Dr. Liam Riordan, of the University of Maine’s History Department, will be this year’s Deborah Pulliam Memorial Lecturer at the Castine Historical Society
Dr. Riordan is also Director of the University of Maine’s Humanities Center, one of the state’s leading advocate for the promotion of the Humanities in American education. His remarks will be preceded by a short video narrated by the American actor John Lithgow, entitled “The Heart of the Matter”, which makers the case for the Humanities in general. Speaking on the video are David Brooks, Yo-Yo Ma, Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, and Ken Burns, among others.
Dr. Riordan hopes to use the video, as well as his own thoughts, to engage the audience in a full-fledged discussion of trends in American education, particularly with reference to the so-called “STEM” subjects: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
Dr. Riordan will be speaking at 7pm on Thursday, August 4 in the Delano Auditorium of the Maine Maritime Academy. The title of his lecture will be “The Promise and the Need: Humanities in the 21st Century.”
The annual Pulliam Memorial Lectures were established in 2008 as a tribute to the late Deborah Pulliam, a longtime philanthropist and benefactor of the Castine Historical Society.
