This exhibition will highlight new acquisitions to the Osher Map Library collection between 2019 and 2024. It will be on view to the public from July 23, 2024 to January 18, 2025.

Annual Mattson-New York Times Lecture
The Dealer Speaks: Who Collects What and Why?
Stories from the Map Trade with Laura Ten Eyck of Argosy Gallery and Antiques Road Show
Wednesday, November 13th, 2024
McGoldrick Center Salons
5:30pm Reception and Meet & Greet
6:00-7:30pm Lecture and Q & A

Registration is free with an optional donation to support the Osher Map Library Fund. More details coming soon!

Laura Ten Eyck, a Toronto native, discovered her love for maps on a solo trek in Nepal when the wind whisked away her only guide. This moment ignited a passion that led her to an MFA in Visual Arts from NYU and a transformative apprenticeship at Manhattan’s legendary Argosy Book Store. Now the gallery director at Argosy, Laura has become a celebrated map dealer and appraiser, appearing on The Antiques Roadshow and CBS Sunday Morning. With deep roots in New York City—she lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where her love for maps and history continues to shape her extraordinary journey.

Explore unsettling histories and see some of our eeriest materials in the OML Collection to put you in the spooky spirit! Admission is free and open to all, light spooky refreshments will be provided.

Pop-up Exhibit – The Osher Map Library Reading Room
11:00 AM – 6:00 PM

Eerie Entertainment – Cohen Classroom
Create Your Own Monsters & Spiders
2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Tarot Card Readings
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Chromolithography was used in the nineteenth century to create full-color and realistic images of the world. In geography, the process was used especially for the scenic, the special, and the spectacular. This exhibition explains the printing process and explores some of its particular applications to maps and bird’s-eye views.

This talk is based on a his current research into the maps that surround more than a century of Hollywood cinema. It will begin with a focus on “location maps,” which aimed to showcase sites within California that could plausibly stand in for other world locations onscreen. Then, the talk will zoom in on a disreputable genre of cartography commonly known as “star maps” which, sold in the open air by street vendors in Los Angeles, purported to offer directions to the homes of celebrities. Ellis aims to take these maps seriously as at once examples of a unique regional form of cartography and as an ephemeral history of American cinema.

This talk is based on a chapter from his recently published book “Democratic Spaces: Land Preservation in New England, 1850-2010.” He will discuss an important but often overlooked achievement in modern land preservation: the protection of natural areas in an urban environment. He’ll also address questions about how preservationists and neighborhood activists defined “wild” in an intensely built environment; how they achieved their remarkable successes in Boston and elsewhere, and how they created “backyard” natural landscapes in starkly underserved neighborhoods in the city.

Using the “Women as Agents of Change: Social Reform in USM’s Specialized Collections” exhibit as a jumping-off point, this talk explores the rich history of women’s activism in social reform movements in the United States. In movements such as temperance, abolition, anti-lynching, and suffrage, women have been integral to shaping the course of United States history. By foregrounding these movements, this talk makes the case for centering women’s history not only during Women’s History Month but throughout the year.

Chromolithography was used in the nineteenth century to create full-color and realistic images of the world. In geography, the process was used especially for the scenic, the special, and the spectacular. This lecture is in conjunction with the current gallery exhibition at the Osher Map Library, “A Pageant of Spectacles: Chromolithography in America”, which explains the printing process and explores some of its particular applications to maps and bird’s-eye views.

Looking for some family fun during February Break?

Drop in on Thursday, February 22, 2024, in the Osher Map Library Cohen Classroom (Glickman 103) for map activities, arts and crafts and snacks!

We have a roster of fun activities planned for our K-12 visitors:

🗺️ Check out our new chromolithography exhibit where you can join a scavenger hunt and try out our interactive code breaker game.

🌎 Visit the reading room to see a collection of glorious globes and check our the Konkel Family Book Collection.

🎨 Learn more about the printing process with arts and crafts in the Cohen Educational Center, plus learn about our annual Illustrated Map Making Contest.

🍎 We will also have map puzzles on hand and plenty of snacks!

