When Demetrie Garner moved from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to Baltimore, he found a wealth of opportunities in Baltimore, a strong spiritual practice, and a supportive network of friends and family. They became necessary anchors for recovering from opioid dependency and managing the workload of a full-time job while earning a bachelor’s, a master’s, and now a doctorate in public health from UMBC.
“My story has a lot of twists and turns. I came to Baltimore in 2018 for treatment for opioid use disorder after experiencing homelessness, incarceration, hospitalizations, and treatment programs. Recovery was a process of 26 years,” says Garner, who now works in the Baltimore City Mayor’s Office of Overdose Response. “When I came to Baltimore, I had a clean slate. I was able to go through an expungement process of criminal records, which was a list of misdemeanors that happened during my drug and alcohol addiction. My journey to UMBC began as an adult learner, at 40 years old, after a year in recovery.”
Understanding the bigger picture
Garner with his mom, Clara Turner.
The inspiration to pursue a bachelor’s degree came from working as a recovery specialist at Franklin Square Hospital in Baltimore County, where he supported patients who had overdosed or were experiencing substance use disorders, many of whom faced significant social and economic conditions that negatively affected their health. Although he connected patients to treatment and recovery resources, he questioned why so many returned to the emergency department with the same challenges. That curiosity sparked a desire to better understand the systems, policies, and social factors driving addiction and recovery.
“I wanted to understand how healthcare is failing people in recovery,” says Garner. “I decided to go back to school. The logical step was to study public health.” Making the leap from working full-time and being a full-time student without a driver’s license posed many challenges. Thankfully, in addition to his faith, friends, and family, Garner also had a team of mentors at UMBC’s School of Public Policy that continue to support him to make his vision possible.
Garner immersed himself in public health research and learned about comorbidities, where patients are managing multiple health needs like substance dependency and mental health. He found that having multiple health needs with little to no healthcare is also exacerbated by homelessness, lack of transportation, inconsistent healthcare, or an environment not conducive to recovery. The emergency room could treat the symptoms but not the root causes.
“My undergrad journey into public health was transformative because the curriculum I was learning for the core courses in public health also exposed me to psychology and epidemiology,” says Garner. “UMBC helped me understand what was needed for me to actually serve. If I wanted to be of service, then I needed to understand not just what leads people into substance use disorder but also what drives the research.”
No limits in sight
Each learning moment inspired great curiosity. Garner sought faculty for advice and opportunities. A game-changing moment came in a research methods course with Pamela R. Bennett, professor of public policy. Bennett encouraged Garner to think beyond what was stated in the research and analyze what was in between the lines.
“I got a D in one discussion post, so I went to Dr. Bennett’s office hours. She told me to stop synthesizing information and to start thinking critically,” says Garner. “That was a game changer because I translated what she said to me into my work.”
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UMBC offered me, someone with a lived experience of homelessness and substance use disorder, a door that I would normally not have access to. College is an opportunity to discover who you are and what matters to you. Don’t be afraid to engage with professors, challenge ideas, and use your voice.
Demetrie Garner ’23, public health, and M.P.P ’25
Another game-changing moment came in Lauren Hamilton Edwards‘ class. Hamilton Edwards, associate professor of public policy, told the class at the beginning of the semester that everyone had an A until they didn’t. Garner interpreted that as an incentive to do his best every day. “From the beginning, she gave me the kind of nurturing I needed,” says Garner. “Now, when I have an intern, I make sure that I’m the “Dr. Lauren Hamilton Edwards” to that intern, as she was with me.”
Additional supports like the McNair Scholars Program gave him the foundation and confidence to pursue graduate school, and his first experience presenting his research at UMBC’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day was a humbling experience, he says.
Garner with Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott.
Garner is thriving thanks to the support of the faculty and staff in the public policy and sociology, anthropology, and public health departments, who recognized his potential.
“Associate Professor Andrea Kalfoglou called me Dr. Garner long before I believed it myself. My faculty advisor, Katie Birger, associate teaching professor, recognized my potential early on and encouraged me to pursue the B.A./M.A. pathway,” says Garner. “Now, with Professor Nancy Miller‘s mentorship, I am on track to finish my coursework by the end of the fall semester and begin my dissertation proposal in the spring of 2027.”
