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Research and Scholarly Work

Elizabeth Toth and Linda Aldoory Win the Outstanding Book PRIDE Award for 2021
10/15/21

PRIDE Awards – Outstanding Book/Monograph:

Aldoory, L, & Toth, E. (2021). The Future of Feminism in Public Relations and Strategic Communication: A Socio-Ecological Model of Influences. Rowman & Littlefield.

 

 

The PRIDE awards are given by the PR Division of the National Communication Association, which is comprised primarily of faculty in the area of communication. Winners have proven to be some of the seminal works in the field.

The awards date back to at least 1989 and are designed to recognize achievement in public relations research. The number of categories has varied over the years, but some version of the best book/monograph and best research article have existed since the start. Some years include a best PR textbook category.

The winners are determined by a committee of three NCA PR Division members. Two are elected at the business meeting the preceding year. The third member, and chair, is the immediate past chair of the division. The committee automatically reviews all articles in Public Relations Review and Journal of Public Relations Journal, but accepts nominations from other journals.

 

NSF Grant Funds Research at Planet Word Museum
10/8/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Starting next summer, University of Maryland language scholars will have a new place to conduct their research and a new source of participants for their studies: the Planet Word museum in downtown Washington, D.C. and its visitors.

A new $440,000 grant from the National Science Foundation funds a partnership between UMD, Howard University and Gallaudet University and Planet Word to advance research and public understanding about the science of language.

For example, experiments may look at what non-signing people believe about what makes various American Sign Language signs hard or easy to learn, why it’s easier to understand the speech of people we know rather than strangers, or whether we think differently when reading a text message versus formal writing.

The experiments will be interactive and fun, said Assistant Research Professor in UMD’s Maryland Language Science Center Charlotte Vaughn, who is leading the project.

“Language is already the topic of conversation at the museum, so there’s an unparalleled opportunity for our studies and activities about language science to be a seamless and memorable part of visitors’ experience,” she said.

Planet Word, opened in late 2020 and housed in the historic Franklin School building, aims to show the depth, breadth and fun of words, language and reading. Faculty from UMD’s Maryland Language Science Center, the Department of Linguistics, the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences and the Department of English were involved in shaping the museum’s vision and programming. It has been a hope of the museum’s founder, Ann Friedman, to also have it be a space for research and discovery.

In addition to Vaughn, the lead project team includes Associate Professor in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences Yi Ting Huang and postdoc affiliate in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences Julie Cohen at UMD, as well as Assistant Professor of Psychology at Howard University Patrick Plummer and Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Gallaudet University Deanna Gagne. Other personnel include Jan Edwards and Rochelle Newman, both professors in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences at UMD; Colin Phillips, professor in the Department of Linguistics at UMD; and Laura Wagner, professor in the Department of Psychology at the Ohio State University.

Vaughn said the opportunity to partner with a historically Black university and the world's only liberal arts university for Deaf and hard-of-hearing people will allow for significant progress on issues central to the field.

“Engaging the diverse Planet Word audience in our activities will make our research stronger, more representative, and more widely accessible,” Vaughn said. “At the same time, our collaborative partnership, plus offering unique research experiences to students underrepresented in the field, works toward diversifying the future of the language sciences.”

The grant also funds the development of a training course in public-facing research, which will be offered for the first time at Planet Word next summer. Though offered through UMD, the course will be open to students from across the region. Those who take part will help lead the research studies, set to begin around the same time.

“Participating in public-facing research is an excellent opportunity for students,” said Huang. “Communicating science to broad audiences involves developing ways to hook people into engaging with questions when they have limited familiarity with the topic and unraveling scientific puzzles through the format of conversations.”

Digging Into Digital Lit, Bit by Bit
10/14/21

By Rosie Grant

The key to unlocking the secrets of a deceased poet’s writing process might not be found in their tattered spiral notebook or on the back of a restaurant napkin—not if they composed their works during the digital age. In that case, it might be buried in an obsolete Apple HyperCard file.

No one using an up-to-date Mac could hope to access the data, but if you’re Matthew Kirschenbaum, you simply dust off your decades-old Macintosh SE and let the literary sleuthing begin.

Kirschenbaum, a professor of English and digital studies at the University of Maryland, is a Sherlock Holmes in the burgeoning field that encompasses literature, the rise of digital media and how texts are written and revised. His new book, “Bitstreams: The Future of Digital Literary Heritage,” explores how the process of making literature has evolved, as well as the common threads that connect digital works to thousands of years of human creativity.

Kirschenbaum, an affiliated faculty member with the College of Information Studies at Maryland and a member of the teaching faculty at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School, is also the co-founder and co-director of UMD’s BookLab, a makerspace, studio, library and press devoted to the codex book.

On Oct. 20, the English department will host a virtual book launch of “Bitstreams” featuring a discussion between Kirschenbaum and Professor of English and Director for the African American Digital Humanities initiative Marisa Parham. Ahead of the launch, we spoke with Kirschenbaum about how digital books are made and can be preserved.