All families are welcome, this event is free, and no registration is necessary–just stop on by and enjoy the fun!

Join us Monday, February 26, 2024, for a conversation with Jessica Parr about “Geographies of Emancipation: Geospatial Technology in Mapping Black Thought in the Age of Revolutions.”

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 90 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

All are welcome to the opening reception of our latest exhibition, “A Pageant of Spectacles: Chromolithography in America.” In tandem with the reception is a talk, “Adding Further Dimensions: Color Map Printing in Nineteenth-Century America” presented by Dr. Matthew Edney, Osher Chair in the History of Cartography.

This event is free and open to the public.

Light refreshments will be served.

This exhibition features a variety of gorgeous and detailed bird’s eye view and wall maps of Maine counties, cities, and towns, and includes popular viewbooks and postcards. The exhibition was co-curated by OML Executive Director Dr. Libby Bischof, and USM Senior History major and Race and Ethnic Studies minor, Rachel Gilbert.

See what goes bump in the archives of the Osher Map Library at our Creepy Collections pop-up!

All are invited to visit the OML Reading Room to see maps and materials from the fearsome to the fantastic from 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM.

Be sure to stay on for some eerie entertainment! Design your own tarot cards and constellations in the Cohen Educational Center all day. Then get a free tarot card reading from 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.

Light, spooky refreshments will be provided. This event is free and open to the public, no registration required.

Please join us at the Russell Hall Theatre on the University of Southern Maine Gorham Campus for “A Synesthete’s Atlas: Performing Cartography–A Lecture, Musical, and Moving Image Performance.”

Since April 2022 Eric Theise has been manipulating projected digital maps in collaboration with improvising musicians in Europe and the United States. While constraining his project to use only web mapping technologies, A Synesthete’s Atlas is Theise’s unique approach to expanded cinema, drawing strategies from experimental film & animation, the Light and Space movement, 1960s light shows, and visual poetry.

The evening begins with a short lecture where Theise will present Carto-OSC, an assemblage of open source libraries, data, and protocols, plus 1000+ lines of creatively-coded JavaScript that integrates it all into a touch-surface control panel. He will discuss his process and motivations, his use of the Open Sound Control protocol to drive the manipulations, and offer aesthetic observations.

For the second part of the evening, he will be joined by local musician The Asthmatic (Sigrid Harmon) for a short performance and Q & A.

Please note: The performance will occasionally introduce strobing effects that may affect photosensitive viewers.

This event is free and open to the public.

Light Refreshments will be served.

Co-sponsored by the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education and the Theatre Department at the University of Southern Maine.

All are welcome to the opening reception of our latest exhibition, “Maine on Display: Nineteenth Century Wall Maps and Bird’s Eye Views.” In tandem with the reception is a panel discussion, “The History and Significance of Municipal Wall Maps and Bird’s Eye Views.” Panelists include: Dr. Matthew Edney, Osher Chair in the History of Cartography, Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., Maine State Historian, Rachel Gilbert, USM Class of ’23 and co-curator, and Christine Carpenter, Conservator at Green Dragon Bindery.

Calling all teens! Bring your drawing and creative skills to this workshop for ages 10-16 and make a map of your own that’s historic, fantastic, or data driven. OML Education Staff Brie and Shawn will provide a brief introduction to the elements of the map, and we will have examples of a variety of maps from the collections on display in the reading room for inspiration. Not an artist at heart? Bring some friends and play a board game instead!

Join us for a screening of the documentary “A Walk Through History: A Tour of the Mills of Biddeford, Maine” on Saturday, June 10, at Hannaford Hall on the Portland Campus of the University of Southern Maine. This film takes you on a tour of the Biddeford Mill complex and delves into the history of the industrial revolution in Biddeford.

A reception with light refreshments will begin at 3:30 PM, with the film to start at 4:00 PM. This film is approximately 30 minutes long and will be followed by a panel discussion with the three tour guides David Adams, Ray Henault, and David Bishop.