“Don’t be afraid”
As Garner’s expertise in public health and policy grew, so did his career opportunities. Today, he serves as the quality assurance manager for Baltimore City’s Behavioral Health Consent Decree. His work focuses on improving outcomes for people experiencing homelessness, substance use disorders, and behavioral health crises, giving him a unique perspective on how public safety and public health intersect to advance overdose prevention and crisis response.
“I no longer see those 26 years to recovery as a period of failure. They gave me lived experience that I now use to help others entering recovery,” says Garner, who, throughout that time, drew strength from the unwavering faith of his grandmother, Hazel Parker; his sister, Shontell Cooper, and his mother, Clara Turner, who never stopped believing change was possible. He hopes his story inspires others to begin their own path to healing.
“UMBC offered me, someone with a lived experience of homelessness and substance use disorder, a door that I would normally not have access to,” says Garner. “College is an opportunity to discover who you are and what matters to you. Don’t be afraid to engage with professors, challenge ideas, and use your voice.”
In his new book, Empathy Machines: This American Life, Podcasting, and the Public Radio Structure of Feeling, Jason Loviglio, professor of media and communications, critiques and analyzes the making of and the impact of one of his favorite shows on National Public Radio (NPR), “This American Life”—a radio show turned podcast that received the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Audio Reporting. “This American Life,” created and hosted by Baltimore-native Ira Glass, became a listener favorite for its magical way of weaving stories about everyday people into larger human issues, sounding more like a sympathetic, curious neighbor instead of a serious professor. The irony is not lost on Loviglio, who thanked his students in the book for reminding him that accessibility ensures that the public, his students, and their families, not only academic editors, understand the research. He wants this young audience to learn about radio and be inspired to research their own media and communications passions.
“The people I have had the honor of calling my students over the years have done more than anyone else to help me learn how to communicate ideas about communication and media clearly and simply,” writes Loviglio in his acknowledgements. “The MCS undergraduates are among the least pretentious and least entitled people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Too numerous to name here, I give a collective thanks to you for the lessons of clarity you’ve taught me and for the laughs.”
Long before Loviglio became an author and the co-editor of Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media and of The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcasting Studies, he was a young kid in love with “weird radio shows,” notes Loviglio. “I remember listening at night to my red transistor radio when I was little, maybe 9 or so. I put it under my pillow so my parents wouldn’t hear it,” says Loviglio. “I mostly listened to weird nationally-syndicated late night public radio shows, like Dr. Demento and local sports talk shows.”
While he doesn’t expect students to fall in love with radio as he did, in his History of Media class, he wants students to understand the power and importance of radio long before stories were mobilized in the palms of our hands 24/7 worldwide. Loviglio encourages students to look beyond Google and instead find people whose lives were shaped by radio.
He wants students to explore what radio meant in everyday life and how it conveyed and reflected emotions such as fear, danger, excitement, and joy—functioning as empathy machines that inspired deeper forms of storytelling and laid the groundwork for public radio and podcasts.
Q: What are empathy machines?
A: I think it’s safe to say that public radio has been explicitly understood as an empathy machine at least since the radio show “This American Life’s” debut in 1996. If we allow for synonyms of empathy, then radio has been understood this way for a lot longer. There’s a longer history regarding various media of communication as uniquely efficient machines for producing empathy. Most famously, of course, is the novel. And before that, oral storytelling. The idea of radio as an empathy machine stems from a specific history referred to as the technological sublime.
The notion that we can invent and communicate our way into equality is central to the way we understand Western history since at least the printing press. The book, particularly the novel, has been hailed for its powers to impart democracy and empathy. This history is opposed by an equally compelling one in which the machine represents the antithesis of democratic values of participation and empathy. A dominant theme in media history is the role of technology as an extension of human values, such that we no longer hear the metaphors in our arguments.
Q: Did you always know you were going to write about “This American Life” instead of general radio?
A: It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized the best way to tell the story of public radio and podcasting was through NPR’s “This American Life.” It was first produced in 1996 by WBEZ, Chicago Public Radio, and then picked up nationally by Public Radio International. It became a massive show.
“This American Life” is also one of the first shows to start offering a podcast version, in case you missed an episode. Around 2014, “This American Life” started to shift, where more people were listening to it as a podcast. I wrote to Ira Glass last year, and he still calls it a radio show. That’s still his default understanding of it, even now.
Q: Did you have fun writing this?