Let’s start with the book’s title. What is a bitstream, and what does it have to do with literature?
That’s a word that originates in computing. A bitstream is a sequence or string of ones and zeroes—bits—that make up a digital object, like a file. Nowadays literary activity is also part of the bitstream; so, a writer writes a novel on their laptop, they email it to their editor, they and their editor go back and forth over email with track changes and then the book moves into production. All of this composition, revision, editing and layout is digital. It’s only at the very end of this process that the book stops being a bitstream and becomes a physical thing when it's finally printed.

How has this evolution impacted literary studies and literary research?
We’re all used to the idea of going to a library, an archive, seeing books and manuscripts and seeing where the author crossed out one word and wrote in a different word instead. We need to understand how to do that now in a world overtaken by bitstreams. How do we ensure that when the author sits down to write a novel on their laptop, those files on their hard drive are saved and eventually wind up at a place like the Folger Shakespeare Library where they can be cared for by archivists and curators, where they can be accessible 50 or 100 years later when someone like me comes along and wants to do literary research?

You tell the story of your work unearthing the poems of William Dickey as a sort of case study of how to do that detective work. Tell us about that process.
William Dickey, who was a recipient of the Yale Younger Poets Award, died at the height of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco in the early 1990s. Before his death he was experimenting with digital poetry. As part of the research that went into the book, I was able to recover and publish online for the first time 14 of his digital poems that had never been seen before. I recovered them from the collections of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities here at UMD in the literary papers of a writer named Deena Larsen, who was a friend, collaborator and confidante of Dickey’s, and therefore had copies of his poems on her diskettes. His poems were written in Apple’s HyperCard software, which ceased distribution back in 2004. Fortunately, I have a Macintosh SE of my own that was able to run the original diskettes and view the poems and then migrate them to more modern media.

In “Bitstreams” you also describe accessing Toni Morrison’s floppy discs. What was that like? 
Yes, I traveled to Princeton, where Toni Morrison taught for many years and where her papers are housed. Among her papers are four floppy discs from the 1980s, when she was writing the novel “Beloved.” Among other things, I found a file named BELOVED3.DOC, which showed a variation on the book’s famous last lines not otherwise represented in the other draft materials. She wrestled with those final lines of the novel for a long time, until the very last minute. It felt very meaningful to me to see into Morrison's creative process like that and look over her shoulder, if you will.

How does your work at BookLab relate to the book?
I’m a professor interested in the cutting edge but I also enjoy old books and metal type and getting my hands inky. Because to me it’s all the same thing. Whether it’s computer code or metal type, it's still a process. You’re still doing something with your hands, you're still making something. I want to understand how books are being made and manufactured in 2021 and be able to apply the same sort of rigor we are used to applying to understanding the makings of physical things to digital objects.

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The Department of English will host a virtual book launch for “Bitstreams” on Wednesday, Oct. 20, from noon-1 p.m. Register here.

Why We Must Hear the Warning in Frederick Douglass' 'Sources of Danger to the Republic' Today
9/24/21

BY ROBERT S. LEVINE

Robert S. Levine is Distinguished University Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, and author of The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, available now from W. W. Norton & Company.

On Jan. 3, 1867, nearly two years after the end of the Civil War, Frederick Douglass stood before a full house of hundreds of African Americans at Philadelphia’s National Hall. He had been invited to speak in a Black lecture series organized by William Still, famous for his work on the Underground Railroad. As recounted by the Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, the celebrated African American singer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield performed several arias before Douglass’s introduction. Douglass then took the stage to speak on the “Sources of Danger to the Republic.” The Telegraph reported that he “was frequently interrupted by applause, and evidently made the best effort of his life.”

“Sources of Danger to the Republic” is indeed one of Douglass’s greatest speeches, and it deserves to be better known for its ruminations on the precarious state of democracy in post-Civil War America. Douglass delivered the speech in the midst of the battle over civil rights for Black people, addressing the threat posed to the nation by a racist President who refused to give them the full rights of citizenship. Douglass’s warning about antidemocratic authoritarianism during the early years of Reconstruction resonates in our own time as well.

The “Sources of Danger” speech was prompted by the reactionary policies of Andrew Johnson, who assumed the presidency on April 15, 1865, after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Shortly after taking office, Johnson pardoned former Confederate leaders, and over the four years of his presidency he vetoed all legislation that sought to expand the rights of African Americans. (Many of those vetoes were overturned by the Radical Republicans and their allies.) In particular, Johnson opposed measures that granted African Americans the right to vote. His reactionary policies contributed to massacres of Black people in Memphis and New Orleans during the spring and summer of 1866. Appalled by the killing of over 100 Black people in those cities, Douglass linked the murders to the disempowerment promoted by Johnson. “Disenfranchisement means New Orleans; it means Memphis,” he said. In this way Douglass called attention to the always simmering possibilities for violence that accompanied the suppression of voting rights.