This film is presented in conjunction with our exhibition “Industry, Wealth, and Labor: Mapping New England’s Textile Mills.” The OML Gallery will be open from 1:00 PM – 3:30 PM before the film for visitors who haven’t seen the exhibit or would like to revisit the materials related to the Biddeford mills.

All are invited to join us for the 2023 DiMatteo Lecture with Dr. Bill Rankin on Thursday, April 6. This talk is an exploration of how new kinds of cartography can challenge the entrenched politics of mainstream mapping. By combining historical research on the history of data maps with Rankin’s own work as a cartographer over the last twenty years, it argues that contemporary cartography should be guided not just by new data or new technology, but by a new set of values.

This lecture will take place in-person at Hannaford Hall in the Abromson Center on the University of Southern Maine Portland campus, and the event will be livestreamed on YouTube.

We invite you to join us for the first event in our winter/spring 2023 programming series for our current exhibition, “Industry, Wealth and Labor: Mapping New England’s Textile Industry,” at the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education.  For this event, we will engage in a common read and discussion of Dr. Beth DeWolfe’s book, The Murder of Mary Bean and Other Stories, a fascinating true-crime historical account of mid-19th century Saco, Maine, and the textile industry.  Dr. DeWolfe is a Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies at the University of New England.

Please join the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at USM for a Black History Month Film Screening of UZIKEE: Washington DC’s Ancestral Sculptor and a Q & A with Filmmaker Doug Harris.

Released in 2018, this film is the story of an integral Afro-centric Washington D.C. Sculptor and arts activist, Uzikee Nelson, who has navigated through the decades of key pivotal moments in the shifting history of the D.C. Capital as it faced systematic dismantling of its once emblematic title, ‘The Chocolate City.’

The reception begins at 5:30pm in Hannaford Hall, and the film screening, with an introduction from the filmmaker, Doug Harris, begins at 6:00pm.

This event is free and open to the public.

Join us Monday, February 26, 2023, for a conversation with Llana Barber about her book Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945–2000. Presented in conjunction with our current exhibition on New England Textile Mills, this discussion will explore the transformation of Lawrence, Massachusetts, into New England’s first Latino-majority city.

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 90 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

Please join us on Monday, December 5, 2022, at 12:00 PM, for a conversation with RJ Andrews about the recently published Information Graphic Visionaries book series moderated by Dr. Matthew Edney. Information Graphic Visionaries is a new book series celebrating three spectacular data visualization creators, with: new writing, complete visual catalogs, and discoveries never seen by the public. Series editor RJ Andrews will give us a tour of Emma Willard’s spectacular chronologies, Florence Nightingale’s persuasive diagrams, and Étienne-Jules Marey’s guide to seeing new realities.

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 90 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

All are invited to join the University of Southern Maine’s Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education for the opening reception of our latest exhibition, “Industry, Wealth, and Labor: Mapping New England’s Textile Industry,” on Thursday, November 17, from 4:00 PM – 7:30 PM, with a panel discussion from 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM in Hannaford Hall. This event is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be provided.

Inspired by the map library’s recent acquisition of a collection of textile mill insurance plans and historic maps from the American Textile History Museum, this exhibition addresses the temporal, geographic, and demographic components of New England’s cotton textile industry from the early 19th century until the middle of the 20th century.

This exhibition was curated by Roberta Ransley-Matteau, MA, Cataloguer for the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, and Ron Grim, PhD, Curator of Maps Emeritus at the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library.

Industry, Wealth, and Labor will be on view at the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education from November 17, 2022 through June 28, 2023.

Register on Eventbite Here

See what goes bump in the archives of the Osher Map Library at our Creepy Collections pop-up!

All are invited to visit the OML Reading Room to see maps and materials from the fearsome to the fantastic from 10:00 AM – 6:30 PM.

Be sure to stay on for our all-ages pumpkin painting in the Cohen Educational Center from 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM.

Light, spooky refreshments will be provided. This event is free and open to the public, no registration required.

The narrative structure of this particular exhibition looks at tourism through the lens of travel and transportation, quite literally the mapping of tourism in Maine from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. This exhibition invites you to think about the changing landscape interventions created by and for tourists, as well as the impact such changes had on people living in Maine year round, and upon the environment.