A: Yes and no. I had fun thinking about it and fun listening to the shows. This is such a great way to tell stories. But it was hard to write because the shows kept changing. My thoughts kept changing. I began writing the book during President Obama’s administration, when I was thinking positively about American history. Then, Trump won.
I didn’t think that because President Obama was elected, it meant that everything was great and we had cured racism. I thought a particular version of liberalism had won. Definitely very capitalistic, definitely very interested in style, maybe more than substance, but there was a story everyone was telling about the country that was designed to make people feel very comfortable. Not only liberals, but also very privileged people, and not particularly political.
Trump winning the 2016 presidential election was a reminder that there is another story. I knew the other far-right story, but I thought that more people were happy for the positive symbolic victory that President Obama represented in terms of being biracial and being born to an immigrant father. This educated, cosmopolitan elite could also speak across different cultural registers. I thought that’s what I was writing about. Then the Trump administration began, and I felt I had to write about this darker story. That meant I had to think differently about the long, slow death of liberalism. There was something rotten in the creeping neoliberalism of the era that put some of us to sleep, left others out in the cold, and mobilized a politics of racial grievance on the right.
Q: What was the critique?
A: I’m not speaking for everyone, but people like me: privileged, educated, and progressive but kind of complacent. What did we do for the eight years of the Obama administration and the previous two or three decades of creeping neoliberalism? What were we listening to? Public radio. That’s what we were listening to. That’s the soundtrack of the frog and the pot. The pot slowly heats up, the frog is comfortable, and doesn’t realize it’s slowly boiling. I love public radio. I love “This American Life.” I love podcasting, but I also wanted to look critically at the story we were telling about empathy, who is telling the story, and who is the story about?
Important exceptions long persisted at the margins of the public radio industry. “Latino USA” is the longest-running public radio Latino news and cultural program in the United States. It is unique in that it has people of color behind the microphone. It is designed by the people that it speaks to, but most of public radio is not that way. In contrast, “This American Life,” in a way, is the epitome of white liberalism. It’s really beautiful storytelling, but in the service of this kind of sound effect of liberalism and empathy, instead of something a little bit more gritty and radically engaged that maybe we should have been trying to tune into.
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I use “This American Life,” as a bridge, because of the way that it really epitomizes…radio, as a place for sonic innovation, experimentation, the primacy of the local, the intimacy of the familiar, weakly voice…
Then what happens is it becomes a national phenomenon…turning into inside the beltway, political relevance, and increasing market share…driven by an increasingly robust audience research, which discovers…that the folks who listen to public radio are disproportionately…highly educated, higher earners, and that in order to sustain a system that relies on donations…the programming has to not only appeal to them, but the variation between programs has to be minimal…which is borrowed from commercial radio.
Jason Loviglio
Professor of media and communication studies, on the "Cultural Studies" podcast. https://culturalstudies.podbean.com/e/jason-loviglio-on-radio-and-podcasts/
Q: Did the mindset about who gets to tell the radio story shift during or after the social justice protests of the summer of 2020?
A: Yes. That is when it all falls apart. The whole public radio storytelling format starts to collapse in the late 2010s because most of these shows are run by white producers and white on-air talent who are telling stories about others. All the contradictions just start to crash into each other, and a lot of the shows go off the air. There are all these awkward moments of reckoning. Shows changed. One week, the radio show “Invisibilia,” an NPR podcast about the unseen forces that shape human behavior, like ideas and beliefs, was being produced by all-white women from NPR, The New Yorker, and Slate magazine. Then, in part due to the collapse of the specific logic of empathy that animated the show, there is a switchover to new hosts—two women of color, who cheerfully embraced a more politically engaged set of feelings, like confrontation and discomfort. The show was canceled in 2023, suggesting that the format could not bear certain kinds of changes to its structure of feeling.
The same thing happened with “Reply All,” a popular podcast about the internet and digital culture, created and hosted by Alex Goldman and PJ Vogt, two white men from New York City. They had a massive implosion. Goldman and Vogt were called out for perpetuating plantation culture in the workplace, where leadership and decision-making are dominated by white executives or managers, right in the middle of doing an exposé on Bon Appétit, a high-end food culture magazine, for doing precisely the same thing. “Reply All” was calling out a white-run magazine, and the people who were doing a lot of the grunt work but not getting paid were people of color and young people, who spoke up about the hypocrisy. That show collapsed in a couple of weeks.
