Previous CURRENTS
Spring 2020
Women, Technology, and Checks: Commercial Banking after World War II
Christy Chapin, Associate Professor, History, UMBC; Summer 2019 Dresher Center Summer Faculty Research Fellow
Geographies of Race: Representations of Racial Mobility
Elizabeth Patton, Assistant Professor, Media and Communication Studies, UMBC; Summer 2019 Dresher Center Summer Faculty Research Fellow
Legislating Medical Practice in Ancient Rome
Molly Jones-Lewis, Lecturer, Ancient Studies, UMBC
Three and a Half Centuries of a Chinese Neighborhood
Nianshen Song, Assistant Professor, History, UMBC; Summer 2019 Dresher Center Summer Faculty Research Fellow
Teaching and Doing Graphic Design in Ethiopia
Guenet Abraham, Associate Professor, Visual Arts, UMBC
Designing Participatory Futures: Using DIY Technologies for Inclusion and Empowerment
Foad Hamidi, Assistant Professor, Information Systems, UMBC
Sonic Waves of Grain: Paul Harvey’s American Evangelism
J. Inscoe, PhD Candidate, Language, Literacy, and Culture, UMBC; Spring 2020 Dresher Center Graduate Student Fellow
Fall 2019
Patrimonial Persons: Poor Devils, Their Eves, and Hegemonic Masculinities in Franco’s Spain (1939-75)
Erin Hogan, Associate Professor of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication; Fall 2019 Dresher Center Residential Faculty Fellow
Hope and Despair in late 1970s Black Politics
Derek Musgrove, Associate Professor of History
Challenging Monopoly: Race and Labor in the NBA
Theresa Runstedtler, Professor of History at American University; 2018-2019 Dresher Center Inclusion imperative Visiting Faculty Fellow
Visualizing the White Farmer Imaginary on California Agricultural Lands
Tracy Perkins, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University; Fall 2019 Dresher Center Inclusion imperative Visiting Faculty Fellow
ibn Batuta and the Fashioned Self Image
Corbin Jones, M.A. Candidate in the Text, Technologies, and Literatures Program; Fall 2019 Dresher Center Graduate Student Fellow
The Horizon of Representation: Nature, Otherness, Intersectionality
Christopher Tong, Assistant Professor of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication and Asian Studies
Spring 2019
20th Century French Historiography between the “Event” and the Longue Durée
Zakaria Fatih, Associate Professor of Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication
Between Cloth and Skin: carrying Objects in Ancient Rome
Melissa Bailey-Kutner, Assistant Professor of Ancient Studies
Challenging Monopoly: Race and Labor in the NBA
Theresa Runstedtler, Professor of History at American University; 2018-2019 Dresher Center Inclusion imperative Visiting Faculty Fellow
Making Space for Human and Multi-Species Inclusion in New York’s Central Park
Dawn Biehler, Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems; Spring 2019 Dresher Center Residential Faculty Fellow
Global Television Formats and National Identities
Ibrahim Er, PhD Candidate in the Language, Literacy, and Culture Program; Spring 2019 Dresher Center Graduate Student Fellow
The Bicycle Craze of 1890s Ukraine from an American Perspective
Olha Martynyuk, Fulbright Visiting Researcher at UMBC; Senior Lecturer at National Technical University of Ukraine “Ihor Sikorsky Polytechnic Institute”
The Southern Typhoid Fever Thesis and Diagnostic Racism
Katherine Bankole-Medina, Professor of History at Coppin State University; 2018-2019 Dresher Center Inclusion imperative Visiting Faculty Fellow
Fall 2018
Pragmatic Naturalism
Eric Campbell, Assistant Professor of Philosophy; 2018 Dresher Center Summer Faculty Research Fellow
Race, Space, and Freedom: The Ongoing Fight for Mobility Rights
Jennifer Maher, Associate Professor of English; 2018 Dresher Center Summer Faculty Research Fellow
Finding Ryukyu
Aimi Bouillon, MFA Candidate in Intermedia + Digital Arts; 2018 Dresher Center Graduate Student Research Fellow
The National Atlas as Imagined Community
John Rennie Short, Professor of Public Policy
Denazification through the Lens of Transitional Justice?