But Douglass was also angry at the Radical Republicans, who claimed to support African Americans, but attempted to stop Douglass from attending a public meeting of Republicans in September 1866 because they didn’t want their party to be perceived as “Black.” Douglass was also distraught that the Republicans’ proposed Fourteenth Amendment, which gave Blacks birthright citizenship, failed to include the right to vote. Without the vote, Douglass bitterly remarked, “my citizenship is but an empty name.”

Convinced that Reconstruction was at a crossroads, Douglass composed “Sources of Danger to the Republic” during late 1866 and gave its first full presentation in January 1867 to the Black lecture series in Philadelphia. In all versions of the speech, Douglass asked: What happens when a “bad man,” as he termed Andrew Johnson, occupies the White House? Douglass knew that Johnson was hardly the first “bad man” to assume the presidency and would not be the last. Before the packed house at National Hall, Douglass made a surprising claim: the principle source of danger to the Republic was the Constitution itself, which, by failing to put a significant check on executive power, “put the liberties of the American people at the mercy of a bad and wicked President and his Cabinet.”

Douglass admired the U.S. Constitution, regularly calling it a “liberty document.” But it had “defects and errors,” he claimed, because the framers mistakenly invested the President with “kingly powers.” Key to Douglass’s speech was his elaboration of exactly how the Constitution enabled a President to thwart democracy.

Douglass objected, first of all, to the “immense patronage” that the Constitution put at the President’s disposal—hundreds of millions of dollars that he could use to appoint someone to a government job “because of his political opinions, not for any fitness for the position.” Patronage power was potentially corrupting, both of the President and his appointees, Douglass explained, for “it holds out a temptation to a man to agree with the President, not because of the wisdom and justice of his position, but because in that way he can get something in exchange for his soul.”

Second, Douglass objected to the Constitution’s conception of a presidential veto that could only be overturned by a two-thirds vote of Congress. Placing so much power in the hands of the President, he insisted, undercut the democratic spirit of Congress. In a similar vein, he argued that the presidency should be a single-term position. Under the current system, he remarked, the President “is partly President, and partly chief of the Presidential party.” For that reason, the President will always be tempted to serve himself more than the country.

Third, Douglass took special exception to the President’s pardoning power. The framers’ decision to make the President the sole arbiter on federal pardons in effect gave the President “a coin with which to traffic in treason.” Knowing that he could pardon anyone serving his interests, the President could use that power to gain “co-operation and alliance, instead of loyal obedience to the laws of the land.” Douglass summed up the problem: “A Government that cannot hate traitors, cannot love and respect loyal men.”

Douglass believed that the defects in the Constitution could be fixed through amendments that cut back on patronage, limited the pardoning power, changed the votes needed to overturn a presidential veto, made the presidency a one-term position and got rid of the vice-presidency (the office that enabled Johnson’s presidency). “Laughter and cheers,” according to the reporter for the Telegraph, greeted Douglass’s remark that “we have had back luck with Vice-Presidents.”

Douglass despised Johnson. But even more crucial to “Sources of Danger” was his concern that Americans risked losing that which they most valued: “democracy in its purity.” For Douglass, democracy was about voting rights. Making clear that the lack of Black suffrage had much to do with Johnson, but was not exclusively Johnson’s fault, Douglass proclaimed: “The fact is that the ballot-box, upon which we have relied as a protection from the passions of the multitude, has failed us, broken down under us.” Most Black people in America, whether in the North or South, simply didn’t have the right to vote. In his speech at National Hall, Douglass called on Black people to “hate as you love,” extolling anger as a way to create community and prompt political action. One month later, when he gave a slightly revised version of the speech to a white audience in St. Louis, Douglass concluded quite differently, telling the whites in attendance that “this matter of Reconstruction” can be left to the “constructive talent of this Anglo-Saxon race.” He continued to deliver versions of “Sources of Danger” through 1867; it was one of his most popular speeches.

With the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, giving Black men the right to vote, Douglass got what he wanted, but by the late 1870s Black people found it nearly impossible to vote in the South. Douglass anticipated these problems in “Sources of Danger” when he instructed Johnson and other white racists: “Drive no man from the ballot-box because of his color.” Douglass’s speech inspired people in 1867 and has much to say to us today, not just about the dangers posed by executive power, whether of Presidents or governors, but about what it means for the character of the nation to restrict the voting rights of African Americans and other people of color. The speech is a prophetic warning from the past about how the powerful can use the tools of power to shut down democracy. Just as important, it advocates resistance in order to preserve what Douglass termed “our beautiful republican institutions.”

All the Screen’s a Stage: A Transmedia Manifesto
9/22/21

BY 

This is not a manifesto for digital theatre. Theatre has used digital technology on- and offstage for over a century, so can we please move on? This is a manifesto for the future of anti-racist, anti-oppressive, accessible theatre with the assistance of creative digital practices. The emergence of digital platforming over the pandemic provides us the opportunity to redefine and recontextualize space, gathering, inclusion, and connectivity that tears at the fabric of gatekeeping. Not all of these practices are effective, but they are irrefutably expansive.

Jared Mezzocchi performs “Someone Else’s House.”

