On a regular basis the Dresher Center will sponsor opportunities for faculty members to present their humanities research in progress to their peers in an informal setting over lunch. Thanks to the generous support of the Office of the Vice President for Research and the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences refreshments will be provided.

Dresher Center for the Humanities
Schedule of Spring 2013 Faculty and Graduate Student Conversations
Notes on food and other logistics

Monday, February 25, 12:00-1:00pm, PAHB 216
“Methodological Approaches and Questions in Place-based Research”
Kate Brown, History and Dresher Center Fellow, and Preminda Jacob, Visual Arts and Dresher Center Fellow

Monday, April 1, 3:00-4:15pm, PAHB 216
“Electronic Literature and its Emerging Forms”
Dene Grigar, Director of the Creative Media & Digital Culture Program at Washington State University Vancouver and Curator of the Library of Congress, “Electronic Literature and its Emerging Forms,” April 3-5.

Wednesday, April 17, 12:00-1:00pm, PAHB 216
Remaking the Malthusian Couple for the Contraceptive Age: Calibrating the Risk of Pregnancy
Carole McCann, Gender and Women’s Studies

In the 1930s, after nearly a decade and half of public agitation in support of the legalization of contraception, questions about contraceptive effectiveness continued to linger. What little information did exist came out of birth control clinics. Population science, or demography as it would be called by the end of the decade, coalesced around a set of statistical tools with which to describe pregnancy risk and contraceptive effectiveness. I juxtapose close readings of the numeric figures produced through the statistical procedures developed in early demographic contraceptive-use studies with affect-laden stories of pregnancy risk and contraceptive practice told by women and recorded in birth control literature. The contrast of these two textual/conceptual practices illuminates the aspects of women’s experiential knowledge of reproductive processes that are displaced by the actionable objects of twentieth century fertility control discourse.

Monday, April 22, 12:00-1:00pm, PAHB 216
“Being There: the adventures most historians would rather not admit”
Kate Brown, History and Dresher Center Fellow
“One Baltimore Block from Inside Out”
Amy Zanoni, History MA student

Wednesday, April 24, 2:00-4:00, PAHB 216
“Trade Networks and Tourist Messiahs”
Pilar K. Rau (Ph.D. candidate in Socio-cultural Anthropology, New York University UMBC B.A. with a double major in Visual Arts (Painting and Art History and Theory) and Modern Languages and Linguistics and M.A. in Intercultural Communication)

URCAD General Session with guest speaker: Alumna Pilar Rau, ’96, MA ’01 Intercultural Communications
12 p.m. to 12:50 p.m.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
University Center Room 312

Tuesday, April 30,m 2:30-5:00pm, PAHB 216
“Hit and Stay”
Joe Tropea (M.A., UMBC Public History) screens clips from “Hit and Stay,” a documentary about the Catonsville Nine, which won the audience award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Theo Gonzalves, American Studies, will introduce the film and filmmaker and talk about related 45th anniversary Catonsville Nine events:

Sunday, April 28, 1:00-4:00pm, UMBC Commons Circle
“C-9 Bus Tour”
Limited seating rsvp to: joby.taylor@umbc.edu

Friday, May 10, Reception 2:30pm, Program 4:00-6:00pm, UMBC Proscenium Theatre, PAHB
“Hit and Stay” Film Screening & Panel Discussion
Tom and Marjorie Melville (of the C-9), Joe Tropea (filmmaker), Karin Aguilar-San Juan (author), graduate and undergraduate students from UMBC, and other special guests and local activists
Social Sciences Forum co-sponsored by American Studies

Wednesday, May 8, 12:00-1:00pm, PAHB 216
“The Painted walls of Chennai: Street Semiotics in an Indian City”
Preminda Jacob, Visual Arts and Dresher Center Fellow

Join us for any or all of these gatherings!
Students engaged in research welcome!

Please RSVP to Mary Welsh: mwelsh@umbc.edu

Below is a list of past Faculty and Graduate Student Conversations

Fall 2010

September 27, 2010

Violeta Laura Columbo (LLC): “Writing Resources Available to Graduate International Students and their Effect on Academic Success”, and Phil Seng (PHIL): Theorizing the Movie-going Experience: To Define or Not to Define?

October 22, 2010

Dawn Biehler (GES):  “Gender, Race, Class and Bugs: Exploring Social Position in the History of Domestic Pest Control”, and Tom Field (MLLI): “Cultural Interference in Language Structure in Roman and Early Medieval Aquitania”

November 17, 2010

Michelle Osherow (ENGL): “Wives, Fears and Foreskins: Early Modern Reproach of Zipporah and Michael”, andNicoleta Barzan (MLLI): “Irresistibly French: Female Stardom and Frenchness”

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Spring 2011

March 14, 2011

Meredith Oyen (HIST): “Thunder without Rain: American NGOs and  Hong Kong Refugees” , and                 Danika Rockett  (LLC) “Single Women in the Borders: Religion and  Philanthropy as Paths to Social Action in Victorian Britain”

April 13, 2011

Terry Bouton (HIST):  “Foreign Founders: How European Investors Helped Write the U.S. Constitution (and Check American Democracy)”, and Tracy Irish (LLC):  Developing STEM Academies: Teacher Perceptions of the STEM Academy Measurement Tool as the Catalyst to Develop STEM-focused Professional Learning Communities

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Fall 2011

September 26, 2011

Donald Snyder (MCS): Hoarding Knowledge: Clutter, Do-it-yourself Archiving and the ‘Ethel Index’”

October 12, 2011

Directors of Dresher Center Humanities Rebecca Boehling and Media and Communications Studies Program Jason Loviglio discuss the status and future of digital humanities at UMBC.

November 16, 2011   

Priminda Jacob  (VIsArts) 2011 Dresher Center Summer Faculty Fellow):

“The Painted Walls of Chennai. Street Semiotics in an Indian City.“

Viviana MacManus  (GWST and MLLI post-doctoral fellow):

“Towards a Critical Women’s Human Rights: Latin American Gender Violence and the Limits of Women’s Rights as Human Rights”

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Spring 2012

February 10, 2012

Amy Phatt (GWST) “From Facebook to Face-to-Face Encounters: Questions for Feminist Ethnography in Era of Globalization”

Craig Saper (LLC) Pulp Fiction, Serial Movies, and the ’New Woman’ or What Happened to Mary”

March 12, 2012

Lee Boot, Associate Research Professor and Associate Director of the Imaging Research Center (IRC) presented collaborative interdisciplinary projects in digital humanities and digital media produced in IRC

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Fall 2012

September 24, 2012

Theo Gonzalves (AMST) “Musical Revolutions: Barbara Dane and Paredon Records”

Fan Yang (MCS) “China’s Fake Apple Store: Branding, Space and Globalization”

October 31, 2012

Christy Chapin (HIST) “Rethinking Corporate Social Responsibility: The Health Insurance and Home Mortgage Industries after WWII”

Sara Cole (LLC) “Identity and Ideology Construction through Interactive Media: Exploring Video Game Influence”

November 19, 2012

Lindsay DiCuirci (ENGL): “Inventing the Archive: The Politics of Textual Preservation in Early America”

Derek Musgrove (HIST): “A Lost Opportunity?: Jesse Jackson and the DC Shadow Senator Position”