All are invited to our Welcoming Reception on Thursday, September 1, from 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM. Dr. Libby Bischof and co-curator Robin Davis will present a talk about the exhibit in the Glickman Library UER on the 7th floor of the Glickman Library at 5:00 PM.

This event is free and open to the public. No registration is needed for this event, and light refreshments will be provided.

Please join us on Monday, June 27, 2022, at 12:00 PM, with Dr. Katherine Parker and her presentation, “European Geographic Debates About the Pacific in the Mid-Eighteenth Century.”

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 90 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

Osher Map Library Eventbrite Page

Inspired by our recent acquisition of Bernard Sleigh’s six-foot long “An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland, Newly Discovered and Set Forth,” (1918) we have selected thematic maps, books, and ephemera from our collections that reflect whimsy and visionary thinking. This exhibit invites visitors to ponder the ways in which myth, fantasy, and fiction have, for centuries, provided both an escape into alternate worlds in times of great strife, as well as an opportunity to create alternate worlds and imagine new realities.

Click here to view a video tour of the exhibition produced by USM Public Affairs.

Please join for our next installation in the Monday Map Lunch Series on Monday, May 23, 2022, at 12:00 PM, with Dr. Susan Schulten, Professor of History at the University of Denver. Dr. Schulten will discuss her forthcoming book, Emma Willard: Maps of History.

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 150 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

Join us for an evening with Bloomberg CityLab journalist Laura Bliss, the curator and editor of the newly published book, The Quarantine Atlas: Mapping Global Life Under COVID-19. Tickets are limited to the first 500 registrants. This event is free an open to the public.

Join artist and naturalist Jill Osgood to learn new techniques and skills to create a map of your own imagining in one of three in-person map making workshops for kids and adults!

Space limited to 12 attendees per session. These events are free and open to the public, and all map making supplies will be provided.

Kids Workshop on Saturday, March 19

Kids Workshop on Saturday, March 26

Adult Workshop on Saturday, March 26

Adult Workshop on Thursday, April 7th

Please join us as as we continue the Monday Map Lunch Series with a presentation by Dr. Mark Monmonier, a leading expert in contemporary cartography and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Syracuse University. Dr. Monmonier will present his lecture,”‘It Takes Time to Find Your House’: How Farmer John Byron Plato Became a Map Publisher.”

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 95 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

Please join us for the 2022 Mattson-New York Times lecture, “Building the Abolition Democracy with GIS, Maps, Data, and Archival Materials,” presented by Dr. Lawrence T. Brown, author of The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America.

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 500 registrants. This event is free an open to the public.

Held virtually over Zoom

All are invited to join us as authors Matt Brown, Rhys B. Davies and illustrator Mike Hall discuss their new book Atlas of Imagined Places: From Lilliput to Gotham City, a gorgeous volume of fictional geography drawn from the world’s most-loved literary fiction, films, and television series.

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 500 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

Held virtually over Zoom

Please join us for the next installment in the Monday Map Lunch Series on November 29, 2021, at 12:00 PM where Dr. Matthew Edney will present What the *bleep* are Maps?: Trying to Write the History of Cartography..

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 95 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

Calling all beasties, merfolk, and creatures of the night! Let your creative costumery shine in our Halloween Map Monster Photo Contest. Using our collections as a reference, we challenge you to find your favorite monster and create a costume to scare up some fun. Send in your photo and automatically be entered in a chance to win a prize. There will be one prize winner selected from each category: kids, teens, adults, and USM Faculty and Staff. Photos of pets are welcome, too!

CLICK HERE to Learn More and Enter

Held virtually over Zoom

Please join us for the second event in the Monday Map Lunch Series on October 25, 2021, at 12:00 PM. Artist and curator Dan Mills will present cARTography: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Current Wars and Conflicts .

