s how Acton landed on her unusual self-designed major, which draws from history and digital and computational studies. This year, Acton is completing a senior honors thesis that “applies math and data science to a historical topic,” in this case, a hidden-away collection of historical clothing.

For years, the theater department has accepted donations of vintage clothing, some dating to the 1800s, from well-meaning faculty, staff, families, alumni, and local residents. Outstripping the department’s ability to catalog the donations (or to use them in shows), the clothes ultimately filled box after box in storage. 

Enter Grace Acton, who is working to, as she says, “data-ify” this collection into a ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Clothing Archive that will be accessible through both physical and digital archives.

With boundless enthusiasm, and co-advised by McDowell and Anelise Hanson Shrout, assistant professor of digital and computational studies, Acton has been taking an inventory of the antique clothing collection to decipher the era of each article of clothing and catalog all of it.

Since September, Acton has examined and dated around 180 pieces of clothing by assessing the kind of textiles and sewing techniques used in each one. “It’s turned out to be the most-fun project,” she said.

“The kind of work Grace is doing is work that people are trying to do all over the country in museums,� said McDowell, a clothing historian. “We’re both interested in having a cultural understanding of what sewing means, the idea of labor. When it takes you 40 hours to make something, you have a very different appreciation of that.�

As she finishes her senior year, Acton is still living the lesson she learned from her mentors, and from her time alone sewing. Research and academics should be serious and rigorous, but there should always be fun and time made for oneself.

Next fall, Acton will pursue a master’s degree in digital humanities with a focus on history and data science at Lancaster University in England — where she plans to continue sewing.

Two traditional Japanese river boats, handcrafted by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students and launched into Lake Andrews five years ago, are part of the re-creation of feudal Japan for the TV adaptation of ³§³óÅ�²µ³Ü²Ô, which debuts today (Feb. 27) on FX.

Back in 2019, Douglas Brooks, an author and expert in Japanese boatbuilding, led the Short Term course “Apprentice Learning: Building the Japanese Boat.â€� During the course, one of the practitioner-taught courses arranged by the Center for Purposeful Work, Brooks’ students built two long, narrow, flat-bottomed boats and then, in a ceremony reflecting Shinto tradition, guided them on a maiden voyage on the Puddle. 

From then until spring 2021, the two 21-foot boats remained in storage at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. In the meantime, FX, a subsidiary of Disney, was ramping up production of a 10-part TV series based on James Clavell’s 1975 novel, which is set at the dawn of the 17th century.

In the novel and in the TV series, traditional Japanese wooden boats are a central part of the seascape and riverscape, used for both transportation and military purposes. To ensure the authentic presentation of this important prop, the producers hired Brooks. 

He provided Disney with traditional boat drawings that their scenic boat builders, overseen by prop master Dean Eilertson, used to create a fleet of small samurai warships. Disney also asked if there were any existing traditional Japanese boats available in North America. “I told them about the boats at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½,â€� Brooks said.

Disney reached out to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ and negotiated a purchase in spring 2021. Brooks traveled to Lewiston to oversee their shipment to the filming location in Vancouver, British Columbia; later, he was flown to the set to teach a few dozen extras how to use the Japanese sculling oar to propel other boats. 

To recreate feudal Japan, the filmmakers chose the rural west side of Vancouver Island, thick with wilderness. There, they created a town with a castle; a palace; and a coastal fishing village. 

The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ boats are a traditional fishing boat, which was often used at the mouth of the Shinano River in Niigata Prefecture, “a huge farming region,â€� said Brooks, where the river skiffs — often called honryousen, or “typical fishing boatâ€� — were used for transport, fishing, hauling rice, and dredging. 

As far as Brooks could tell during his time advising on the filming in and around Vancouver, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ boats won’t appear on screen enough for viewers to create a drinking game (“ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ boats!â€�) of their appearance. 

“I was told on set that the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ boats would most likely be used to ‘dress’ the set, that is, provide a look of boats pulled up on a beach,â€� said Brooks. “I suspect if you see them anywhere, they will be at the fishing village.â€�

While many traditional Japanese boats are used throughout the series, most are of a different style used in battle scenes. “Primarily what you see in the film are small Samurai war ships.�

Since 1996, Brooks has apprenticed with Japanese boat builders and . Back in 2019, just prior to the campus launch, he described the experience as “fantastic,� drawing the syllables out for emphasis.

