CURRENTS: María Bernedo Del Carpio and Morgan Smalls

CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now is lunchtime series that showcases exciting new faculty work in the humanities in a dynamic and inter-disciplinary setting.

María Bernedo del Carpio, Assistant Professor, Economics, UMBC

People make most economic decisions under uncertainty, i.e. each choice has different potential scenarios with their corresponding probabilities. Research has shown that people do not weight probabilities in the same way. Distorting probabilities is a problem because people make decisions based on unrealistic assumptions. For instance, people spend their money in lottery tickets even though the chances of winning are very low, or small business owners (particularly in developing countries) do not buy insurance to protect their assets, or Americans are financially underprepared for retirement despite a distinct possibility that they might outlive their assets. Kahneman and Tversky studied this phenomenon and developed Prospect Theory. In the talk, Bernedo will discuss this concept and how researchers have measured probability weighting attitudes. Bernedo will do an overview of the literature that studies how we can alter probability distortions and discuss preliminary work on the design of a study that looks at the role of education.

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Morgan Smalls, Assistant Professor, School of Media Arts and Design, James Madison University; Spring 2022 Inclusion Imperative Visiting Faculty Fellow

Insecure was an HBO comedy series that focused on the life of two African American female best friends in their late 20s. Starring showrunner Issa Rae, Insecure had the opportunity to become a space in which stereotypical representations of African American women on television could either be reproduced or contested. A show run by a Black woman can also serve as a vehicle for conversations about race, gender, and class, not only in the series but also beyond the screens. This project seeks to understand the role of television in constructing the main character Issa Dee, played by Rae, in the series. Specifically, Smalls investigates the way Issa’s character is portrayed in the third season of the show and assesses whether this portrayal aligned with historical or contemporary stereotypes of Black women.