It’s really a radical moment because radio shows and podcasts don’t get to tell the same stories without ever changing who gets to tell the stories. You don’t get to pretend you care, but not change. And so things really start to feel the strain by 2020.
Q: Are shows today more liberal or conservative as a result of the shift in 2020?
A: There are many shows today that center on conflict and unhappiness with the status quo—that Trumpism has gone too far. I try to write about how we are in a whiplash between this rhetoric of empathy and the rhetoric of Trumpism, this hostility to the idea of caring for others. I don’t know how many people took the political implications of empathy seriously, but rhetorically, it shaped a good deal of the public radio structure of feeling.
Q: Why did you thank your students in the book?
A: Students are reading less and less, and academics like me want to write clearly, and we usually don’t because we’re not thinking about 17-year-olds. We’re not thinking about the parents of 17-year-olds who might encounter our research in a faculty magazine or a newspaper. We’re thinking about the people who review academic journals or books.
One reason I thanked the students is that in the MCS methods class, students read articles written by MCS faculty. If they’re learning about history, they’re reading something I wrote or something Liz Patton, chair and associate professor of MCS, who writes about media history, identity, and space, wrote. If they’re reading about globalization and representation, they’ll read research byTracy Tinga, associate professor of MCS, who focuses on critical conversations about media, power, development, and digital cultures in African contexts, or research by Fan Yang, professor of MCS, who writes about the intersection of cultural studies, transnational media studies, globalization, postcolonialism/postsocialism, urban communication, and contemporary China. And now, they are reading work on social media and mental health, thanks to our newest colleague, Holly Avella. They’re also reading or viewing the work of Chung-Wei Huang, teaching assistant professor, Kristen Anchor, teaching associate professor, and Donald Snyder, teaching professor of MCS.
Students love reading faculty research, so I want to make sure what I’m writing is accessible to students. It’s a conversation starter when students connect personally with the research.
Q: Do students in your classes listen to the radio?
A:Some do. I think they do so a bit more after they’ve had a class with me. I want to make sure all my classes have opportunities for different kinds of creativity and engagement. In my History of Media class, I have students think about radio and pay attention to what is on the radio by having them interview a grandparent or someone older in their lives about their experiences with the radio. Students create small stories by conducting interviews and editing them into short radio diaries in a style similar to “This American Life.”
A lot of our students are immigrants or international students, and even more are children or grandchildren of immigrants. Radio remains especially important in much of the world, particularly in the Global South and in regions shaped by uneven development. This assignment helps students learn about their grandparents, and for some, it becomes the most meaningful conversation they have ever had with them. I’ve had students come back and tell me, “My grandfather died, and I have this recording of us talking for your assignment. It’s the only thing I have of him.” That’s why I really value this assignment.
Q: Is listening to the radio really a thing of the past?
A: Video games and gaming culture are increasingly central to sound studies because so much of these experiences are built around audio design. Many major games are intentionally structured to sound like radio, as in Grand Theft Auto, which features more than a dozen in-game radio stations with full playlists. In this sense, radio continues to shape not only podcasting but also video games, providing a template for how soundscapes are constructed for audiences. Even though radio may seem obsolete or old-fashioned, it remains one of the dominant frameworks through which people understand and design contemporary sound culture.
Alfred Boakye first began thinking deeply about the care and well-being of elders and their families while caring for his centenarian grandmother, Margaret Nyarko, in his home city of Tema, on the Atlantic coast of South East Ghana. She was in charge of her essential self-care routine—bathing, dressing, eating, toileting, transferring from sitting to standing, and continence—and more complex daily tasks necessary for independent living: medication management, meal preparation, transportation, and shopping. But even with her mobility, his grandmother lacked a social network.
Acting as both a devoted grandchild and a caretaker, Boakye experienced firsthand the complexities of aging. He learned to respect his grandmother’s independence while finding ways to support her where she needed help. Boakye, now a UMBC gerontology Ph.D. student in the social, cultural, and behavioral track, notes that his grandmother’s children didn’t live with her, and her grandchildren didn’t understand her aging process. As her friends and siblings passed away, her social circle shrank. “I asked her what motivated her to stay at church for hours, and she says the church supports her, brings her communion, visits her, and brings her Christmas gifts.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in human resources at the University of Ghana, Boakye wanted to broaden his understanding of aging and caregiving. In 2021, he moved to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in gerontology at Georgia State University (GSU), where he met his mentor and master’s thesis chair, Jennifer Craft Morgan, professor and director of the GSU Gerontology Institute.
