RESEARCH, SCHOLARSHIP & CREATIVITY

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

ARHU faculty maintain close relationships and hold leadership positions with:

“Art Journal,” College Art Association: Jordana Moore Saggese, editor-in-chief

Labor and Working Class History Association: Julie Greene, president

College Band Directors National Association, Eastern Division Conference: Michael Votta, president

Intersectional Qualitative Research Methods Institute: Ruth Zambrana, president-elect

Digital Art History Society: Meredith J. Gill, vice-president for membership

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS

A new partnership with the American Institute of Physics (AIP) will help

uncover stories of scientific discovery while illuminating complex social

issues faced by both humanists and scientists. A $1 million pledge from AIP will establish an endowed professorship in the history of natural sciences and support the appointee’s humanistic and scientific research through a partnership with AIP’s Center for History of Physics.

Dean Bonnie Thornton Dill will help lead a project called the Humane Metrics for the Humanities and Social Sciences that will develop and implement new methods for assessing the nature and quality of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. The initiative, now in its second phase, is funded by a $695,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Michigan State University to continue building the framework allowing scholars to tell more textured and compelling stories about the impact of their research.

The Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture expanded its ongoing collaboration with the Riversdale House Museum in Riverdale Park, Maryland. Student-led education and community projects included 3D digitization of objects in the museum collection to create a digital scavenger hunt for children, an augmented reality initiative and an accessibility project for those unable to climb stairs.

With an $800,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the college will transform an existing digitization platform developed in collaboration with Harvard Law School into a complete digital text

production pipeline to expand access to a vast trove of literature

from the pre-modern Persian and Arabic world.

SCHOLARSHIP

Linda Aldoory, associate dean for research and programming, is the health communication lead on a $140,000 subcontract of a $12 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control project with Prince George’s County Health Department to develop and implement tailored health messaging to reach underserved communities.

Clare Lyons recieved a 2018-19 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to support the completion of her book “Sex in an Eighteenth-Century AngloOceanic World,” which examines changing ideas about sexuality and gender in the English-speaking world of the 1900s.

Rachel Singpurwalla, assistant professor of philosophy, received a $20,000 grant from the Maryland Catalyst Fund New Directions Program to study the idea of “civic friendship” in ancient Greek philosophy and what it might teach us about the current heightened division and civic conflict in the U.S. Co-edited by Associate Professor of History Julie Taddeo, “Conflicting Masculinities: Men in Television Period Drama” is a collection of essays exploring the complex male characters in period dramas and why they have such broad appeal to 21st-century audiences.

Robyn Muncy, professor of history, curated “Rightfully Hers: American Women and the Vote,” an exhibit at the National Archives, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote.

TEACHING

In Associate Professor of Communication Damien Pfister’s “Interpreting Strategic Discourse” class, students collaborated with the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities to code approximately 3,000 Facebook advertisements planted by the Russian Internet Research Agency and create a publicly searchable database of them categorized by content and theme. Students in “Soundtrack to Revolution: Black Protest Music from the Slave Ship to SoundCloud,” an honors seminar taught by American Studies Assistant Professor La Marr Jurelle Bruce, learned how black people have used music to express grievances with antiblackness, misogyny and other forces that have threatened their lives.

Associate Professor of Art History Abigail McEwen taught “Curating Change: Latin American Art at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB),” a course that introduced students to digital art history by curating an online exhibition at the IDB.

VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS

John Ruppert, professor of art, received a $15,000 grant from the Maryland Catalyst Fund New Directions Program to attend the Arctic Circle Residency Program, where he spent several weeks recording the sounds of ice and making notes for future sculptures and installations that will give viewers a multi-sensory experience of nature. The “Living Legacy National Speaking Tour” features David C. Driskell, distinguished university professor of art emeritus, in conversation with Curlee R. Holton, executive director of the David. C. Driskell Center, to share Driskell’s legacy as an artist and scholar.

The School of Music received a grant from the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music to fund a yearlong Kurt Weill Festival featuring performances of the famous composer’s concert and staged works and lectures that explored how Weill’s history as an immigrant shaped the future of music.

Professor of Theatre Daniel Conway represented the U.S. at the 2019 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space with his innovative set design for Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s “Macbeth.” “Here and Now: Recent Acquisitions,” the spring 2019 exhibition at the University of Maryland Art Gallery, featured work from the many generous contributions from donors that make possible the continued growth of the University of Maryland Art Gallery permanent collection. The exhibition was supported in part by the Dorothy and Nicholas Orem Exhibition Fund as well as a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council.

>> LOOKING FORWARD:

As part of a creation residency through the Artist Partner Programs at The Clarice, Porte Parole, a documentary theater company from Montreal, developed workshop readings of “The Assembly: UMD,” a play that examines the dynamics of polarization around the world today. The play premieres December 5-7 at The Clarice. See the complete 2019-20 performing arts season online at go.umd. edu/2019-20arts.