You see, the term “digital theatre” does not propose a new form of theatremaking. It instead refers to a vision of technological extensionism that can aid the dismantling of white supremacy and oppressive practices that the industry is now belatedly reckoning with. Can we, the theatre industry, allow these newly discovered digital resources to expand our audiences, democratize our processes, create a sustainable discipline amid climate change, and revitalize our gatherings and civic duties as theatre practitioners in a (hopefully) post-pandemic, technologically saturated culture?

That is the question digital theatre asked our industry over the last 18 months of this multifaceted plague. In March 2020, the live theatre industry shut down due to COVID-19. It was a moment of subtraction and erasure for those who were currently working in the field. It also was a great equalizer, as those who once could create theatre were suddenly just as shut out as those who never could. In this moment of pause, technologists stepped forward with innovative opportunities to create, collaborate, and connect once again. They took a technologically foreign, ever-expansive frontier and helped define it into an accessible, site-specific platform: the digital online. Their work raised the question: Does theatre need an in-person venue to maintain its identity as theatre?

Answers came in many forms. Geffen Playhouse produced seven fully digital online shows (including my show, directed by Margot Bordelon, Someone Else’s House) as a part of their Stayhouse Series, which brought in live audiences to nightly performances who were mailed a package as a participatory element that was interactive. Joshua Gelb’s Theater In Quarantine produced several livestreams from a closet in his apartment (winning a Drama League Award). Fake Friends’ This American Wife and Circle Jerk (a Pulitzer finalist!) were live, studio-style experimental performances, blending livestream and Twitter as means of engaging their audiences in real time. In addition to Someone Else’s House, I helped create live works like Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm (co-directed with Elizabeth Williamson through Theatreworks Hartford, TheatreSquared Arkansas, The Civilians), Caryl Churchill’s What If If Then (co-directed with Les Waters through NAATCO), and Manic Monologues (an interactive web portal with performances by 20-plus actors, directed by Elena Araoz through Princeton University and McCarter Theater). Many of these experimented with live performance, live design, live audiences both visible and hidden, and with various forms of interactivity. Many more offered on-demand streaming, allowing audiences to view the work in an asynchronous way as well. 

As these digital works were shared, a debate began. Many argued that the identity of theatre inherently belonged to a live, in-person engagement among gathered audiences and storytellers within a shared space. Many argued that digital theatre was not that.

Taking these one by one: If liveness is the essence of theatre, the digital can maintain this identity by livestreaming. If gathering is the essence of theatre, the digital can maintain this identity through myriad softwares and forums: Zoom, Twitch, Discord, Unity, Virtual Reality, Vimeo, Twitter, TikTok, etc. 

Mia Katigbak in ‘Russian Troll Farm.’

The argument that shared space is essential to theatre is closer to the heart of what splinters the theatre community. Many feel that theatre is defined by bodies—those of artists and audiences—occupying the same physical space. This argument is centered around the importance of the ability to experience a live event in the same room as others. In 2017, the University College of London published a study presenting that when we witness a live event together, our heartbeats synchronize, and everyone in the room is, in a sense, feeling the same thing together. This powerful phenomenon is often referred to as “sacred” and “vital.” As a theatregoer myself, I agree: It is very much sacred and vital to share a space with other heartbeats that become synchronized with my own heart as actions play out in front of our eyes in the same room at the same time. It is profoundly moving.

But digital theatre does not refute that, nor does it threaten to diminish that profundity with its own unique existence. The question for live, in-person theatre, though, is this: If theatre’s identity has mostly to do with bodies in the same physical space, what of those who are prohibited from or unable to share that space at any given time for various reasons? Inaccessibility takes many forms: the lack of availability, affordability, physical ability, cultural reference, proximity. What is the answer of the theatre field to this challenge? Theatre venues can lower the barriers to that physical space by complying with ADA requirements, hosting “relaxed” performances, pay-what-you-can evenings, etc.

Theatre venues can also embrace digital. In October 2020, JCA Arts Marketing published findings that digital theater attracted 43 percent new audiences to theatre. Nearly half of the audiences who clicked on events were distinct from those who regularly attend in-person performances. This is a very powerful discovery. Moreover, the demographics of these clicking audiences have shown a wider diversity in class, race, gender, and age. By liberating ourselves from the location of a venue at a specific time with often prohibitive ticket prices, digital accessibility has the potential to crack open a wider demographic of theatre patrons in a profoundly expansive way. 

Another overlooked equity unique to online performance is in the audience’s live response to the work. Digital performance allows some viewers to be verbal and active, others to be silent, some to watch in groups and others alone. This allows the work to meet the viewers in individualized ways simultaneously, without compromising the experience of other audience members. The audience member who likes to actively talk back to the stage with their lights on won’t disrupt the experience of the audience member who seeks silence and darkness when consuming live theatre. And while some in-person theatres offer sensory-friendly performances, ASL, and closed-captioned performances, digital platforms allow these viewing preferences to be offered simultaneously, which diminishes the “othering” effect of specially set aside in-person performance dates.

