BRUNSWICK — Thornton Oaks Retirement Community will sponsor this year’s Midcoast Senior College Summer Wisdom lecture series.

The series will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesdays in June in the Morrell Meeting Room at Curtis Memorial Library, 23 Pleasant St. All sessions are free and open to the public.

“The college has been holding classes at Thornton Oaks since the establishment of our Midcoast Senior College in 2001,” a Midcoast Senior College release states. “Thornton Oaks residents have expressed their interest in continued learning and enjoy the expanded opportunities to explore topics with peers, taught by peers. Senior College faculty Barclay Palmer and Charlie Plummer have taught multiple classes at Thornton Oaks and Thornton Oaks residents have taught senior college classes.”

This year’s Summer Wisdom theme is “Art and Literature in Maine.”

The schedule is as follows:

— June 6: “Watercolors, Awash in Color and Light- Modern American Art and Maine,” Donna Cassidy, professor of American and New England studies and art history at the University of Southern Maine, will focus her lecture on how, in the late 19th and early 20th century, watercolor moved from the domain of the amateur painter to become a prominent medium for innovative, expressive art. This talk will explore how it came to center stage in New York galleries and in the work of artists picturing Maine such as Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth.

— June 13 “Remembered Splendor, Social Class and Sartorial Imagery in The Scarlet Letter,” Bill Watterson is the Edward Little Professor of English Language and Literature at Bowdoin College. His lecture discusses Hester Prynne’s origin in the decayed gentry of England, which labeled her with a class identity in the vulgar and prudish environment of the puritanical Massachusetts Bay Colony in which she lived, and for which she paid a high price.

— June 20 “Ogunquit Art Colony: A History of Art and Lineage,” There was an explosion of art and artists in Maine during the early part of the 20th century. Prominent among them was the Ogunquit Art Colony, which had a significant influence on the direction of modern art in this country. Ron Cruzan, director of the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, will be the guest speaker.

— June 27 “Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Then and Now,” Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, written in Brunswick, has had a dramatic afterlife. The lecture will examine its impact on the development of African-American literature from the 1890s to the work of James Baldwin in the mid- 20th century. Tess Chakkalakal is associate professor of Africana Studies and English at Bowdoin College.

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