Who came to Maine? Why did they come? How did they get here? Where did they stay? Who did they meet? What were they seeking? Where did they find it? How did they change Maine? How did Maine change them? What infrastructure was necessary to serve them? What remains today of past tourist accommodations? What has been the outlook and interaction of local folks with visitors? How have tastes and needs and interests changed over time? These are some of the questions we will explore together this winter.
Week 1: What’s the Attraction? Maine in the Imagination; The Idea of Maine
Week 2: The Rusticators
Week 3: The Wilderness Experience
Week 4: Literary Pilgrims, Art Colonies, and Other Gatherings
Week 5: From Trains and Steamers to the Automobile
Week 6: Tourism in Midcoast Maine, Then and Now
Instructor Jayne Gordon is VP of Coastal Senior College, and a member of the Curriculum and Activities Committees. She has taught courses on Thoreau and Antislavery, Fact and Fiction in Little Women, and Transcendentalism and Education Reform. She has also taught courses on Maine in 1820, and two different courses on Maine Landscape and Literature. Jayne coordinated the special state bicentennial programs for CSC in 2019/2020, and now coordinates the Brown Bag lunchtime series.
Jayne lived in Concord, MA for close to a half century before moving to Damariscotta four years ago. She retired as Director of Education and Public Programs of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and before that was Director of the Thoreau Society and of Alcotts’ Orchard House, and Director of Education at the Concord Museum. Since 2010, she has led 10 weeklong National Endowment for the Humanities workshops for teachers from across the country on both the American Revolution and the world of Henry Thoreau. Her focus — in her career as a museum educator, administrator, and consultant, and now teaching courses in Maine — has consistently been the intersection of landscape, literature, and local history.
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