Barry Rodrigue, Associate Professor, Arts and Humanities
B.A. (1974) Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington: Anthropology, Biology.
M.A. (1993) University of Maine, Orono, Maine: History.
Ph.D. (1999) Université Laval, Québec City, Québec: Geography.
Ph.D. (2000) University of Maine, Orono, Maine: Historical Archeology, History.
Barry Rodrigue was born and raised in Maine. He lived in Alaska for twenty years,
making a living in the commercial fishing industry as a cannery worker, mariner and
biologist, as well as conducting research in rural Alaska, California and Central America.
He worked with the indigenous communities of Alaska. When not at sea, Barry served as
founding editor of the journal, Archipelago, which produced one of the largest collections
of regional folk music in the United States for the legendary Folkways Records (available
through the Smithsonian Institution’s Global Sound series). His work has won awards
from National Public Radio and the American Museum of Natural History.
A Fulbright Scholar, Barry studied in Ireland, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Alaska, as
well as in Maine and Canada. He is trained in cultural research as an archeologist,
geographer, historian, biologist and ethnographer. He served as a Research Geographer
for the Centre interuniversitaire d’études québécoises (Interuniversity Center for Québec
Studies) and the Laboratoire de géographie historique (Laboratory of Historical
Geography) at Laval University in Québec City before joining the faculty of the Arts &
Humanities Program at the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College.
His research focuses on World Studies, and he is active in developing the new field of
Big History or Macrohistory. Barry also serves as the Scholar for USM’s FrancoAmerican Collection, and is director of French North American Studies and co-director
of Global Studies. A book for which he was an editor and principal writer, Histoire
régionale de la Beauce-Etchemin-Amiante, was runner-up for the prestigious Sir John A.
MacDonald Prize of the Canadian Historical Association in 2003. He presents at
conferences sponsored by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Praxis Education
and Research Group in the post-Soviet area, as well as being involved in support of the
Victor Serge Public Library (Moscow) and an ecological field camp in Crimea (Ukraine).
A strong advocate for interdisciplinary studies and student-centered learning, Barry
involves students in real-life projects and professional field research. His classes perform
archeological surveys for the Maine State Historic Preservation Commission, during one
of which the students unraveled the mystery of two bodies found in Auburn from 200
years ago. He and his students have organized conferences of the world’s leading
authorities on French North America, which contributed to anthologies in which Barry
has published, Vision et Visages (2001) and Franco-Amérique (2008). Students also
worked on his recent book, Voyages: A Maine Franco-American Reader (2007), which
Barry co-edited with Nelson Madore of Thomas College in Waterville.
Barry also has brought many speakers, performers and artists to USM, including
folksingers John McCutcheon and Utah Phillips, Archbishop Lazar Puhalo of the
Orthodox Church of North America, Somali cinematographer Maady Mahweel, FrancoAmerican novelist Clark Blaise and ethno-musicologist Andy Cohen. He and his students
began the annual celebration of International Human Rights Day and of Earth Day at
USM-LAC.
Barry is a founder and faculty advisor to the International Student Organization of
Lewiston-Auburn (ISOLA), one of the most active such student organizations in the State
of Maine. They have held seminars with activists from around the world, round-table
discussions with leaders of a variety of political parties, and town-meetings to discuss
referendum issues and candidates’ points-of-view. Their projects have included the
gathering of supplies for a primary school in Botswana with the help of the U.S. State
Department and established a treaty of exchange with the University of KwaZulu-Natal
in Durban (South Africa). They recently founded the Métis Alliance of Maine.
Most recently the students have been involved with humanitarian assistance for
Chechnya and the north Caucasus region of Russia, one of the most war-torn regions on
the planet. As a part of this effort, the Maine State Legislature passed a resolution on
Russia and the Caucasus that Barry wrote and Legislator Elaine Makas sponsored (Elaine
is also a professor at USM-LAC). They are now involved with the U.S. Congress and
Senate in furthering this work.
Barry lives in Bath (Maine) with his wife Penelope, son Kenai, grandson Dimitri, and
their two dogs–Yukon and Cherry Blossom. He is a military veteran and a member of
Veterans for Peace, a scuba diver, and spends a lot of time hiking in the forest in the
course of his work. He plays Highland and Lowland bagpipes, reads science fiction, and
writes both fiction and non-fiction.