Boakye at his GSU master’s graduation. (l-r): Antonius Skipper, assistant professor of gerontology at GSU and Boakye’s master’s thesis committee member; Reverend Kwaku Owusu-Boachie, Boakye’s uncle; Boakye; and Craft Morgan. (Image courtesy of Boakye)
In 2023, the year his grandmother passed away and the year he completed his master’s at GSU, Boakye published his first aging-related article, “Does the Church Care? Assessment of Social Support Strategies on the Health and Wellbeing of Older Adults within the Tema Metropolitan Assembly-Ghana” in the African Journal of Ageing Studies.
Craft Morgan fostered Boakye’s interest in gerontology and encouraged him to continue his work at the doctoral level, leading him to UMBC’s gerontology doctoral program, which is an interdisciplinary program in collaboration with the University of Baltimore. “Professor Craft Morgan has held my hand from the day I started my master’s program and continues to do so today,” says Boakye. “I always feel privileged that I have her in my corner.”
Stigma of male caregivers
Boakye’s studies are also informed by his experience being the primary caregiver to his father. Before moving to the U.S., Boakye did the grocery shopping, cooking, and laundry for Stephen, his 76‑year‑old father. He became aware of the multiple obligations children have when caretaking for themselves, their families, and their parents, as well as the isolation that can happen, especially if you are a male caregiver.
At the time, Boakye saw himself as being a “helpful child,” a term associated with a Ghanaian proverb that states, “If they take care of you to grow your teeth, you take care of them to lose theirs.” The proverb is more than words—it is a way of life in Ghana, which reinforced Boakye’s caregiving role and emphasized what it takes to be a helpful child—one built on responsibility and reciprocity. But it’s easier said than done. “I had to juggle my ‘identity’ as a male caregiver in a historically patriarchal society with my caring masculinity,” says Boakye. “Caregiving is predominantly perceived as ‘women’s work’ in Ghana, and men who take on these roles are often stigmatized and labeled ‘Kojo besia,’ which translates to ‘man woman’. To avoid such labeling, I was hesitant to ask for help, despite the toll caregiving took on my physical and psychological well‑being.”
Boakye presents his research on male caregiving to GSA leadership during their visit to UMBC in spring 2026. (Bradley Ziegler/UMBC)
Boakye presented his research and personal experience to the leadership of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) during their visit to UMBC this spring. Thanks to the UMB Provost’s Global Scholar Program, Boakye will be traveling to Ghana this summer to engage with male caregivers—to listen to their caregiving experiences, explore what these experiences mean to them, and co‑create resources to support them. He will use this research to finish his master’s thesis in applied sociology—Boakye’s third master’s degree.
Meeting Japan’s centenarians
In 2024, Boakye joined the Global Healthy Aging in Japan study abroad program, organized by Taka Yamashita, professor of sociology, anthropology, and public health and co-director of the gerontology doctoral program. The two-week program leads students through research, community centers, and historic sites in Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo. Japan is known for its cutting-edge research and policy that supports the active lives of the world’s largest aging population and the highest number of centenarians. The students visited multigenerational living communities and centers that merge theoretical research with real-world practice and outcomes.
Boakye (second row, fifth from the left) at a senior center in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. (Image courtesy of TakaYamishita, professor of gerontology and sociology, second row, first on the right)
Boakye was not expecting that at a time when he was missing his grandmother the most, Kanagawa would make him feel like he was home in Tema. It wasn’t only that both Japan and Ghana operate on a similar collective familial care system focused on intergenerational living and inclusion, notes Boakye. It’s also the physical environment. “The buildings are close together, and people put chairs in front of their homes to talk,” says Boakye. “Older adults greet passersby, and people stop to have a conversation with them. They will tell you they are out for a little sun.”
A highlight of the trip for all the students was meeting a supercentenarian. The 110-year-old woman welcomed them and kissed each of them on the cheek. “All the students say that they were blessed to have this welcome and that she could still talk to us,” says Boakye. “It was really emotional for me. I just kept thinking of my grandmother.”