“From the organization of this course, working with the Center for Purposeful Work, to the collegiality of faculty who contacted me with an interest in my course, to the students, who really were wonderful and worked very hard,� he said, “it’s been amazing.�

Additional reporting by senior writer Deirdre Stires.

Tim Dugan, associate professor of theater, has wanted to bring The Thanksgiving Play to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ since it was first produced off-Broadway in 2018.

But he knew that in order to produce Larissa FastHorse’s satire, which is as hilarious as it is unsettling, the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ production crew and cast would need help avoiding the very behavior that the play viciously lampoons: performative wokeness by white people who think they’re celebrating a Native American perspective.

So as Dugan set out to produce The Thanksgiving Play at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ this fall, he forged a partnership with two experts: and program coordinator at the University of Maine’s Wabanaki Center in Orono, and ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Associate Professor of History Joe Hall, who teaches and researches the history of the Wabanaki tribes: the Wolastoqey (or Maliseet), Mi’kmaq, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki.

Performances of The Thanksgiving Play take place on the Gannett Theater stage through Nov. 13.

At first, says Mitchell, he was “a little apprehensiveâ€� about joining the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ theater team. “But once I saw their commitment, I was completely sold. In fact, I thought, ‘This has to be done. I need to work with these actors and the director. I need to help them. It was so worth it.â€�

One of the top-10 most-produced plays in the country this year, The Thanksgiving Play delivers belly laughs, but is also intended to shock and disturb the audience. 

It’s about four white actors, two of whom are teachers and all of whom consider themselves liberal, woke, and forward-thinking, and how they go about rehearsing a Thanksgiving pageant that celebrates Native American Heritage Month for elementary school students.

While played for laughs, their efforts are clearly small-minded and offensive. “Meant to ‘lift up’ the Native American point of view despite including no Native Americans,� writes The New York Times in its review, the play within the play “twists the [characters] into pretzels of performative wokeness so mortifying they induce a perma-cringe.�

The practice of inviting cultural consultants is part of the new approach to theater taking place across the country, Dugan explains. With The Thanksgiving Play, the goal of working with Mitchell and Hall is to avoid the pitfall of “becoming the play. I knew this was not my lived experience. I knew as part of the learning it would require a whole cultural competency to help us approach this carefully and thoughtfully. Throughout the process of working with John Bear, Joe, Wabanaki REACH, and doing research, I realized how much I don’t know.â€�

Several times this fall, Mitchell, who has been a lecturer in Native American studies at the University of Maine for 23 years, drove more than three hours roundtrip from Orono to provide insight at rehearsals, as well as encouragement to the students.

Joined by Hall, who also served as the play’s dramaturge, Mitchell fielded questions from students in real time and responded to emails from students who wanted to dig deeper into FastHorse’s message.

Throughout, Mitchell took time to reassure students that it was OK to follow FastHorse’s stage directions, regardless how disturbing they may be. He told them not to worry about how offensive their lines or actions on stage were, because that was the whole point, since the shocking stories that FastHorse weaves throughout her play are based on true events.

“I don’t think my job or even the actors or Tim’s is to make the audience feel comfortable about true history,â€� Mitchell says. “I don’t teach history or consult on history to make people feel comfortable about true history.â€� 

To help the cast and production team get a basic understanding of Native culture, Dugan also scheduled a six-hour, two-day workshop with Wabanaki REACH, a Maine-based non-profit that teaches Wabanaki history and culture to promote restorative justice and restorative practices in Maine communities. 

The workshops, additional readings, and spontaneous discussions that erupted during rehearsals all helped focus the cast on delivering FastHorse’s message.

Because an audience who takes in The Thanksgiving Play also might need help understanding and making sense of FastHorse’s intent, Dugan put together an expanded play program that explains what the audience can expect, with insights from Hall and Mitchell.

As a long-time consultant on film, television, and theater productions, Mitchell knows the effect satire can have. It can prompt an audience to reflect, examine, and consider their own morals and life views. The Thanksgiving Play, he says, helps deliver this reaction in spades. 

When students expressed concern at being offensive or showcasing violence from historical events, Mitchell encouraged them to show all of that — to take it as far as they could. And they listened.

“To hear from someone who is a specialist in Native American history is great, but to hear it from someone who has experience in the (misrepresentation of Indigenous people), that was extremely valuable,â€� says Paige Magid ’24 of Washington, D.C., who’s doing her senior thesis for her theater major on acting techniques in the play. “John Bear has specific experience working in theatre and film as a cultural consultant so he knows about media representation from that.â€� 

In one particular scene in the play, the amount of blood (albeit fake) that gushes onto the stage is grotesque, even haunting. When the play was shown on Broadway, some in the audience walked out during this violent scene. Students asked Mitchell if they should scale it back. 