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 95 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

Held virtually over Zoom

Please join us for the second Annual DiMatteo Lecture, “Not ME!: Exceptionality and (Dis)Engagement with Diversity” presented by Dr. Larissa Malone and Dr. Adam Schmitt of the USM School of Education and Human Development. This lecture uses critical race spatial analysis in order to problematize Maine’s status as one of the whitest states in the country amidst its changing racial demographics. Within the context of K-12 education, we will explore (dis)engagement with issues of diversity, particularly through the erasure of race and racism, the construction and maintenance of white racial identity, and the ideology of liberalism.

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 480 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

Held virtually over Zoom

Please join us for the kick off of the Monday Map Lunch Series on September 13, 2021, at 12:00 PM. In conjunction with the opening of the physical exhibit “Bending Lines: Maps and Data from Distortion to Deception” at the Leventhal Map and Education Center in the Boston Public Library, President and Head Curator Garrett Dash Nelson will present Don’t Believe Me On This: Engaging With Truth and Skepticism Through Maps & Data.

This event will be presented on Zoom and tickets are limited to the first 95 registrants. This event is free and open to the public.

We are pleased to announce the opening of our new gallery exhibition: “Where Will We Go From Here? Travel in the Age of COVID-19.” The exhibition pairs historical maps, travel guides, and travel ephemera from our collections with contemporary reflections (crowd-sourced) on where we didn’t go in 2020-2021. This moving and reflective show asks us to consider all that we have collectively lost during the pandemic, and to think about where, as individuals and as a community, we will go from here.

Wednesday, August 4th
10:00 AM – 1:00 AM
Held in person at Osher Map Library
314 Forest Avenue, Portland

Join us for our Summer 2021 K12 Educator Open House to preview our educational activities and explore our collections.
CLICK HERE to Register

“You and I can never be satisfied with sitting down before a great human problem and saying nothing can be done. We must do something. That is the reason we are on Earth.” – W. E. B. Du Bois, 1909

Please join us via Zoom Webinar on Thursday, March 25th, from 6pm-7:30pm, as we welcome Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the W.E.B. DuBois Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In her talk, followed by a Q and A, Dr. Battle-Baptiste will connect what we describe today as anti-racist scholarship with the incredible and radical legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois.

This lecture is sponsored by the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, the Department of History, the Race and Ethnic Studies Program, and the Department of Geography and Anthropology at the University of Southern Maine.

Please note: This event will include live ASL Interpretation.

Image: DuBois and his Staff in the Editorial Offices of The Crisis, 1912. [Image courtesy of Dr. Whitney Battle-Baptiste]

Register for this event on the Osher Map Library Eventbrite page

Please join us for: “Iyoka Eli-Wihtamakʷ Kətahkinawal–This is How We Name Our Lands: Mapping Penobscot Place Names,” a panel discussion on the making of the 2016 Penobscot Nation Cultural and and Historic Preservation Department Map and Gazetteer, as we learn from Language Masters, Historians, Artists, and Cartographers, on the intersections of place, language, art, culture, and cartography.

Featuring:
Carol Dana
James E. Francis, Sr.
Gabe Paul
Margaret Pearce

According to the mapmakers, “This map is a Penobscot guide to the place names given by our ancestors. On one side are the English translations, and on the other side are the Penobscot names. A separate gazetteer is for your reference for a quick connection between Penobscot and English. The names offer a window into the past and allow us to view the landscape at the heart of our culture. The meanings of the names tell us how we interact with the shape and character of the land and how we interconnect with the rivers, lakes, wetlands, falls, eskers, meadows, and rocks across our traditional territory. They indicate where plants, animals and materials for tools are found. They inform us where and when to plant, tan hides and hold our seasonal gatherings and ceremonies. The canoe routes, gathering places, and stories show us how the place names connect and why they are located where they are. Together, place names, travel routes, and stories reveal a map given to us from the hearts of our ancestors. The last piece of the map, of course, is you.”

Register for this event on the Osher Map Library Eventbrite page

Ages 5 to 8: Learn about maps and create a map of your own imaginary land.
CLICK HERE to Register for AGES 5-8

Ages 9 to 12: Learn the ins & outs of mapmaking, from where to gather inspiration to important map features to mapping techniques to illustration how-tos.
CLICK HERE to Register for AGES 9-12

Please join us for a lecture about the Freedom Colonies Project and Atlas and a lively Q and A with Dr. Andrea Roberts. 