This accessibility is not only liberating to the viewer, but to the artists’ ecosystem as well. Over the last 18 months, many underrepresented artists were able to mobilize globally to share and develop their stories in immediate ways. With a demand for new work that could speak to the current cultural climate, online platforms not only made this immediacy possible, but responsive, efficient, and sustainable. Without the pipeline of annual season planning, digital platforms revealed how quickly we can gather when no longer limited by highly unsustainable means of travel and lodging. 

We also saw budgets dramatically adapt to the needs of each unique project, as well as sliding ticket sales that opened up dialogue around pay-what-you-can ticket pricing. In this way digital theatre became a speculative model for in-person performances. Organizations were able to experiment with ideas in a venue-decentralized manner, which in turn have inspired new budgeting and pricing structures for in-person performance as it returns. 

Haskell King and Mia Katigbak in ‘Russian Troll Farm.’

As this dialogue evolves, however, some would clearly prefer to shut it down. As theatres have begun to eye a return to in-person, venue-centric theatre-making, many would seek to erase the progress we saw during the pandemic. Indeed, some seem to associate digital innovation with the pandemic itself, and now that the emergency is (almost) behind us, they’re openly relieved to see digital recede.

“Thank goodness it’s over!” they say.

“We can let go of the placeholder!” they say.

“We’re back!” they say.

This perspective is steeped in the comparison, instead of extension, of digital to in-person theatre. What this rhetoric exposes is the way able-bodied, well-off audiences take for granted the option to go to a venue. As we saw in statistics during the pandemic, there is an entire community holding a different comparison: digital theatre vs. no theatre at all. This blind spot has effectively created a Theatre of the Able as our default, on the assumption that everyone has this choice. Closing the proverbial door on digital theatre for those unable to attend in-person events shuts out an entire artistic ecosystem that we have glimpsed over the past 18 months, and may never encounter again without further investment. This does the opposite of protecting our discipline; it instead freezes an opportunity for contemporary growth.

From our venue-centric vantage point, where we assume in-person theater is theatre for all, we assess digital theatre as “lesser than,” in a way that dangerously erases these communities, artists, and stories for audiences who may experience the digital differently than us. For some, digital is the only means to gather. And yes, I said gather: Digital technology can no doubt appear isolating to some, but it is also unquestionably a shared space for many. Keeping this door open may uncover and share entirely unique perspectives, told in digitally original ways. Joining this potential with the statistics around diverse new audiences, we can see that this is one form of inclusivity and allyship for which we should be fighting.

Clearly this isn’t the catch-all solution, but it helps move the needle into a more equitable position. Digital theatre, it should be said, still struggles with its own inaccessibility issue: broadband and wifi connectivity aren’t universal or free. In September 2020, Vox published a report showing that, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 21 million Americans don’t have access to quality broadband internet. While still a substantial issue, it is not comparable close to the high gates of inaccessibility erected by in-person-only performance. In fact, if the live performance community put its muscle behind the cause of equity in broadband access, they could help an entirely new audience and market form. Vox’s report tracked efforts in cities like Chattanooga, Tenn., where, in 2010, the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, the city-owned utility known as EPB, “began offering ultra-high-speed internet to all of its residents after building out fiber to the city for a smart grid.” As theatre continues its discussion of accessibility, the nationwide conversation about broadband access should be central. As live performance advocates, we could be the powerful voice of change and equity that this movement needs.

Through these efforts, we can connect new audiences and inspire new artists worldwide. These efforts do not need to remain exclusively online, but can become a conduit to new processes and collaborations for in-person hybrid experiences as well. Inviting more voices with diverse perspectives serves the vitality of theatre. Theatre practitioners had been in an artistic rhythm for decades, broken by the last 18 months, which forced a fresh examination of what we all took for granted and assumed was unchangeable. As this wider net of artists join our ecosystem, it will be crucial to welcome them into a neutral gathering forum, uncontaminated by the hierarchical structures of long-standing in-person practices. The only way to make radical change in these structures is by neutralizing the power relationships within assumed processes.

Digital platforms have already shown they can be part of this solution. As disembodied creative ensembles, we witnessed how our disparate environments influenced the ways we communicate, collaborate, and progress. Thrown off balance from our usual way of working, digital theatremaking has demanded authentic patience, empowered every participant to hold space in their own ways, and allowed for a democratization in creative problem-solving without a hierarchical power structure. Working in digital required us to ask each participant about their individual experience; it required us to literally meet each of us in our intimate living quarters and truly listen to everyone’s needs. These needs and requirements are no less relevant for in-person theatre, but working in a digitally disembodied way taught us to communicate less hierarchically, and to be more honest with our experiences, since there were no other participants experiencing the work from our unique location. These conversations led us to realize something we should have always had in mind, including for in-person performance: that everyone experiences the world uniquely.

