All posts by: UMBC News Staff

Christopher Corbett, professor of the practice of English, wrote about books and New Year’s resolutions in his latest column for Style magazine.  Corbett has not resolved to get a Kindle, nor has he resolved to thin his massive book collection.

“Kindle and e-books may be the future, but what kind of future would I have without my boon companions Eeyore and Christopher Robin and Kim and Long John Silver and Squire Trelawney? I still believe we ought to meet them in books, with actual pages,” he writes.

The essay, “One For the Books” appeared in the January 2012 issue of the magazine.

Constantine Vaporis, professor of history and director of the Asian studies program, has been invited to become an advisory panel member at the Walters Art Museum.  Vaporis is part of an international panel of humanities scholars advising the Walters Art Museum on the renovation of its Asian Art Collection. This is a two-year commitment for 2012-13. The focus of the renovation will be the Hackerman House section of the Walters. Renovations will begin in 2013, and the section is scheduled to reopen in 2015. Vaporis also works with the National Geographic Museum.

The UMBC chess team came in second place on December 30 in the Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, advancing to the 2012 President’s Cup, known as the “Final Four” of chess.

The UMBC chess team headed into the 2011 Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess

Championship with a record nine titles to its name. The competition known informally as the Pan-Am, was held December 27 to 30 in Fort Worth, Texas. Since the tournament began in 1946, dozens of universities throughout the Americas have participated. The Retrievers won their first Pan-Am title in 1996, and then embarked on a five-year title streak from 1998 to 2002.

This year, the University of Texas at Dallas came in first with six points, UMBC came in second with 5 points, and Texas Tech and New York University tied for third with 4.5 points each.

“It was an exciting finish, because we could have won right up until the last match,” says Alan Sherman, Chess Director. The University of Texas at Brownsville surprisingly did not make the cut for the Final Four even though they were the highest ranking team going into the tournament.

The UMBC team, all on chess scholarships, is composed of students not only with exceptional chess skills but also with strong academic records, Sherman says. UMBC requires students to maintain a 3.0 GPA to maintain chess scholarships.

The Retrievers last won the Pan-Am title in 2009, and took second last year. This year’s team will compete in the 2012 President’s Cup, the “Final Four of College Chess,” to be held March 31–April 1 in Herndon, Va.

About the UMBC players

Leonid Kritz, an International Grandmaster from Germany
Giorgi Margvelashvili, an International Grandmaster from the Republic of Georgia
Sasha Kaplan, an International Master from Israel
Sabina Foisor, International Woman Grandmaster from Romania

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Rebecca Boehling, professor of history and director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities, will appear on WYPR’s Maryland Morning with Sheilah Kast on Friday, December 16 at approximately 9:15 a.m.  The subject of the discussion will be Boehling’s recent book, Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust.

The broadcast can be heard live here, or after the show here.

Several students have received Huayu Enrichment Scholarships (HES) from the Taiwan Ministry of Education to study Mandarin in Taiwan from June-August, 2012. The students are Niesha Watts ’14, applied linguistics; Amy Fowler ’12, Asian studies and interdisciplinary studies; Vadim Rubin ’10, history, and ’12 Asian studies; and Jillian Long ’13, Chinese.

Initial contact with the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representatives Office (TECRO) in Washington, D.C., was made by Eugene Schaffer, chair of education. The Asian studies program, including director Constantine Vaporis, organized an information session to inform students about the scholarships and to assist with the application process. Anna Shields, director of the honors college,William Brown, lecturer in Chinese, and Vaporis formed the selection committee.

The scholarships are being supplemented with funding from the offices of the Vice Provost, Academic Affairs, the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Antonio Moreira and the Asian Studies Program.

Robert Deluty, associate dean of the graduate school, is published in the Fall 2011 issue of The Faculty Voice.

The paper, which is an independent newspaper published by and for all the faculty of the University System of Maryland, included 20 of Deluty’s poems along with commentary by editor William Hanna.

The English Alumni Association of Ravenshaw University in Cuttack, India, has invited Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, to give the first annual alumni lecture on January 8, 2012.  Spitz will also give the keynote address at the International Seminar on Children’s Literature and Politics, which will be held at the university January 9-10, 2012.

The Alumni Lecture and the seminar are expected to attract many distinguished alumni, including lawmakers from the Indian Parliament, writers, judges in the Supreme Court of India, the Chief Information Commissioner of India, civil servants, and academics.

In addition to these lectures, Spitz will also meet with Indian school children.

A transgender anti-discrimination bill went before the Maryland General Assembly in the 2011 session, passing in the House of Delegates, but ultimately did not pass. In the 2012 session, which starts in January, advocates are hoping to take legislation through the last hurdle it needs for passage.

Jodi Kelber-Kaye, interim associate director of the Honors College, said transgender anti-discrimination legislation has come up at the state level for many years.

“The problem has consistently been how we define transgender for the purposes of providing protections,” she said. “The concern for me as a gender researcher, on top of someone who’s politically supportive of this stuff, is the need for a space safe for women.”

The story, “Laurel delegate’s fight for transgender anti-discrimination legislation to continue in 2012 session” was published on ExploreHowardCounty.com and appeared on the Baltimore Sun website on December 7.

Piotr Gwiazda, associate professor of English, has had a busy semester; his reviews, poetry and translations have appeared in a variety of outlets.

His reviews have appeared in:

• Rain Taxi, where he reviewed “Building the Barricade” by Anna Swir.
• The Times Literary Supplement, where he reviewed “Unseen Hand” (translated by Clare Cavanagh), by Polish poet Adam Zagajewski.
• EOAGH, where he reviewed The Iliad Book XXII: The Death of Hector by Lisa Jarnot.

His poems and translations can be found in:

• “Mudlark,” which published his poem “Time.”
• Vallum, which published his poem “Removable Tattoos.”
• And the Seneca Review, which published his translation of Grzegorz Wroblewski.

He was also published in two recent poetry anthologies.