“I told them, ‘Do you want to temper history? This country was not built on love and peace. It was one of the largest mass extinctions in history and that’s well documented. It should be a shock. If it’s not a shock, then you censored history,� he says.

David Walker ’24 of Canton, Mass., who plays one of the four white characters, spent more time preparing for this production than on past plays at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. The reward? Now he’s looking forward to seeing the effect the play has on those who attend.  

“The way FastHorse describes it, there is a comedy within the satire, so for every bit of sugar, there is medicine to go with it. If people are thinking about this play when they leave the theater, then I think we’ve done our job,â€� says Walker, a double major in theater and economics who plays the role of Caden, an elementary school history teacher. 

Magid plays the role of Logan, a high school drama teacher trying to hold onto her job, while Adam Joseph Matos ’26 of Springfield, N.J., is cast as Jaxton, a mostly out-of-work actor. Ruby Marden ’27 of Sidney, Maine, plays the role of Alicia, a bold, frank Los Angeles actor. 

While it is very hard to deliver lines that are so offensive, says Magid, it’s in service to staying true to FastHorse’s mission, which she says is delivered in every single line in the play. 

“A lot of people who come to see it will see themselves in it, especially in the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ community, which is predominately white and liberal. A lot of people want to be woke and do good work without any evidence of being helpful,â€� says Magid. “I want people to see the offensive thing happening and recognize what’s wrong and modify their own behavior.â€�

Hall says whether the audience walks away with a clear understanding of FastHorse’s messages about the misrepresentation of Indigenous culture in the U.S. is hard to predict. But it’s also hard to miss that ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is part of an education system that FastHorse’s play is mocking.

“I think ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ producing this play is great, not because everyone will walk out of the play with a perfect understanding of contemporary Native issues. I hope non-Native people get some sense of the powerful stereotypes that silence so many Native voices,” says Hall. “I also think this play is an exciting opportunity for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ to think about how it wants to be a place where Native people have a voice, and also provide an education about Native people that is responsible to those voices.”

When Assistant Professor of English Myronn Hardy moved back to the U.S. in 2018 after nearly a decade living in Morocco, the poet found North America both recognizable and unrecognizable.

In the years since, he’s written a series of poems that speak to that experience of exile and return. The collection that stemmed from that time of transition, on Oct. 10 as part of the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets.  

The poems in this collection are all set around the same time of day, at or near dawn. “Aurora Americana explores an ominous yet hopeful new morning in America, one in which potential cataclysm exists alongside possibility and change,” the university press notes.

Hardy, who works in varied poetic forms, including the sonnet, the triolet, and the ghazal, which has its origins in seventh-century Arabic poetry, recently told he’s never centered temporality this way.

“This is very new for me. Also, of course, there is the metaphor of ‘dawn’ that I hope the poems interrogate,” he said. “What does it mean to be on the cusp of something? Are we on the verge of evolution or devolution?â€�

Speaking of his process to The Rumpus, Hardy described the inception of his poetry as an image or images. “I see something I can’t shake,” he said. “The image remains in my mind. I dream about it. I wait for that particular image to morph, a subtle change in color or a repositioning. When that happens, I know I’m in the process and nearing the page.”

Then, Hardy “wait(s) for the music: the sound of a leaf sliding on asphalt, a river flowing over jagged rocks, etc. This is usually the sound I’m trying to emulate in the poem. When this is clear, the language arrives in a line, sentence, stanza. The poem is in motion. I wake up before the sun emerges and write as its light covers the page.”

At ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, Hardy’s courses include “The Aesthetics of Seeing: Poetry as Witness,â€� which looks at poetry that has been profoundly influenced by poets’ lived experiences as witnesses.

He also teaches creative nonfiction, advanced poetry writing, and “‘I, Too, Sing America’: Poetry of This Moment/Movement,” analyzing the work of contemporary poets responding to the current social and political moment in the U.S.

Aurora Americana is the second book of Hardy’s poetry to be published by Princeton. The first, Radioactive Starlings, came out in 2017. His other works include Approaching the Center, The Headless Saints, Catastrophic Bliss, and Kingdom.

His poems have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, the Portland Press Herald and the Michigan Quarterly Review, among others. He has received several awards, including the PEN Oakland–Josephine Miles Award.