Rebecca Boehling, Professor of History and Director of the Global Studies and Judaic Studies Programs; Fall 2018 Dresher Center Residential Faculty Fellow
Spring 2018
The Anansi Trio: On the Path
Matt Belzer, Senior Lecturer, Music
The Herd: Seeking a Swimmable Harbor
Kelley Bell, Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Visual Arts
Eighteenth-Century England’s Charitable Corporation: A Cautionary Tale of Micro-lending, Financial Fraud, and Government Bailouts
Amy Froide, Professor, History, and 2018 Dresher Center Residential Faculty Fellow
Railroad Track of Violence: Stories About the Chinese in Nineteenth-Century America
Irene Chan, Associate Professor, Visual Arts, and 2018 Dresher Center Residential Faculty Fellow
Fall 2017
‘They Ask, Why Do You Talk Like That; I Ask, Why Don’t You Want to Talk Like That?’: Analyzing the Online Speech and Identity Practices of Black Female Undergraduates
Erin Berry, PhD Student, Language, Literacy and Culture; Dresher Center Graduate Student Residential Fellow
The Influence of Gender on Research in Avian Behavior: Diversity of Researchers Speeds Progress
Kevin Omland, Professor, Biological Sciences
Reclaiming the Black Group Soul: Blueprints for Black Infrastructure in Claude McKay’s Amiable with Big Teeth
Chris Varlack, Lecturer, English
The Posthumous Autobiography and Civil Rights Memory
Brian Norman, English, Loyola University Maryland; Dresher Center Visiting Professor
The Marginalization of Privilege: The Fracture of Upper Class Identity in WW I Britain
Mary Laurents, PhD Student, Language, Literacy and Culture; Dresher Center Graduate Student Residential Fellow
The Superblock Downtown Development Debacle: “It seems like it has taken so long to get nothing started,” 2003-2015
Nicole King, Associate Professor and Chair, American Studies; Dresher Center Summer Faculty Research Fellow|
Shanghai Survivors: World War Two’s Displaced Persons in Asia and the International Politics of Refugee Resettlement
Meredith Oyen, Associate Professor, History; Dresher Center Summer Faculty Research Fellow
Driveway Moments: The Public Radio Structure of Feeling
Jason Loviglio, Associate Professor and Chair, Media and Communications Studies
Spring 2017
Documentation of Innu: A Step toward the Preservation of Indigenous Languages of Quebec (Canada)
Renée Lambert-Bretiere, Assistant Professor, MLLI
Let’s Not Talk About Sex: Prostitutes as Knowledge Brokers in the Medieval Mediterranean
Susan McDonough, Associate Professor, History
‘All She Must Possess’, a neo-Modernist play about Etta Cone
Susan McCully, Assistant Professor, Theatre
Railroad Track of Violence: Stories of the Chinese in 19th-Century America
Irene Chan, Associate Professor, Visual Arts
The Velvet Fist: Canadian Gay and Lesbian Liberation in 1981 Toronto
Calla Thompson, Associate Professor, Visual Arts and 2017 Dresher Center Residential Faculty Fellow
Reconsidering Yoshida Shôin, Samurai Imperial Loyalist, through his Memory Landscape
Constantine N. Vaporis, Professor, History, and Director, Asian Studies Program and 2017 Dresher Center Residential Faculty Fellow
Fall 2016
The Vanguard is Never Caught Napping: Informants and Police Inside the Black Panther Party in Baltimore, 1968-1972
Andy Holter, Historical Studies M.A. Program
The Quest for Livable Space: Futurity and Sonority in Early Twentieth-Century Black Narrative
Maleda Belilgne, Assistant Professor, Africana Studies and English
Jibooms, Barrels, and Arseholes: Singing Sex in Sea Chanteys
Jessica Floyd, Language, Literacy, and Culture Ph.D. Program and Dresher Center Residential Graduate Fellow
Spanish Movies
Erin Hogan, Assistant Professor, Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication
Defining their Past and Immortalizing their Future: Women’s Monuments in Early Modern England
Kelly Daughtridge, Historical Studies M.A. Program and Dresher Center Residential Graduate Fellow
‘Enhanced Interrogation Techniques’: Poetry, Translation, and the News
Piotr Gwiazda, Professor, English
What is a Population-Level Cause?
