Cary Library to host streaming lecture

Cary Library will host a streamed lecture on Monday from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on the topic of “2012 and the Maya: Past Predictions and Future Histories.”
UNE’s Center for Global Humanities has announced speakers for the 2012-2013 year, its fourth year of programming. The Center is a public forum designed to introduce students and members of the public to the exploration of the great issues facing humanity today in partnership with the Maine Humanities Council, and also through an agreement with Euro-Arab Foundation Institute.
Cary Library will offer pre- and post-lecture discussion around the lecture, focusing on David Carey Jr.’s Engendering Mayan History: Mayan Women as Agents and Conduits of the Past, 1875-1970. With Dec. 21, 2012 fast approaching, attention on the Maya and their alleged doomsday prediction is growing.
With poverty and violence increasing in Guatemala, tourism and foreigners increasingly dominating Yucatán, and militarized security and the forces of globalization shaping even Chiapas—the home of the revolutionary Zapatista movement—many Mayas have good reason to hope for dramatic change.
After briefly examining the evidence in Maya calendrical systems for millenarian predictions, we will explore more recent Maya histories and the ways indigenous women and men reconstruct their own pasts and forge their own futures in nations that often celebrate their ancestors but discriminate against their contemporaries.
For more information, call the library at 532-1302.