The ability of African tribal masks to convey deep and unspoken truths about the human condition is proving a remarkable teaching tool this spring in a Maine Humanities Council-led program for young women at the Maine Youth Center. Arts and humanities educator Odelle Bowman invited an expert on Nigerian masks to explain their meaning and then asked the teenagers to create masks expressing their own sometimes fragile sense of identity.

Oscar Mokeme, from Portland's Museum of African Tribal Arts, told them how in his culture masks are used both for self-awareness, Bowman reports. "as well as for looking at your dark side, that side of ourselves which, in a Jungian sense, we all have." There is "the mask that fades away your sorrow," she explains, "and the mask that gives you power."

The girls' masks will be used later this year in a performance, possibly of a Shakespearean play, says Bowman, for whom this is one more innovative technique for persuading troubled youths to reflect on their lives. The program is made possible not only by the participants in the Winter Weekends but by a grant from the River Rocks Foundation.

"A big part of what we do is trying to change how these girls operate in the world. We want them to think about the patterns of their lives and the patterns of their mothers' lives and their grandmothers' lives. They tend to be very creative young women, very good with words, but many of them accept the labels that other people pin on them and miss out on discovering the talents they really have."

Bowman says a major challenge is to persuade them "not to think of themselves as 'jailbirds,' but try instead to make the best of the time they have at the center. We encourage them not to build up more anger about their situation but to take responsibility for why they're there. We want them to feel alive instead of feeling numb." This involves, she adds, frank conversations about addictive behavior, eating disorders, family histories, even suicide. The masks provide a neutral, non-threatening way to approach such topics as body image and self-image.

Bowman is experienced in working with troubled youth, notably through her Company of Girls, a theater group for more than 50 at risk young women in Portland ages 8 to 18. Her colleagues in the Council's program at the Maine Youth Center include teachers Anita Charles, who started the project four years ago, and Kathryn Toppan. They meet one afternoon a week with 12 to 15 participants.

"Some of the girls are at the center because no one knows what to do with them," Bowman says. "They are runaways, and no one knows where to send them. But they love our program. By the second session they've established their own rules. There's no acting up. They are on their best behavior."

Maine's favorite Viking, author and traveler W. Hodding Carter, will appear this summer in his many-layered woolen seafarer's suit - a replica of what sailors wore on the North Atlantic around 1000 A.D. - to talk about Vikings and Norse maritime culture to a group of teenaged boys incarcerated at the Maine Youth Center in Portland. He will be joined by Jon Robbins, who taught English for 31 years at Wiscasset High School and who has been a keen student of Norse and Anglo-Saxon epics for much of his life.

This program is made possible by donations to the Maine Humanities Council's program for at risk youth by participants who attended the 2001 Humanities Winter Weekend in March at Bowdoin College. Entitled Beowulf and the Norse Millennium, the two-day public program attracted 115 participants for a close reading of the new Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf and discussions with experts in early medieval history and literature.

This was the fourth such "Great Books" weekend; previous topics have included The Odyssey, The Inferno, and Moby-Dick. Each year, a portion of the fee paid by participants helps underwrite the Council's reading and discussion programs for youth at risk, defined as young people who have been or are at risk of getting into trouble with the law.

This year's symposium considered, among other questions, why the most famous Anglo-Saxon epic is set in Scandinavia, rather than England, and why it seems to express both pagan and Christian values. Participants discussed the cultural implications of living in a borderland and the various theories of translation and were asked to consider why certain works, at certain times, are declared "canonical" and others are neglected.

Speakers included Daniel C. Donoghue (Harvard), Kathleen Ashley (University of Southern Maine), Michael Jones (Bates College), and Council board member John Thompson (University of Indiana, retired), in addition to Carter and Robbins.

A resident of Whitefield, Robbins now has a second career as a bookbinder. He spoke about how powerful a text Beowulf had proved in capturing the attention of high school English students and how close we had come not to having it at all - the single manuscript was almost destroyed by fire in the 18 century.

Carter, who lives in Rockport, told of his adventures in rough seas with a small crew aboard the Snorri, a Maine built replica of Leif Eriksson's ship which they sailed from Greenland to Newfoundland. Their exercise in applied archaeology helped scholars understand the practical difficulties, climatic conditions, and time factors facing the early Norse settlers of Vinland. Carter is the author of A Viking Voyage (Ballantine Books, 2000) and a book retracing the Lewis and Clark Expedition.