This exhibition (co-sponsored with the Emery Community Arts Center) features artworks that engage the legacy of realism in the 21st century, continuing, complicating, or contesting this tradition. Accounts of western art history often emphasize the political significance of realism’s commitment to depicting “ordinary life”… Continue Reading "Art Exhibit: “Reimagining the Real”"

Join Dr. Shelton Waldrep (Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine) for an original exploration of David Bowie's "Life on Mars?", including its meaning and common misconceptions about it. Among many other works, Dr. Waldrep is the author of Future Nostalgia:… Continue Reading "Shelton Waldrep, Lecture on David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?”"

Jordan Peele's Oscar-nominated 2017 horror film that critiques racism in America, Get Out, will provide the foundation for New Commons Project events in late October and early November 2021.

Join Dr. Aaron Wyanski (composer, pianist, and Assistant Professor of Music Composition at UMF) for a critical exploration of soundtracks of horror films over the last century, with particular discussion of Michael Abels' soundtrack to Get Out.

Join Dr. Michael Johnson (Professor of English at UMF) for an examination of Get Out's place within a long lineage of depictions of African Americans in horror cinema.

Do Black people always die first in horror movies? Is it possible to be Black and successfully survive a horror film? This talk examines the status of Black representations in the horror genre from Blaxploitation cinema to the horror parodies of the late 90s/early… Continue Reading "Keynote: Kevin Wynter, “The Final Brother: On Horror and Black Survivability”"

Arthur Miller's dramatic deconstruction of the American Dream, Death of a Salesman (1949), will take center stage in the New Commons Project in late November and early December 2021.

Dr. Linda Britt (Professor Emerita of Spanish at UMF) directs a community performance of Arthur Miller's critique of the American Dream: Death of a Salesman.

New Commons Project programming for January 2022 focuses on Marjane Satrapi's landmark graphic novel about growing up during the Iranian Revolution of the 1970s, Persepolis.

Emily Dickinson's foundational body of poetic works will be the focus of New Commons Project events in February 2022.

Helen and Scott Nearing's key work of the American back-to-the-land movement, Living the Good Life: How to Live Simply and Sanely in a Troubled World (1954), will be the focus of New Commons Project events in March 2022.

The New Commons Project will complete its cycle of programming on a delicious note in April 2022 with an exploration of Fannie Merritt Farmer's culinary classic, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896).