All posts by: UMBC News Staff

At the November meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Robert Provine, professor of psychology, and his student co-authors presented a poster entitled “When the whites of the eyes are red, yellow, and super-white: A uniquely human communication medium.”

Provine’s co-authors included Marcello Cabrera ’12, psychology; Skylar Spangler ’12, psychology; Jessica Nave-Blodgett ’12, psychology; Schnaude Dorizan ’13, psychology; and Iman Kennedy ’12, psychology.

An article on their work ran in the February issue of the Swedish magazine Modern Psykologi.

On Saturday, January 21, more than 200 people attended Create Baltimore, an “unconference” organized around the idea of building a creative community in Baltimore. Among them was Lee Boot, associate director of the Imaging Research Center, who presented a session with photographer John Dean on bringing street commerce to Baltimore.

“I spent time in Istanbul and John spent time in Florence this fall and we were both blown away by how different the concept of street commerce is in other parts of the world from the way we do it here in Baltimore (and most of the states),” Boot wrote on the website, explaining their topic. “We think it could be the missing link for jobs, making the city a destination, and bringing life to struggling neighborhoods.”

The “unconference,” and Boot’s session, were covered in a January 24 Baltimore Brew blog post entitled “Arts and tech community gather for Create Baltimore.”

Deer are cute, but pigeons are “rats with wings.” And rats are just gross. Why do we love seeing some wild animals in the city, and loathe others? Dawn Biehler, assistant professor of geography and environmental systems, discussed this issue on the Canadian Broadcasting Company program “DNTO (Definitely Not the Opera).”

“Humans have a little bit of an anti-urban bias,” she explained. “So when one of these representatives of the wild comes to the city, we feel really flattered that they would want to come and be in this place where we have this concentration of human life.”

The episode, “City, meet wildlife… wildlife, meet city” aired on the program on January 21. It can be heard here; Biehler’s segment begins at 43:45.

Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, spent her winter break traveling to the Czech Republic, for research, and to India, where she gave the first annual alumni lecture to English Alumni Association of Ravenshaw University in Cuttack and the keynote address at the International Seminar on Children’s Literature and Politics.

Spitz shared an account of her journeys on Talking Heads, UMBC’s faculty expert blog.  Her post can be read here.

A number of Baltimore County public officials use Twitter, Owings Mills Patch noted.

Rebecca Adelman, assistant professor of media and communication studies, predicts Twitter use among public officials will soon become the norm.

“I could see how that could be a real benefit for someone trying to maintain a relationship with their constituents,” she said.

The story, “Baltimore County Public Officials To Follow on Twitter,” appeared on the website on January 17.

Constantine Vaporis, professor of history and director of the Asian studies program, has published a new book. Voices of Early Modern Japan: Contemporary Accounts of Daily Life during the Age of the Shoguns is part of  ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Press’s “Voices of an Era” series. 

The book spans an period of Japanese history ranging from the unification of the warring states under Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early 17th century to the overthrow of the shogunate just prior to the mid-19th century opening of Japan by the West.  Much of what we think of as quintessentially Japanese emerged during the time of the Tokugawa shoguns, including Kabuki theatre, sushi, sumo wrestling, woodblock prints and the tea ceremony. Vaporis’s book brings that time to life through the voices of those who experienced it, focusing on the day-to-day lives of both the rich and powerful and ordinary citizens.

Robert Deluty, associate dean of the graduate school, has published a new book of poetry, “A Scratch On The Wall.”
In his review, Ronald Pies writes: “Robert Deluty’s latest collection takes its cue from William Faulkner’s observation that the writer ‘wants to leave a scratch on [the] wall… that somebody a hundred, or a thousand years later will see.’ Indeed, whether it is the ‘renowned scientist/ requesting to be buried/ holding his reprints’ or ‘the frightened man/ wishing he could be bold/ outside his dreams,’ Deluty’s memorable poetic characters often embody the deep desire to ‘leave a scratch’ on the wall of immortality. As a writer and poet more aware of life’s brevity than most, Deluty has already left much more than a ‘scratch’ on that wall. His gemlike poems inscribe both our darkest fears and fondest hopes—and do so with humor and empathy for the human predicament.”

Copies of “A Scratch On The Wall,” as well as of Deluty’s other books, are on sale at the UMBC Bookstore.

Work done by Robert Provine, professor of psychology, was recently featured in a film shown on the European television station ARTE. The film, ‘Une Histoire Naturelle du Rire’ was broadcast in both German and French on December 30. It can be viewed for a limited time here.