Faculty
Kristen Case has published essays on Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William and Henry James, and is the author of the book American Poetry and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011). Kristen’s first poetry collection, Little Arias was published by New Issues Press in 2015. Her second collection, Principles of Economics, was published by Switchback Books in 2019. She is the recipient of the Maine Literary Award in Poetry (2016 and 2020), a MacDowell Fellowship, and the UMF Trustee Professorship. She is co-Director of the Monson Arts Seminar and Director of Thoreau’s Kalendar: A Digital Archive of the Phenological Manuscripts of Henry David Thoreau. Her current book project is Keeping Time: Henry David Thoreau’s Kalendar (forthcoming, Milkweed Editions). She is Scholar Research and Grants Manager at the Mitchell Institute, Maine’s premier Scholarship organization.
Aaron Wyanski is a composer, pianist, and educator who might be the one person on the planet that has had work premiered at Carnegie Hall and destroyed an instrument onstage at legendary punk venue CBGB and backed a Sinatra impersonator at a Florida aquarium. Wyanski combines all of this wide-ranging and stylistically diverse experience into a deeply personal creative practice exploring memory, perspective, and vulnerability. His music has been featured at New Music Miami, the Hartford New Music Festival, and Five Points Center for the Visual Arts, and he has been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Performers who have commissioned and/or premiered Wyanski’s works include: Duo Refracta, the Amaranth Quartet, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Robert Frankenberry, Krista Kopper, Roger Zahab, Yoon Sun Choi, and Jacob Sacks. Wyanski is Assistant Professor of Music Composition at the University of Maine at Farmington and co-Director of the Monson Arts Seminar.
Noelle Dubay is Student Services Coordinator for Upward Bound at the University of Maine Farmington. They completed their BFA at UMF in 2012 and their PhD in English at Johns Hopkins University in 2020. Their research project, “Works like a Charm: The Occult Resistance of Nineteenth-Century American Literature,” argues that occult practices and their representations in literature have been key to the consolidation of and resistance to racialized power throughout Atlantic history.
Noelle has designed and taught various courses in literature and writing for diverse educational settings. They previously served as Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow with JHU’s University Writing Program, as Visiting Assistant Professor of American Literature and Editing/Professional Writing at UMF, as Bridge Instructor for UMF’s Upward Bound summer program, and they’ve coordinated community classes and film series in Baltimore, MD, and Farmington, ME.