RESEARCH, SCHOLARSHIP & CREATIVITY STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS ARHU faculty maintain close relationships and hold leadership positions with:
American Comparative Literature Association: Sangeeta Ray, president
In partnership with UMD’s Center for Global Migration Studies and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, the “Making African America” symposium brought together scholars, journalists, activists, curators, filmmakers and writers to discuss how immigration has shaped and is continuing to reshape what it means to be Black in the United States. Faculty from the Maryland Language Science Center and the Department of English helped shape Planet Word, a new museum in Washington, D.C., that seeks to inspire and renew a love of words, language and reading in people of all ages. Faculty continue to collaborate with the museum on research and other initiatives. Associate Professor Anita Atwell Seate, Professor Brooke Fisher Liu and Assistant Professor Jiyoun Kim from the Department of Communication are working with the National Weather Service to improve how forecasters communicate severe weather threats across the nation. The project is funded by a $368,675 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency. The Department of Philosophy established an arrangement with the University of Maryland Medical System to have philosophy graduate students and recent Ph.D. graduates serve on a hospital ethics committee. Two students, along with Department of Philosophy Professor and Chair Samuel Kerstein, provide consultations on issues including withdrawal of life-sustaining treatments, do-not-resuscitate orders and medical futility.
College Band Directors National Association: Michael Votta, vice president
Society for Music Theory: Gretchen Horlacher, vice president
Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication: Linda Aldoory, vice president (president-elect)
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SCHOLARSHIP 1. | During the flare-up of IsraeliPalestinian violence this past spring, Visiting Professor of Israel Studies and Jewish Studies Scott Lasensky spoke on a panel organized by HBO and the Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies at UMD about past American attempts to resolve the conflict, why they failed and steps the Biden administration could take going forward. The event was part of a screening and discussion of the HBO film “Oslo,” a diplomatic thriller about the 1993 Oslo Accord, and drew a global audience of scholars and academics. 2. | Philip Resnik, professor of linguistics, is applying machine learning techniques to social media data in an attempt to make predictions about important aspects of mental health, including the risk of suicide.
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3. | Associate Professor of American Studies La Marr Jurelle Bruce’s book, “How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind” explored the Black radical creativity of artists like Nina Simone, Richard Pryor, Lauryn Hill and Kendrick Lamar to shed light on various manifestations of madness in the face of antiBlackness. Bruce’s research is situated in the emerging, interdisciplinary field of mad studies, which interrogates the social construction of psychiatry and mental illness—and illuminates lived experiences of “madness.” 4. | Jordana Moore Saggese, associate professor and associate chair in the Department of Art History and Archaeology and current editor-in-chief for the College Art Association’s Art Journal, oversaw the first issue in the journal’s 80-year history to focus explicitly and exclusively on “Blackness.”
