Page 11 - The Bell Tower - Winter/Spring 2014

French ImmersIon Program
UMFK’s Acadian Archives/Archives acadiennes at UMFK held its first Acadian Institute, a French immersion program for teachers of French, in late June.
Organized by Lise Pelletier, director of the Acadian Archives, and Dr. Raymond Pelletier, co-director of the Canadian-American Center in Orono. The Institute is an exploration of the geography, culture, history, literature, foods, and traditional arts of Acadia. Participants included professors of French, graduate students, and French teach- ers from the states of New York, Massachusetts, Louisiana, as well as Maine.
While in the St. John Valley, the group visited the
Acadian Archives and historic sites in Van Buren, Lille, St.
David, St. Agatha, and Fort Kent. The group also partook
in seminars about Acadian and St. John Valley history,
Acadians in Québec, the “Republic of Madawaska”, and the
boundary conflict. The program participants ate a traditional Acadian meal consisting of patates fricassées, turnips and carrots, chicken stew, ployes, sugar pie, and molasses cookies in UMFK’s Nowland Hall. During their evening at the Archives, they were entertained by Les Chanteurs Acadiens with traditional, as well as original, songs.
Before leaving Fort Kent, the group took a field trip, which included a stop at the historic Acadian Village in Caraquet, New Brunswick; to the Land of the Sagouine in Bouctouche, New Brunswick; and a meeting with famed Acadian author, France Daigle.
“FIndIng Your VoIce” monologues
UMFK hosted Finding Your Voice, a series of French-language ways there are to keep the language alive. Being a member of a
monologues, in November in Fox Auditorium. The presentation was a special collaboration between UMFK’s Acadian Archives aca- diennes and the Société Nationale de l’Acadie. Finding Your Voice was a pre-Congrès Mondial Acadien 2014 event.
The objective of the monologues was to provide a community gathering where participants listened to the Franco-American lan- guage, talked about how they felt when they speak it, and what
“Percent For art” Project In Powell hall
minority is common for many French Acadians; they have many things in common. The monologues reflected on the similarities, and brought a sense of pride to the words and to the culture.
The monologues were performed by Grégoire Chabot, a Franco- American playwright, and actor from Maine; and Anika Librette, an actress from New Brunswick, Canada.
The University held a formal dedication of a town and the beginnings of
of Developing, 1839, within the campus’ Powell Hall lower level lobby in mid- September.
Developing, 1839 is the work of artist Shoshannah White of Portland, Maine. Ms. White’s work was developed and installed under the state’s Percent for Art program.
The installation includes two painted
wall stencils and one wall mounted light
box. Photographs were drawn from the
native Fort Kent landscape. The photo-
graphs were created with a variety of
techniques including historic photographic
processes from the 1800s and were pro-
duced with contemporary technology. The
wall stencils were hand cut and painted
directly on the wall, referencing the botanical cyanotypes of the 1800s.
“When researching for this project, I found that Fort Kent was founded in 1839, the same year the invention of photography was announced,” says the artist. “I began to think about the beginnings
photography and how we use tools to capture, shape and harness what is important to us.”
Developing, 1839 was commissioned for the University of Maine at Fort Kent and the citizens of Maine under the Maine Percent for Art Act administered by the Maine Arts Commission.
The Percent for Art program within Powell Hall is related to a $1.4 million renovation of the 48-year- old dormitory and learning center, completed in 2010. The project incorporated many energy-savings components that helped the build-
ing achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification; the first public building in northern Maine to earn that designation.
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Cultural Events