All posts by: UMBC News Staff

Each year, the America East conference celebrates Black History Month by recognizing a Black faculty or staff member from each of the nine schools school in the conference. These features highlight the connection each of these individuals have on campus as well as in the surrounding communities.

This year, the conference highlighted Kimberly Moffitt, assistant professor of American studies. “As a community member and a fan for Retriever sports, Dr. Kimberly Moffitt has been introducing students to how African-Americans are portrayed through various media outlets,” they write.

A video interview with Moffitt produced by America East can be seen here.

Denis Provencher, associate professor of Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, has been awarded a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship to the European Union. This is a $180,000 fellowship from the European Commission’s CORDIS (Community Research and Development Information Service).

For a one-year period beginning in September 2012, Provencher will lead a research group of scholars in French studies, cultural studies and linguistics at Nottingham Trent University (UK) while also pursuing research on his second scholarly monograph, currently titled “Queer-Arab-France: Sexuality, Islam and Citizenship in France.”

The Interdisciplinary Studies Program and Council of Majors present the 2012 Petrovich Lecture and Film Screening with director Richard Chisolm ’82, interdisciplinary studies.  Chisolm will discuss the interdisciplinary mission of his film company Recipe for Change Films and his latest film, Cafeteria Man.

The movie concentrates on Chef Tony Geraci’s efforts as food director of the Baltimore City Public School system to educate school kids about nutrition, food preparation and locally sourced organic food, as well as his efforts to reform the food purchasing system.

The lecture, discussion and screening will take place on February 22 at 7 p.m. in the Skylight Room. There will be a small reception following the lecture.

A Scrabble competition at UMBC on Saturday, February 4, featured students from surrounding schools and adult scrabble enthusiasts.

Linda Oliva, an assistant professor of education and competitive Scrabble player, helped to organize the competition.  She has worked with schools, including Arbutus Middle School, to develop Scrabble clubs where students can learn the game. “Kids really love this game. It’s a game where you can become a lot better very quickly. And they enjoy learning new words and making great plays,” she said.

The story, “Scrabble helps students sharpen their skills,” appeared in the Catonsville Times on February 6.

Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, recently visited India, where her activities included reading books to children at the SAI International School.  Her visit was covered in the Telegraph newspaper.

“Imagination is a conscious activity that requires a great amount of focus and concentration. Storytelling can create a number of scenarios and possibilities. It can make the impossible possible. For example, our storybooks have animals talking, people talking, things vanishing and so on. But my aim was not to teach children to live in a fantasyland. I told them about humanitarian values, something that can help them become better individuals,” Spitz told the newspaper.

The story, “Of Math and Games,” appeared in the newspaper on January 13.

Spitz’s visit was also described in a release by the school, which said that “her wonderful presentation and storytelling was very impressive.”  The full release can be read here.

English Chair Jessica Berman’s newest book, Modernist Commitments: Ethics, Politics, and Transnational Modernism, is now available from Columbia University Press.

In this book, Berman demonstrates how modernist narrative connects ethical attitudes and responsibilities to the active creation of political relationships and the way we imagine justice. She challenges divisions between “modernist” and “committed” writing, arguing that a continuum of political engagement undergirds modernisms worldwide and that it is strengthened rather than hindered by formal experimentation.