From 2014 to the present, The Texas Freedom Colonies Project founder, Dr. Andrea Roberts has documented Black settlement heritage and grassroots preservation practice among descendants of these historic communities. Freedom colonies (an umbrella term for Black settlements, Black towns, enclaves, or freedmen’s towns) are everywhere–hidden behind the pine curtain of the rural countryside and underneath the concrete landscapes of Houston, Dallas, Austin, and Beaumont.  Until recently, planners have overlooked unmapped freedom colonies located in rural or unincorporated areas. Inspired by her own familial roots in freedom colonies, social justice, and the book Freedom Colonies by Thad Sitton, planning scholar, Dr. Roberts makes these places visible through her participatory action and ethnographic research. The result: old voices given new purposes, old stories making new maps, old places made visible and relevant. 

Presenter: Dr. Andrea Roberts, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning and an Associate Director of the Center for Housing & Urban Development at Texas A&M University. She is also the founder of The Texas Freedom Colonies Project.

Register for this event on the Osher Map Library Eventbrite page

Register for this event on the Osher Map Library Eventbrite page

This talk will provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the New York Times used maps and geography to help readers understand the political makeup of the country during one of the most complicated election years in recent memory.

Presenter: Tim Wallace, PhD, Senior Editor for Geography, The New York Times Image courtesy of Tim Wallace, The New York Times.

Register for this event on the Osher Map Library Eventbrite page

Maps were essential instruments in two of the most ambitious challenges to American law in the twentieth century: the suffrage and prohibition campaigns. Persuasive maps have long been deployed in American history and were especially important in generating opposition to slavery in the west in the 1850s. These early examples served as a model for the prohibitionists and suffragists, who used similar visual tools to broaden support for their respective legislation in the early twentieth century. Both movements began with regional strengths—suffrage in the west, prohibition in the south—and the maps leveraged that regional power to create momentum. As suffrage and prohibition pivoted from state level campaigns to federal amendments after 1913, the maps were used to establish and amplify support across the entire nation. A closer look at the common slogan, “Make the Map All White,” reveals the degree to which both movements navigated racial and ethnic divisions in order to achieve their legislative and constitutional goals.

Presenter: Susan Schulten, PhD, Professor of History, University of Denver

Register for this event on the Osher Map Library Eventbrite page

The Holocaust was an intensely geographical event that affected people and places across Europe and beyond. This lecture will present dynamic, creative maps and other visualizations from the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, whose interdisciplinary work has helped inspire the “spatial turn” in Holocaust Studies.

Presenter: Anne K. Knowles, PhD, McBride Professor of History, University of Maine, and Co-Founder of the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative

Image credit: Graphic rendering of the universe of SS concentration and labor camps by Erik B. Steiner, reproduced from Anne Kelly Knowles, et al., “Mapping the SS Camps,” in Knowles, et al., eds., Geographies of the Holocaust (Indiana University Press 2014).

Exhibition on display in the OML Gallery, Fall 2020

Register for this event on the Osher Map Library Eventbrite page

Please join us for the opening reception and lecture of our Maine Bicentennial exhibit: “Mapping Maine: The Land and Its Peoples, 1677-1842,” curated by OML Faculty Scholar, Dr. Matthew Edney.

Explore ways to teach the history of the land that is now called Maine and its peoples through various types of primary sources. Geared towards middle and high school teachers, this workshop includes presenters from Akomawt Educational Initiative, Maine Historical Society, Maine Department of Education, and the Osher Map Library. Workshop capped at 40 participants

Presenter & Session Information:

