History Commons^™

Maine Bisexual People's Network (Mbpn), Kat Hartford

POP 101: Queering the Archives

This presentation attempts to construct a history of the Maine Bisexual People’s Network (MBPN), drawing from primary sources from USM’s Special Collections, specifically from the LGBTQ+ Collection in the Jean Byers Sampson Center. Information includes when, why, and how the MBPN was founded, who founded the organization, important events in the MBPN’s history, and the experience of bisexuality for Mainers. Also included are images of the primary sources, such as clips from Our Paper: Serving the Alternative Community, a publication that served queer Mainers. While the MBPN was just one of several examples from Maine’s history of LGBTQ+ organizations, the …

"The Struggle For The Supremacy Of The Coast": Baseball And Identity In Boothbay Harbor, Maine, Christopher G.F. Hoffman Ma

All Student Scholarship

During the summer months of the first decade of the twentieth century, the Boothbay Harbor region was invigorated with baseball fever. By 1900, Americans had come to understand baseball as its national game, and Boothbay Harbor discovered and nourished the game in the final decades of the nineteenth century. But as the twentieth century began, baseball became more than a game: it was a business, a spectacle, and an opportunity for inhabitants of the region to define themselves based upon the team they supported.

Fin De Siecle Diana: The New Woman Discovers The Maine Woods, Nan Cumming Ma

All Student Scholarship

Women's roles were in flux during the late nineteenth centuury and early twentieth century. Faced with neurasthenia and other health problems, many upper and middle class women accepted the suggestions of doctors and social reformers that they take more exercise, usually in the form of calisthenics and bicycling.The quest for genuine experience in the increasingly artificial and overpopulated cities brought many male sports to Maine's untamed woods and, by 1890, women joined them in increasing numbers.

This study explores the attraction that the Maine wilderness held for upper and middle class Victorian women.