What We Know, What We Wish: Maine Statehood, Historical Commemoration, and the Urgency of Public History

Cities, states, and nations are grappling with how best to commemorate historical events and anniversaries in ways that are fair, accurate, and open public dialogue about the often contested past. This volume springs from varied approaches to the historical commemoration of Maine’s state bicentennial in 2020 that involved academics, independent scholars, local and statewide cultural organizations, sovereign Wabanaki nations, and the state itself in the form of the Maine State Bicentennial Commission. While wide-ranging in their goals and values, all sought to take advantage of opportunities for collaboration to contribute to a dynamic and multi-faceted practice of public history. These new essays use Maine’s bicentennial as a focal point to put public history theory into action. Its diverse contributors share stories about the past that move beyond celebration to reflect crucial ways that the past shapes our understanding of the present and our aspirations for the future.

This volume’s core argument is that academics need to collaborate more fully with independent scholars, history-based cultural institutions, and the general public in order for public history to thrive and to improve the quality of civic life. What We Know, What We Wish does this through wide ranging essays that discuss the long statehood era in Maine from the 1770s to 1820s as well as its legacies in the state centennial commemoration of 1920 and museum exhibits from the 2020 bicentennial. The occupational and cultural diversity of the collection’s contributors together with the content of their essays offer a model for how to put public history principles into practice to foreground meaningful historical reflection that is urgently needed in divided communities around the world.

Contributors include the volume editors, as well as Maulian Bryant, Osihkiyol (Zeke) Crofton-Macdonald, Charles H. Lagerbom, Ryan LaRochelle, Stuart Kestenbaum, Michael McVaugh, Kevin D. Murphy, Micah A. Pawling, Jessica Skwire Routhier, Donald Soctomah, Laura Fecych Sprague, Alan Taylor, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

Richard W. Judd is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Maine. His most recent book is Democratic Spaces: Land Preservation in New England, 1850-2010. Judd is the author of numerous books, including Finding Thoreau: The Meaning of Nature in the Making of an Environmental Icon and Second Nature: An Environmental History of New England.

Liam Riordan is Adelaide C. and Alan L. Bird Professor of history at the University of Maine. He was the co-editor with Jerry Bannister of The Loyal Atlantic: Remaking the British Atlantic in the Revolutionary Era. He currently serves on the City of Bangor’s Historic Preservation Commission and the board of the Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust. He is a past board member of the Maine Humanities Council and past director of the Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center at the University of Maine.