Akomawt Educational Initiative: endawnis Spears and Chris Newell
The Akomawt Educational Initiative was born out of our professional experience in museum and classroom education. Our founders, as they worked together, saw an ever-growing need to supply regional educators with the tools to implement competent education on Native history and Native contemporary issues. We also saw the need to provide Native-sourced resources on contemporary issues affecting Native America. The Akomawt Educational Initiative is here to supply that need. Education is the tool that binds what we do with classroom educators, professors and university administrators, curators and museum professionals, but also in how Native peoples are looked at and talked about in this country. We work to create a more inclusive environment in all of the spaces we educate and make community. By honoring the voices of Native peoples in our shared educational work, we hope to create a better world for all. We hope you will join us on the snowshoe path. (See more at www.akomawt.org)

Maine Historical Society Presentations: Kathleen Neumann and Brittany Cook
Participants will learn about how to use Maine Memory Network and the research tools Maine Historical Society to access primary sources and lesson plans, with a special emphasis on what MHS has created and highlighted for Maine’s Bicentennial. Using the resources of MHS teachers (and students) can find, save, and use primary source documents of local, state, and national significance, share lesson plans and interactive classroom activities, and develop partnerships and projects with historical organizations in the community. We will also discuss opportunities for schools to visit.

Osher Map Library & Smith Center for Cartographic Education
Dr. Matthew Edney, Dr. Libby Bischof, and Renee Keul are pleased to lead participants through a exploration of the primary sources in the collections of the Osher Map Library. Participants will learn how to access and use maps and other items through the Osher Map Library’s website and the digital repositories of other cartographic archives.

Register at Eventbrite

Director of the Office of Historic and Cultural Preservation at the Penobscot Nation and tribal historian, James E. Francis Sr. (Penobscot) will unpack stories about the origin and meaning of geographic place names in what is now known as Maine from a Wabanaki perspective. Wabanaki, part of the Algonkian language group, is the first language of Maine, and each tribe has a distinct language that expresses worldview. The original words of this land – Casco, Katahdin, Kennebec, Androscoggin, Pemaquid – can be found on any map of Maine today. As settlers colonized Maine with a dominant English language system, they named towns after their founding fathers or English homelands, resulting in a situation where Wabanaki people are now living in a deeply familiar place populated with foreign words. In his presentation, Mr. Francis will illuminate the relationship between natural resources, place names, and Wabanaki worldview. And through place names, Mr. Francis reveals the continued legacies of colonial violence on the landscape as well as the continuation of Indigenous adaptation, endurance, and resistance. This is a fantastic opportunity for anyone, but particularly educators, to learn from a master historian, teacher, artist, and speaker!

The lecture will take place in Hannaford Hall in the Abromson Center on USM’s Portland Campus.

Sponsored by the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the University of Southern Maine, and the Wabanaki Studies Initiative of the Portland Public Schools.

Register at Eventbrite

Workshop led by Shawn Martel
Saturday, February 29th
12:00 AM – 1:30 PM
Osher Map Library & SCCE, 314 Forest Ave, Portland

Shawn Martel will guide attendees through an introduction to making maps of fictional worlds. This event is limited to 25 attendees, ages 12 and up.

Register at Eventbrite

On Thursday, January 23rd, 2020, from 5pm-6:30pm at Hannaford Hall, Abromson Center, USM’s Portland Campus, Passamaquoddy language teachers and linguists Roger Paul and Newell Lewey will discuss the relationship between Passamaquoddy lands, language, and worldview in a wide ranging talk that will draw on history, culture, linguistics and stories. Their talk is designed for educators and future educators of all levels (and other interested folks) looking to increase their understanding of Indigenous cultures and communities in Maine. This is a rare opportunity to learn from native speakers, master language teachers, and gifted storytellers.

This talk is co-hosted and co-sponsored by the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the University of Southern Maine and the Wabanaki Studies Curriculum Initiative of the Portland Public Schools.

This event is FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

More Information and Registration at Eventbrite

Abraham Schechter will guide attendees through an introduction to the art of calligraphy and pen-dip handwriting. This event is limited to 25 attendees, ages 12 and up.

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Please join us Thursday, December 5, 2019, as we welcome historian and author, Richard Rothstein, to speak about his 2017 book, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America.”