Jessica Pfeifer, Associate Professor, Philosophy
The Political Thought of America’s Founding Feminists
Lisa Vetter, Assistant Professor, Political Science
Spring 2016
Philosophical Anarchism and Political Obligation: Kantian Questions
Michael Nance, Assistant Professor, Philosophy
Using Digital Tools to Measure Transnationalism: Developing Typologies and Methodologies for Cross-cultural Comparisons of Television Formats
Edward Larkey, Modern Languages, Linguistics and Intercultural Communication
From Paid Wailing to Protestant Tears: The Transformation of Chinese Grief
Ruth E. Toulson, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Humanistic Studies, MICA
Racial Violence and Vaudevillians of Color: The Makings of a Black Theater Circuit
Michelle Scott, Associate Professor, History
The American Civilization Institute: Toward a New History of Civic Engagement
Denise Meringolo, Associate Professor, History and Dresher Center Residential Fellow
Building an Augmented-Reality Reading Machine: A Documentary
Craig Saper, Professor, Language, Literacy, and Culture and Dresher Center Residential Fellow
Fall 2015
Imagining Otherwise: Narrating Transformative Identity Work in a College-Level Social Justice Course
Rachel Carter, Ph.D. student, Language Literacy and Culture, Fall 2015 Dresher Center Graduate Residential Fellow
Developing a new Professional Identity: Second Career Teachers
Sarah Shin, Professor, Education, Co-Director, M.A. TESOL Program
Sexual Necropolitics and the Gender of Betrayal in Latin American Literature and Film
Viviana MacManus, Assistant Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies
Memory and Memorialization in the midst of Colombia’s Armed Conflict
Felix Burgos, Ph.D. student, Language Literacy and Culture, Fall 2015 Dresher Center Graduate Residential Fellow
Human Agency, Intentionality, and Niche Construction
Erle Ellis, Professor, Geography and Environmental Systems
txt me im board: The Long Poem in Contemporary American Poetry
Tanya Olson, Lecturer, English
Spring 2015
Freedom Marooned: An Atlantic Slave Rebellion in the Eighteenth-Century Dutch Caribbean
Marjoleine Kars, History
Design, Desire and Consumption
Peggy Re, Visual Arts
“We’ve Done Beautiful Work Here”: Resource Conservation as Intercultural Process in Mojanda, Ecuador
John Stolle-McAllister, Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication
Making Time for Carbon: Understanding the Value of Nature and the Instability of Capital
David Lansing, Geography and Environmental Systems
Fall 2014
Acting While Black (and Male) in Disney’s Land
Kimberly Moffitt, American Studies, Spring 2014 Dresher Center Residential Faculty Fellow
The Hopkinson Hoax of 1763
Kevin Wisniewski, Ph.D. student, Language Literacy and Culture, and Fall 2014 Dresher Center Graduate Residential Fellow
An American Enlightenment: Political Theory and the Origins of American Feminism
Lisa Vetter, Assistant Professor, Political Science
Neoliberal Globalization and the ‘Chinese Dream’
Fan Yang, Assistant Professor, Media and Communication Studies
Scribebamus epos: Identity and Confusion in Martial’s Exilic Poetry
Tim Phin, Lecturer, Ancient Studies
Spring 2014
Set in Stone? Posthumous Accounts, Epitaphs, and the Writing of Mid-Tang Literati Biographies
Anna M. Shields, Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication
‘Pleading the Belly’: Convict Transportation and Motherhood
Teresa Foster, PhD student, Language, Literacy and Culture
Leah’s Dybbuk: A Feminist Adaptation of a Classic Yiddish Play
Susan McCully, Theatre; Eve Muson, Theatre; and Michele Osherow, English
Explosive Figures: Population Projections and the Pill
Carole McCann, Gender + Women’s Studies
Fall 2013
Doing Feminist Translation as Local and Transnational Activism – The Turkish Translation and Reception of Virgin: The Untouched History
Emek Ergun, Ph.D. student, Language Literacy and Culture, Fall 2013 Dresher Center Graduate Residential Fellow
Improving the Art of Paper War: The Literary Gambols of Francis Hopkinson
Kevin Wisniewski, Ph.D. student, Language Literacy and Culture
Grin and Bear It: Humor as an Economy of Being
Kara Hunt, Post-doctoral Fellow
Beyond Representation: Approaching Violence and the Visual
Rebecca Adelman, Assistant Professor, Media & Communications Studies
Spring 2013
Methodological Approaches and Questions in Place-based Research
Kate Brown, History and Dresher Center Fellow, and Preminda Jacob, Visual Arts and Dresher Center Fellow
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
Remaking the Malthusian Couple for the Contraceptive Age: Calibrating the Risk of Pregnancy
Carole McCann, Gender + Women’s Studies
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
Trade Networks and Tourist Messiahs
Pilar K. Rau, Ph.D. candidate in Socio-cultural Anthropology:
Hit and Stay
Joe Tropea, M.A., UMBC Public History