This interactive presentation examines the many meanings of maple sugaring. Maple is enormously important to Vermont’s economy, ecology, and heritage. Champlain College professor Michael Lange will discuss sugaring ethnographically, based on over five years of research among sugarmakers all over the state, learning from them what sugaring really means to Vermont.

Rather than discussing the practical aspects of sugaring, such as how to tap a tree or how an evaporator works, his talk focuses on how and why maple has become so important to Vermont’s identity, and how and why it helps us shape who we are as Vermonters.

This presentation is a Vermont Humanities Council program hosted by Southern Vermont Arts Center and held in conjunction with For the Love of Vermont. This exhibition features more than 200 works of art that capture Vermont’s unique character, people, traditions, and landscapes during the early- and mid-20th century.

Dr. Michael Lange is a professor of anthropology and folklore at Champlain College in Burlington. He has authored several academic works on cultural identity. His recent work draws on research with sugarmakers across Vermont and includes “Foodie Influence on the Culinary Meanings of Maple Syrup” and “Sweet Bedfellows: Continuity, Change, and Terroir in Maple Syrup.” His most recent book, Meanings of Maple was recently named a Choice “Outstanding Academic Title.”

Event image: Bernadine Custer (1900-1991), Sugaring, watercolor, from the Lyman Orton Collection