The future of theatre is at a fraught intersection as we prepare for reentry. We have the choice to move forward or to go back. This is a plea for us to join forces and embrace the remarkable progress digital theatre has made in dismantling hierarchical assumptions, able-bodied biases, and the racism and classism that in-person theatre perpetuates by its gatekeeping. Digital theatre is not a symbol of the plague. It is a symbol of the resilience of artists. The past 18 months required us to use our bodies in a disembodied space to engage in risky, innovative, inclusive, democratized experiments. And when we celebrate the work of digital theatremakers, we encourage the theatrical community to hear this as extensionism, not replacement; addition, not subtraction. We can be allies, not rivals.

So as many return to venue-centric performance making, let’s also celebrate and incorporate the necessary strengths of the digital world we unlocked in the last 18 months. Let’s divorce these discoveries from the trauma of the pandemic and expose the strengths we unearthed in the experimental processes we just experienced online. Because these experiences, to many, were also sacred.

Jared Mezzocchi is an Obie-winning multimedia theatre director and designer. He is an associate professor of multimedia and projections at the University of Maryland, and is producing artistic director of Andy’s Summer Playhouse.

New Directions Fund Fall FY2022 - The Maryland Catalyst Fund

The New Directions Fund aims to enable important new lines of research and creative work with high potential for impact. There are three competition tracks:

 

 

 

  • Track A: Proof of Concept awards support researchers pursuing a new line of research or collaborative partnership to help them be competitive for external funding.
  • Track B: Limited External Grant Opportunity (LEGO) awards support particularly innovative and impactful research, writing, and/or creative work in fields where external funding is scarce.
  • Track C: NEW: Racial & Social Justice Research awards supports research on the underpinnings of, consequences of, and/or solutions to address systemic, institutional, and structural racism and injustice.

New Direction Proof of Concept awards are not intended to support research closely related to past work but rather to support exploratory work enabling a new line of research. This new line of research may be facilitated in part by new collaborative partnerships. Research may be basic or applied but should hold potential for future external funding.
New Direction Limited External Grant Opportunity (LEGO) awards also support new directions in faculty research, writing, and/or creative work but for fields with limited access to external funding. Proposed research should advance the body of knowledge and/or build UMD’s reputation in scientific and scholarly communities through a seminal publication, monograph, or other recognized means of discipline impact. Follow-up proposals to obtain external funding are not required though still encouraged.
NEW: Racial & Social Justice awards The Division of Research is inviting proposals relating to the underpinnings of, consequences of, and/or solutions to address systemic, institutional, and structural racism, racial and social in/justice, and other related areas. Please note that anything in Track C could fit into Tracks A & B but does not have to.

Examples of eligible projects in each of the above tracks include:
● Projects that obtain pilot data, demonstrate the feasibility of an approach or method, or contribute to the development of a prototype.
● Unique opportunities to conduct field work or research at an archive or special collection.
● Projects leading to seminal work intended for publication with an academic press.
● The development and execution of particularly innovative creative work that will be exhibited or performed in nationally or internationally known venues.
● Projects that examine the underpinnings and structures of systemic racial and social inequity and injustice, or lead to/inform antiracist policy, advocacy, education,
programming, and/or community organizing initiatives.

Support Provided:
New Directions funds can be requested at one of two levels:

● Level 1: $10,000 – $25,000 per award.
● Level 2: $25,001 – $50,000 per award.

Cost Share:
● VPR will fund 50% of the requested amount;

● The benefiting Unit(s) contribute the remaining 50% of requested funds.

Eligibility Criteria:
● Both tenured/tenure-track and professional track faculty (assistant research scientist or higher) whose full-time, home position is at UMD are eligible to apply.

● Track B only: No disciplines automatically qualify for Track B. Proposal should briefly detail the funding landscape and demonstrate the scarcity of external research funding opportunities for their discipline (and why New Directions funding is critical for the proposed effort). Contact the Research Development Office with questions.
● Faculty may only submit one New Directions proposal (as PI or co-PI) in a
given competition cycle.
● Faculty chosen as the principal investigator for past New Directions awards (or the
predecessor program “Tier 1” awards) within the last ten (10) years are not eligible to
compete to be principal investigator for New Directions awards.

 Award Fund Use:
Award funds may be applied to a range of cost categories, including but not limited to:

● Collection of pilot data required for agency/private proposal submission;
● Coordination of new multidisciplinary activities that will lead to development of
a proposal for external funding;
● Graduate student support to conduct proposed research;
● Hosting of conferences which bring visibility and expertise to UMD;
● Travel of UMD personnel to conduct research and/or to disseminate research;
● Research supplies;
● Faculty summer salary – Applicants should be prepared to justify why this summer
salary is vitally important.
● Track B only: Teaching release time (requires department chair authorization). Note that these New Directions Funds do not buy out faculty salaries directly but rather are intended to be used by departments to cover the costs of bringing on a replacement instructor.
● Funds must be spent within one calendar year of receipt of funds; if the work proposed
will require a longer period of performance, the application should state this and
provide justification.