Racial segregation characterizes every metropolitan area in the U.S. and bears responsibility for our most serious social and economic problems – it corrupts our criminal justice system, exacerbates economic inequality, and produces large academic gaps between white and African American schoolchildren. We’ve taken no serious steps to desegregate neighborhoods, however, because we are hobbled by a national myth that residential segregation is de facto—the result of private discrimination or personal choices that do not violate constitutional rights. The Color of Law demonstrates, however, that residential segregation was created by racially explicit and unconstitutional government policy in the mid-twentieth century that openly subsidized whites-only suburbanization in which African Americans were prohibited from participating. Only after learning the history of this policy can we be prepared to undertake the national conversation necessary to remedy our unconstitutional racial landscape.

Richard Rothstein is a distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and a Fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He lives in California, where he is a Fellow of the Haas Institute at the University of California–Berkeley.

Reception will begin at 5:00pm, followed but a lecture, remarks, audience Q&A, and book signing starting at 6:00pm.

Please join us for the opening reception and lecture for our newest exhibit, “Mapping the Classroom: Teaching Geography and History in 19th and 20th Century New England.”

Reception and exhibition viewing will begin at 12:00pm in the arcade in front of the Osher Map Library & Smith Center for Cartographic Education, followed by a lecture at 2:00pm from curator and Executive Director, Libby Bischof. The lecture will take place in the University Events Room on the seventh floor of the Glickman Family Library.

Image: Medfield Grammar School, 1886. Courtesy of Historic New England

Join us on Saturday, September 28th for “The River to which I Belong: Relationships of Reciprocity and Resistance in the Waterways of the Wabanaki,” a lecture by Dr. Lisa Brooks, Professor of English and American Studies, Amherst College.

In 1739, the Wabanaki leader Polin traveled from the Presumpscot River down the coast to Boston to protest the dams that blocked the passage of the abundant fish on which his community depended. Wabanaki people had developed and sustained a dynamic, reciprocal relationship with salmon on the Presumpscot River over thousands of years, a relationship which was directly threatened by both colonial wars and colonial development, including intensive deforestation, powered by dams. Polin’s protest was not an exceptional event but part of a long-term, adaptive resistance, arising from a vast and multifaceted community within the Wabanaki homeland, which continues today.

Lisa Brooks is an Abenaki writer and scholar who lives and works in the Kwinitekw (Connecticut River) Valley. She is Professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College and is active in the Five College Native American and Indigenous Studies Program, which she chaired from 2013-2017. Along with her many accomplishments, her most recent book, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War, which begins and ends in Casco Bay, received the Bancroft Award for History and Diplomacy and the New England Society Book Award for Historical Nonfiction in 2019. As a Whiting Public Engagement Fellow, she worked with a team of students and colleagues, to develop a companion website, www.ourbelovedkin.com, which features full color digital maps of Native space. Lisa was honored in 2018 with the Maine Historical Society’s Neal Allen Award for exceptional contributions to Maine history.

The lecture will take place in Hannaford Hall in the Abromson Center on USM’s Portland Campus.

Co-Hosted by the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education, Friends of the Presumpscot River, and USM College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Science.

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Please join us at the opening reception for our newest exhibition, “All Aboard:” Riding the Rails in New England and Beyond, 1830s – 1950s.

Gallery opening and reception will begin at 5:00 pm, followed by a lecture by Maine State Historian, Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr., at 6:00 pm. The lecture will take place in the Cohen Center, Glickman Family Library room 103.

Free parking available will be available in the Bedford St. Garage.

The 2019 Mattson-New York Times lecture, “Mapmaking in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI),” will be presented by Dr. Tim Wallace, Creative Director at Descartes Labs, and recent graphics editor and geographer for the New York Times.

The art and science of mapmaking are in the midst of a giant leap forward, thanks to machine learning algorithms that are making quick work of once-impossible cartographic efforts. Because of AI, features like buildings, trees, wind turbines and wildfires can all be mapped across vast expanses and at great speed. And, lucky for us, geographers, cartographers, and storytellers are taking note of the new and evolving capabilities–and digging in.

Please join us for what promises to be a fascinating lecture.

Free and open to the public. Doors open at 5:30pm.

Image courtesy of Tim Wallace and The New York Times.