Amy Froide
Director
Professor Froide is a Professor in the Department of History where she teaches courses in British history and European Women’s History, focusing on the years 1500-1800. Her areas of expertise include social, economic, social, women’s, and gender history. She is the author of Silent Partners: Women as Public Investors during Britain’s Financial Revolution, 1690-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2016). Her other books include Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2005) and Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), co-edited with Judith M. Bennett. Professor Froide has served as the book review editor for the Journal of British Studies, President of the Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies, and the founding Director of UMBC’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Minor.
She holds affiliate appointments in UMBC’s Gender, Women’s + Sexuality Studies and the Language, Literacy, and Culture Ph.D. program. She regularly mentors Master’s degree students in both early modern British and European women’s history. Former students have gone on to Ph.D. programs in the U.S. and the U.K. and three are currently professors. In addition to her research and administrative work, Prof. Froide was the recipient of the 2018 Maryland Board of Regents’ Award for Teaching Excellence and is currently UMBC’s Presidential Teaching Professor for 2024-27. She regularly shares her Humanities research with a general audience through articles in The Conversation, podcasts, lectures with Profs & Pints, and pre-show theatre talks.
Earl H. Brooks
Associate Director
Earl H. Brooks is a musician and Assistant Professor in the Department of English. He teaches courses in sound studies, African American rhetorical traditions, media literacy, rhetorical theory, and composition. His forthcoming book, On Rhetoric and Black Music (Wayne State University Press, African American Life Series), examines how Black music functions as rhetoric, considering its subject not merely reflective of but central to African American public discourse. Brooks argues that there would have been no Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Movement, or Black Arts Movement as we know these phenomena without Black music.
Through rhetorical studies, archival research, and musical analysis, Brooks establishes the “sonic lexicon of Black music,” defined by a distinct constellation of sonic and auditory features that bridge cultural, linguistic, and political spheres with music. Genres of Black music such as blues and jazz are discursive fields, where swinging, improvisation, call-and-response, blue notes, and other musical idioms serve as rhetorical tools to articulate the feelings, emotions, and states of mind that have shaped African American cultural and political development. Examining the resounding artistry of iconic musicians such as Scott Joplin, Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, and Mahalia Jackson, this work offers an alternative register in which these musicians and composers are heard as public intellectuals, consciously invested in crafting rhetorical projects they knew would influence the public sphere.
Brooks’s work also appears in Sounding Out!, Rhetoric Review, Journal for the History of Rhetoric, Langston Hughes Review, and College Composition and Communication. Brooks is a recent winner of the College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences (CAHSS) Early Career Excellence Award and a recipient of the CAHSS Dean’s Research Fund, the Dresher Center Residential Faculty Research Fellowship, and the Humanities Teaching Lab Course Transformation Support Grant. Brooks is also a proud alumnus of the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program, and he serves as a UMBC McNair Faculty Mentor and advisory board member. Brooks also serves on the executive board of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) as a representative of the CCCC Black Caucus.
Kate Drabinski
Director
Humanities Scholars Program
Courtney C. Hobson
Program Manager
Originally from Lanham, Maryland, Courtney Hobson, M.A. ’14, graduated from Bowie State University with a Bachelor of Science in History and later earned her Master of Arts in Historical Studies with a concentration in Public History from UMBC. She has 14 years of program management experience at various cultural institutions throughout the state of Maryland. In addition to working at the Dresher Center, Courtney also serves on the Advisory Committees for the Public Humanities Program, as well as the Critical Disability Studies Minor.
Outside of UMBC, she works as a historical consultant, collaborating with organizations including The Southwest Partnership, Inc., Historical Research Associates, the National Park Service (NPS), the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), and the National Council on Public History (NCPH). Courtney’s areas of expertise include Black history in Maryland and engaging with descendant communities. She is also a member of the Association of Black Women Historians, ASALH, as well as NCPH, where she currently serves on the Advocacy Committee of the Board.
In her spare time, Courtney is a foodie, amateur archer, cat mom to Pepper, collector of unread books, and queen of karaoke at her neighborhood bar in Baltimore where she has proudly lived for almost a decade.
Kate Chasse
Administrative Assistant
Humanities Scholars and Linehan Artist Scholars Programs
Kate Chasse earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from UMBC in 2003. Following graduation, she embarked on a period of travel, living in seven states across the US. Her diverse professional background spans language and translation, e-commerce, charter school governance, and the travel industry. Now residing back in Maryland, Kate is thrilled to rejoin the UMBC community. In addition to this role, Kate also serves as Program Coordinator for the SFS Cybersecurity Scholars within CSEE. In her free time, she enjoys hiking in Patapsco, attending Washington Spirit games, and playing sports with her pre-teen sons.