Great Falls Forum with Andrea Breau

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The 2020-2021 season of the Great Falls Forum continues on Thursday, February 18, featuring Youth Studies scholar Dr. Andrea Breau, on the topic “It’s a lot of pressure for us to understand this stuff: Lessons About Race and Place from Lewiston’s Teenagers.” The program will take place from 12 noon to 1 PM virtually via Zoom and streamed to the Lewiston Public Library Facebook page.

In the past two decades, there has been much media attention devoted to Lewiston’s rapid demographic shift and, depending on the source, either its stubborn “race problem” or its thriving “multicultural community.” In these stories, youth and their behavior serve as a primary gauge for diversity—especially teenagers. They are cast as either the present problem because they “can’t get along” or as a sign that hope is on the horizon due to activities that bridge racial and cultural difference. But what is known about the lives of youth, and their own understandings of race, beyond these media stereotypes? In her Great Falls Forum talk, Andrea will discuss her research with the first generation of white and Black youth coming of age together in the context of Lewiston as a historically and still predominantly white town. By examining the ways that youth themselves draw on place to make meaning of their past, present, and future selves, her research challenges the harmful yet commonplace belief that youth are either those who need to “be saved” or those who will “save us all.”

Andrea received her B.A. from Colby College and her Ph.D. in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies from The Ohio State University, where she taught for nearly a decade. Her work focuses on the racial, gender, sexual, and place-based identities of teenagers in Lewiston. She is especially interested in how Lewiston’s young white and migrant communities interact. Andrea’s deep Maine roots led her to her research in Lewiston, where she currently resides with her husband and daughter. Andrea has worked for both Lewiston Public Schools and the Lewiston Public Library, and most recently for the Diverse BookFinder at Bates College, where she coordinated the launch of an online tool to help public librarians across the U.S. diversify their children’s book collections. Andrea currently sits on the Androscoggin County Committee of the Maine Community Foundation and the Diverse BookFinder Advisory Council.

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The Great Falls Forum is a monthly, brown-bag speaker series featuring statewide and regional leaders in public policy, business, academia and the arts. Admission is free to all Forum events. The Forum is a co-sponsorship of the Sun Journal, Bates College, and LPL. Recordings of the virtual Great Falls Forum programs will be archived on the Library’s YouTube channel following the live event.

For more information, please contact the Lewiston Public Library at 513-3135 or LPLReference@lewistonmaine.gov.