Review Criteria and Process:
All proposals will be evaluated in accordance with the following criteria; limited review

feedback will be provided to all applicants. Proposals will be assigned reviewers that may or may not have direct expertise in your area of research, so writing for a broad technical audience is crucial.
● Technical approach: Does the project develop or employ novel concepts, approaches, methodologies, tools, or technologies? (Proposals should make clear the current state of the art.) Are the conceptual framework, design, methods, and analyses adequately developed, well-integrated, well-reasoned, and appropriate to the aims of the project? Do proposed outcomes represent a new paradigm for concepts in this area of research?
● Societal relevance: What are the potential implications of this research for society? Does this study address a problem with regional, national, or global significance? Does the proposed project align with strategic goals of the department, college, or UMD?
● Alignment with the goals of the New Directions Fund award tracks:

  • Tracks A and B: Does the proposal make clear how the proposed project would be a new direction of investigation for the faculty involved? Could the work be conducted without New Directions Fund support? Would it facilitate a new collaborative partnership? (Preferred but not required).
  • Track B only: Does the proposal make a compelling case that, while work would be significant to the field, external funding sources are severely limited?
  • Track C: Does the proposed research have the potential to lead to innovations, policy changes, or recommendations to address systemic, institutional, or structural racism; and/or transformative and/or healing impact on communities affected by racism/racial trauma? Proposals that focus on local challenges and impact Prince George’s County, the State of Maryland, or the DMV region are encouraged.

● Likely project outcomes: The proposal should clearly articulate significance or
expected impact on both the faculty member’s professional development and the larger relevant discipline. Is the effort likely to catalyze new lines of research for the PI or inspire follow-on work by others in the field? Will this effort lead to new lasting
technical capacity at the University that could enable new lines of research for others in the future? Does the proposal include robust plans to share and disseminate results through multiple platforms to various audiences? Is the project likely to result in new scholarly recognition and/or visibility for the University?

  • Track A only: Do the investigators present reasonable plans to garner extramural support from specific funding agencies? Proposal should demonstrate why the proposed scope of work will improve the proposer’s ability to secure external funding, and should include a detailed plan for obtaining future support (ideally with more than one external funding program identified).

Application Process and Materials:
In addition to completing the electronic submission form, all application materials must be uploaded in one PDF file and must be submitted electronically by 11:59pm ET on the deadline date. The electronic submission form can be found at https://umd.infoready4.com/.

Application materials include:
● Universal Funding Form with department/college signatures affirming willingness to support 50% of the request.

● Project Narrative: not to exceed three single-spaced pages (plus up to one additional page of figures if needed), with one-inch margins and at least 11-point font, detailing:

  • Project background and objectives (including ties to previous faculty research);
  • Innovation and impact (including alignment with organizational priorities);
  • Approach and research plan (listing specific tasks);
  • Strategies to leverage award, optimize outcomes, and increase impact; and
  • High level implementation timeline.
  • Proposals should be written for a non-specialist reviewer.

● References (does not count against the page limit)
● Budget and Justification: Budget and justification should demonstrate that you have
thought through all aspects of your project and the costs associated with them.
Include any other sources of funding that will be supporting the project (if applicable)
and whether those funds are committed or pending.

  • Justification should include details of unspent start-up, gift, or retention funding.

● Biosketch or CV for the submitting principal investigator and for any co-investigators if applicable (up to two pages each).

The InfoReady online submission form will also request:

  • Title,
  • co-investigator information (names, titles, affiliations and emails), and
  • project summary (suggested length: 150 words max).

Expectations of Applicants and Awardees:
● An annual progress report must be completed for two (2) consecutive years.

● Within two years of award, at least one of the following deliverables should be
completed: a related research proposal submitted to an external funding agency, written publication submitted to a journal or book publisher, book contract secured, and/or creative work exhibited or performed.
If these expectations are not met, the faculty member’s department may not be eligible for New Directions funds for one year.

Professor GerShun Avilez's Book Black Queer Freedom Nominated for the P. Sterling Stuckey Book Prize
9/20/21

Professor GerShun Avilez's book Black Queer Freedom: Spaces of Injury and Paths of Desire is nominated for the P. Sterling Stuckey Book Prize. The award is given by The Association for the Study of The Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), a non profit organization of international scholars seeking to further their understanding of Africa and the African Diaspora. The award committee will consider scholarly articles on any period and from any discipline published in English and is particularly interested in publications that are methodologically and conceptually innovative and demonstrate academic excellence.

About Black Queer Freedom

From the publisher: Whether engaged in same-sex desire or gender nonconformity, black queer individuals live with being perceived as a threat while simultaneously being subjected to the threat of physical, psychological, and socioeconomic injury. Attending to and challenging threats has become a defining element in queer black artists’ work throughout the black diaspora. GerShun Avilez analyzes the work of diasporic artists who, denied government protections, have used art to create spaces for justice. He first focuses on how the state seeks to inhibit the movement of black queer bodies through public spaces, whether on the street or across borders. From there, he pivots to institutional spaces--specifically prisons and hospitals--and the ways such places seek to expose queer bodies in order to control them. Throughout, he reveals how desire and art open routes to black queer freedom when policy, the law, racism, and homophobia threaten physical safety, civil rights, and social mobility.

