Mother-daughter poet-artists Adele Ne Jame and Melissa Chimera will present The University of Toledo’s 22nd Annual Maryse and Ramzy Mikhail Memorial Lecture.

The free, public lecture titled “The Lebanese Diaspora, Loss and Recovery, a Personal Retrospective,” which will include a recitation of Ne Jame’s poetry and images from Chimera’s paintings, is 7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 18, in the Law Center McQuade Auditorium and will be livestreamed on the University’s YouTube channel.

Hawaii natives Ne Jame and Chimera combine their expertise to represent species extinction, globalization and human migration. Their work has been displayed at the Sharjah, United Arab Emirates International Biennial in 2009 and most recently at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Mich.

An award-winning poet, author and professor emeritus at Hawaii Pacific University, Ne Jame has taught poetry at universities since 1990 and previously served as poet-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, an Elliot Cades Award for Literature, a Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize and a Robinson Jeffers Poetry Prize among many others.

In addition to being an artist, Chimera has worked as a conservationist in Hawaii since 1996. Her work, which relies heavily on her research about species extinction, human migration and globalization, has been on display across the U.S., Asia and the Middle East. Chimera is this year’s artist in residence at Anchorage Museum in Anchorage, Alaska, displaying her artwork representing immigrant narratives. Her work resides in the collections of the Arab American National Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art and the Hawai‘i State Foundation of Culture and the Arts.

“As the college’s longest-running endowed lecture series, the Mikhail is a very special event each year,” said Dr. Melissa Gregory, interim dean of the College of Arts and Letters. “The lecture’s annual focus on Arab culture makes it a great fit for the Toledo community, given our city’s vibrant Arab-American community and our rich history of Arabic immigration.”

Doors will open at 6 p.m. with first-come, first-served seating. Event parking is available in Area 12. A visitor parking permit is required to park on campus at all times. A temporary visitor permit can be purchased online in advance of the event.

The free, public lecture has been a continuous event at UToledo since 2001 and is sponsored by the College of Arts and Letters and the Mikhail Endowment Fund, which was originally established through a donation from the Mikhail family to honor the work and contributions of Maryse Mikhail and her involvement in educational, philanthropic and interfaith organizations.

The fund supports an annual lecture dealing with Arab culture, history, politics, economics and other aspects of life in the Middle East, including issues of peace and justice.

More information is available on the event website.

Those who wish to make a tax-deductible contribution to the fund can go to the UToledo Foundation website.