Research and Scholarly Work

The College of Arts and Humanities extends its congratulations to outstanding faculty who have been named 2017-18 recipients of the Creative and Performing Arts Awards (CAPAA) or Research and Scholarship Awards (RASA) from the University of Maryland’s Graduate School.

ABOUT CAPAA:

CAPPA supports artistic activities and are awarded to full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty. Faculty who receive a semester award are excused from teaching duties during the period for which the CAPAA was granted. Those who receive a summer CAPAA will receive a $9,000 stipend for two months during the summer for which the award is granted. To be eligible for the summer award, the faculty member needs to hold a 9 – 9 ½ appointment, which means they do not have teaching responsibilities over the summer. The most recent CAPAA summer awardees will apply the award to summer 2017.

ARHU’s semester CAPAA recipients include:

Joshua Weiner, Department of English

Helen Huang, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

ARHU’s summer CAPAA recipients include:

Cy Keener, Department of Art

Brandon Morse, Department of Art

Gabrielle Fuentes, Department of English

Sarah Frisof, School of Music

ABOUT RASA:

RASA are awarded to full-time tenure and tenure-track faculty. The awards support research and scholarship. Faculty who receive a semester award are excused from teaching duties during the period for which the RASA was granted. Faculty who receive a summer RASA will receive a $9,000 stipend for two months during the summer for which the award is granted. To be eligible for the summer award, the faculty member needs to hold a 9 – 9 ½ appointment, which means they do not have teaching responsibilities over the summer. The most recent RASA summer awardees will apply the award to summer 2017.

ARHU semester RASA Recipients:

Andrew Schonebaum, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Alexis Lothian, Department of Women's Studies

Ali Abasi, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

Damien Pfister, Department of Communication

Randy Ontiveros, Department of English

Janelle Wong, Department of American Studies

Jan Padios, Department of American Studies

ARHU summer RASA Recipients:

Antoine Borrut, Department of History

By Mabinty Quarshie | USA Today

"When Bill O'Reilly insulted Rep. Maxine Water's hair and White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporter April Ryan to "stop shaking your head," the comments by the two white men hit a nerve.

"Black women — who often face a one-two punch of racism and sexism in their daily lives — immediately took to social media using the hashtag #BlackWomenAtWork to air out their grievances, including those about other women.

" 'The things that black women need to push for are quite different than what we think of as the mainstream feminist movement,' said Sheri Parks, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland and author of Fierce Angels: The Strong Black Woman in American Life and Culture."

Read the complete article at USA Today

By Christine Condon and Danielle Ohl | The Diamondback

"President Trump plans to defund the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, a move that could jeopardize funding for the arts and humanities at the University of Maryland and in this state.

"A Jan. 19 report in The Hill detailed a meeting between White House staff and Trump's transition team, who fleshed out a plan to cut back on bureaucracy and government spending. The plan included eliminating the two endowments, which have granted this university about $2.5 million for research, performances and projects since 2010.

" '[The NEH and NEA] have been important in a lot of ways,' said arts and humanities college Dean Bonnie Dill. 'They are a very important part of the work that we do.' "

Read the complete story online at The Diamondback.

Image: The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. (File photo/The Diamondback).

The Center for Synergy in the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) has received a $100,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to fund “Home Stories,” a digital storytelling project that empowers migrant youth to create and share their stories with the wider public.

The award is part of NEH’s inaugural Humanities Access grants, which provide cultural programming to underserved groups and were awarded to 34 organizations. The grant is designed to encourage fundraising and sustainability of ongoing programming.

The project co-directors are Ana Patricia Rodríguez, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures and Sheri Parks, associate dean of research, interdisciplinary scholarship and programming and associate professor of American studies.

The project responds to the growing number of often-unaccompanied migrant youth who travel to the U.S.-Mexico border and eventually seek to reunite with families, relatives or friends who live in the long-standing Central American communities near the University of Maryland. These newcomers navigate multiple identities but rarely have the opportunity to reflect on or share these experiences. Despite the scale of youth migration to this area, there is little research or ethnographic work generated about or by these youth.

“We are living in a historical moment where there is an explosion in migration,” says Rodríguez.  “Digital storytelling is a way of uncovering these stories and making them accessible to a wider public, and it is something that anyone can learn.”

“Home Stories” extends the Center for Synergy’s ongoing Social Innovation Scholars Program into the public humanities. Through the project, undergraduate students at the University of Maryland will enroll in a multi-semester course with Rodríguez to learn about the migrant experience while collaborating with migrant youth from local middle and high schools to explore digital storytelling.  Digital stories are multimedia movies that combine voiceovers, video, sound and text to create a narrative. Both in and out of the classroom, they are a tool for not only developing technical skills, but also promoting self-reflection and critical thinking.

“The project is a way of connecting students who have the technological skills with migrant youth in communities who have important stories to tell,” says Rodríguez.  “Digital storytelling is a democratizing tool that allows these stories to be created and shared across communities.”

The project will work with youth in local schools that enroll large numbers of recently arrived migrant youth from Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean and culminates in a community screening of the filmed stories these youth produce, which will then be available on a public website.

“The humanities help us study our past, understand our present, and prepare for our future,” says NEH Chairman William D. Adams. “The National Endowment for the Humanities is proud to support projects that will benefit all Americans and remind us of our shared human experience.”

Image Credit:
Close up of Child Migrant Quilt Project (September 2014)
© Ana Rosa Ventura-Molina 2014

Message from the Dean: ARHU “Year in Review” and the U.S. presidential election.

Dear Colleagues:

It is fortuitous that we’re releasing the College of Arts and Humanities’ (ARHU) annual “Year in Review” the week after the most startling U.S. presidential election in recent history. The election laid bare yawning divisions among us and has elicited deeply-felt emotions of anger, fear, pain and exaltation. People on all sides of this chasm, nationally and locally, are actively engaged in trying to understand and find meaning in these events and discern approaches for moving forward.

This moment presents an exceptional opportunity for me to remind everyone in our community—students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends—of the tremendous value and expertise that the arts and humanities offer society. Through our fields we have the talent and knowledge to analyze, interpret and contextualize these events as both a product of U.S. history and culture and as part of the broad sweep of human civilization.  

Our historians, philosophers and rhetoricians interrogate the narrative arc of the divisive national conversation and its ethical implications. They provide insight into the immense power of words and the burdens of the past. Students and scholars in the visual and performing arts explore creative ways to express feelings of thrill and despair and do so in ways that can bring people together to see and hear one another and to help soothe their pain.

Those who study languages and culture along with those in the multidisciplinary fields of women’s, American, and LGBT studies engage issues of identity, belonging and cultural expression. They are equipped to put into context the pressing challenges of inclusion, communication across cultures and the imperatives of respect for difference.

This report provides multiple examples of the wealth of resources we can draw upon in these challenging times. They offer reassurance and encouragement. I invite you to join me in celebrating the outstanding successes and accomplishments of our community and in utilizing them to help us create new accomplishments in the years ahead.

Sincerely,

Bonnie Thornton Dill

Professor and Dean, College of Arts and Humanities

View PDF here.