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USM’s ‘07-‘08 Trustee Professor Writing New Book about Novel “Peyton Place"

November 9, 2007

Ardis Cameron, professor of American and New England Studies, has been named the University of Southern Maine’s 2007- 2008 Trustee Professor. The University of Maine System Board of Trustees established Trustee Professorships in 1998 to reward excellence among faculty members in each of the University of Maine System campuses.

Each Trustee Professor receives funding and release support their research. Cameron will use these resources to complete a book about the novel “Peyton Place,” which she sees as an artifact of New England culture. This book, “Tales of ‘Peyton Place’: The Biography of a Big Book,” will build on Cameron’s longstanding fascination with the novel and its author, New Hampshire’s Grace Metalious.

USM’s American and New England Studies program is an interdisciplinary course of study leading to a Master of Arts degree in which Cameron has taught since 1988. In addition to several scholarly books, she wrote the introductions to both University Press Of New England’s editions of “Peyton Place” and “Return to Peyton Place.” Recently, she presented the lecture, “The Other Side of Writing: Peyton Place and Place of Writing in Working Class Life and Culture” at the annual convention of the Organization of American Historians, and was on a panel last June in Camden, Maine, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the filming of the movie “Peyton Place.”

The University of Southern Maine is the comprehensive metropolitan university in Maine, serving some 10,400 students with campuses in Portland, Gorham and Lewiston-Auburn.  Founded in 1878, USM is a member of the University of Maine System, and currently offers over 50 majors and more than 40 academic programs.  For more information, see: http://www.usm.maine.edu.

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