"Sound Expertise" Podcast
9/17/21

William Robin (musicology) was awarded the Society for American Music’s Sight and Sound Subvention to help fund seasons two and three of his podcast, “Sound Expertise.” The critically-acclaimed podcast, which features interviews with important scholars in music studies about their research, has received more than 29,000 downloads to date. The first two seasons are available for free online, and the third will air in 2022.

A New Vision for Violin Instruction
9/17/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Students learning classical violin usually have to wait until a session with a music teacher to get personalized feedback on their playing. Soon they may have a new tool to use between lessons: an app that can observe them play and guide them toward better posture and form—key elements both for sounding their best and avoiding overuse injuries.

Two University of Maryland researchers are drawing on very different academic backgrounds—one in classical violin and music education, the other in robotics and computer science—to develop this virtual “teacher’s aide” system powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology. In addition to expanding the market for violin instruction, it will allow students who may not have access to private lessons to receive feedback on their playing.

Associate Professor of Violin in the School of Music Irina Muresanu, who is collaborating with Cornelia Fermüller, associate research scientist in UMD’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, said the technology will be revolutionary for a field rooted in tradition.

“While I believe that traditional methods are still the best way to pass on to our students the legacy and heritage of the classical music world, I am excited to explore ways in which artificial intelligence can be integrated as a feedback mechanism into daily practice—the central experience of any musician’s life,” she said.

The project is part of Arts for All, a new initiative to expand arts programming across campus and bolster interdisciplinary offerings through a fusion of the arts, technology and social justice.

Muresanu and Fermüller were recently awarded a $115,000 Phase I Maryland Innovation Initiative award by the Maryland Technology Development Corporation to support the project. The award, a partnership between the state of Maryland and five of its public universities, is designed to help propel research ideas from the lab to the commercial market.

An internationally renowned Romanian violinist, Muresanu has spent the last decade working at the intersection of music and technology. She previously collaborated with Amitabh Varshney, dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, on “Four Strings Around the Virtual World,” which embedded Muresanu’s solo violin project in famous global locales including concert halls, cathedrals and outdoor spaces.

When the COVID-19 pandemic made in-person teaching impossible, Muresanu began seeking new ways to allow violin students to continue learning remotely. Last year, she partnered with UM Ventures, a joint technology commercialization initiative of the University of Maryland, Baltimore and University of Maryland, College Park, to explore high-tech approaches for enhancing remote lessons.

Fermüller was a natural fit for the project. A researcher of computer vision and robotics, she works to enable computers to understand and enhance what people are doing in their daily activities.

In the Autonomy Robotics Cognition Lab, Muresanu and Fermüller, along with computer science Ph.D. student Snehesh Shrestha, are studying human-robot interaction in the context of playing the violin and how to integrate AI into the learning process. The technology they are producing—which will enable computers and phones to derive information from digital video—will let music teachers customize the type and amount of feedback students receive and survey the results.

Fermüller said the technology will be a major step forward in using AI for music education, and could potentially be applied to other instruments.

“The platform we are currently working on provides feedback to students based on their specific needs, and this is very novel,” she said. “I believe this is the future of AI-supported education.”

Professor of English Jessica Enoch Appointed ARHU ADVANCE Professor
9/14/21

By Rosie Grant

Professor of English Jessica Enoch has been named the 2021–22 ARHU ADVANCE Professor, a two-year role during which she will mentor and support ARHU faculty seeking to get published and promoted, find greater work-life balance and more.

ADVANCE faculty are part of the university’s ADVANCE Program, which is housed within the Office of Faculty Affairs and supports the recruitment, retention and professional growth of a diverse faculty through faculty networks, education and training, advocacy and research. Each college has an ADVANCE professor, which are all women.

Enoch, the director of the Academic Writing Program and a mother of three, said she has a particular interest in supporting working parents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she has experienced firsthand the difficulties of balancing teaching with childcare and virtual school.

“I am especially concerned with women faculty who have taken on the brunt of childcare during the pandemic,” she said.

She also plans to help women and assistant professors of color acclimate themselves to the university and prepare for promotion.

ADVANCE began in 2010 as a five-year, NSF-funded campuswide project promoting institutional transformation with respect to the retention and advancement of women faculty in STEM. Since then it has increased the percentage of women in tenure-track faculty roles and was recognized by the National Science Foundation as an exemplary program.

Enoch was formerly a participant in two ADVANCE mentorships, under Professor of English Laura Rosenthal and Professor of Communication Linda Aldoory. With Rosenthal she participated in a group of associate professors who worked to complete their second monograph and earn promotion to full professor. The four women in this group have completed their books and have earned, or soon will earn, promotions. With Aldoory, Enoch took on the role of mentor to two associate professors, meeting virtually during the pandemic to discuss strategies for publication and promotion.

“I have seen firsthand the great benefit of the ADVANCE program,” she said.
 
Enoch was selected in coordination with the ARHU Dean's Office and will hold the position for two years. She is the third English professor to hold this appointment, after Professor of English Martha Nell Smith and Rosenthal.

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