CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now with Eleanor Brasfield (PUP) and Keegan Cook Finberg (ENGL)
Advanced Registration Required for Lunch
Location
Performing Arts & Humanities Building : 216
Date & Time
November 16, 2026, 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Description
The Dresher Center’s CURRENTS: Humanities Work Now lunchtime series showcases exciting new work in the humanities in a dynamic and inter-disciplinary setting.
Limited advanced registration for lunch. Sign up by November 11.
Eleanor Brasfield, Doctoral Student, Public Policy
Between Housed and Unhoused: Renaissance Festival Workers and Policy Studies in Transience
Eleanor Brasfield's current research is focused on housing policy as it relates to migrant workers, using the experiences of full time renaissance festival workers (colloquially called "road rennies") who work at the Maryland Renaissance Festival as a case study. More broadly, she is interested in the evolution of housing policy in the United States over the course of the twentieth century, and how changes in policy have resulted in extremely limited options for people whose work or life requires them to move around frequently or stay in one place for a short or indeterminate amount of time. Fresh from a series of interviews in preparation for her dissertation proposal, Brasfield will reflect on the interview process and preliminary takeaways.
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Keegan Cook Finberg, Associate Professor, English
Collaborative Sites: State Surveillance and the Family
How has the US state collaborated in the making of family structures since the 1970s? Keegan Finberg's new book project, Collaborative Sites: State Surveillance and the Family, studies families on the margin working with and under the eyes of the state. The book draws from a historical and cultural archive of resistance to what the state might deem as the “family ideal” that nonetheless collaborates with various surveillant structures: healthcare and welfare in service of transgender kinship, abortion as well as birth as part of childrearing, and tales of the impossibility of a singular role of “wife” or “mother.” This presentation discusses the initial stages of research and planning for Collaborative Sites, showcasing how 70s philosophies of the Wages for Housework movement and the welfare rights movement reach into our moment.
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Join via WebEx: https://umbc.webex.com/umbc/j.php?MTID=m82fd7a6f260e13006da3d3fbb99a09b2