Boakye was also impressed by the Kanagawa ME-BYO approach to aging, which encourages monitoring vital signs using biomedical technologies. ME-BYO focuses on preventing and minimizing illness progression through programs that promote healthy behaviors such as a balanced diet, exercise, and social activities. “My experience in Japan has been one of the best things that has happened in my personal and academic life and in my career,” says Boakye, who wants to find a way to incorporate ME-BYO into his current and future caregiving research and practice. “This trip has equipped me with the cultural competence, literacy, sensitivity, communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills needed to have a real-world impact in the field of gerontology.”
Looking Ahead
With five years of longevity research, Boakye now understands that his grandmother’s experience is common for many older adults in Ghana. He discovered in the 2021 Population and Housing Census of Ghana that adults 65 years of age and older make up 4.3 percent of Ghana’s population. However, he explains, the need for person-centred and geriatric care services has not kept up with the demand.
“I feel like I am now clearly connecting the dots between my experiences in Ghana, what I saw in Japan, and what I have learned in class. I am passionate about encouraging more men to engage and support the people they love, but also seek help when they need it,” says Boakye. He plans to finish his doctoral program in fall 2027.
“It has been a pleasure to watch Alfred’s research grow during his time at UMBC,” says Nancy Kusmaul, professor at UMBC’s School of Social Work, his dissertation chair, who Boakye works with as a research assistant. “He is committed to raising the voices of paid and unpaid caregivers who provide vital services to older adults and people with disabilities in the US and abroad. I am confident that he will continue to make significant contributions to the field.”
He knows there is a long road ahead, but he is confident that he is on the right path. “I want to build culturally relevant and gender‑sensitive resources that support male caregivers, not only to improve their health and well‑being but also to amplify their voices when it matters most.” His grandmother, Margaret, continues to inspire Boakye’s work on how caregiving shapes the experiences of both the carer and the care recipient.
Rather than taking her usual route to UMBC at the Universities at Shady Grove for her spring public health class, Magaly Lizama Hernandez ’26, psychology, boarded a plane to Geneva, Switzerland, as part of a 2026 study abroad program. The experience was made possible by the Bernard L. Berkowitz Memorial Award for students dedicated to public service. Lizama Hernandez was the inaugural recipient in 2025.
“The Berkowitz Award helped make my study abroad experience in Switzerland possible. I had the opportunity to explore health and well-being from a global perspective while immersing myself in a new culture,” says Lizama Hernandez, who split her week abroad between Geneva and Zurich. “It was an amazing experience that broadened my understanding of community health and deepened my commitment to helping others through public service.”
Erika Bucciantini, a doctoral student of public policy and the 2026 recipient of the Bernard L. Berkowitz Memorial Award, is also grateful for the award. As a full-time mom and full-time student, time is scarce, and the cost of child care and basic needs adds up quickly.
(left)Stokan presents Bucciantini with the Bernard L. Berkowitz Memorial Award certificate at the 2026 award ceremony. (Amy Wolf/UMBC). (right) Bucciantini with her family. (Cheryll Bankert Ratzsch/UMBC)
“As a parenting student with swiftly growing children, the first thing I did was buy new shoes for my kids. I also treated myself to two books for my research by Alan Mallach—The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America and Smaller Cities in a Shrinking World: Learning to Thrive Without Growth,” says Bucciantini.
Eric Stokan, associate professor of political science and director of UMBC’s Center for Social Science Scholarship (CS3), praised the CS3 advisory board for an outstanding selection of two exceptional students — Magaly and Erika — who, as he noted, “are poised to make a significant and positive impact on the Baltimore community, as envisioned by the founders of the Berkowitz Award.”
“The real gift of this award for me is the opportunity to afford childcare for my youngest over the summer so that I can take an internship to further my skill building,” says Bucciantini, who assists Loren Henderson, director and professor of the School of Public Policy, with data analysis coding, manuscript development, and teaching support for Henderson’s research about the plight of Black farmers in the United States.
(left) Bucciantini (center) with fellow public policy graduate assistants. (right) Bucciantini (first on the left) at the American Sociological Association’s Policy Outreach Program with Loren Henderson (first on the left). (Image courtesy of Bucciantini)
Whether it’s supporting fellow doctoral Retrievers on campus or serving as vice chair for Montgomery County’s Dickerson Area Facilities Implementation Group to help residents stay informed about facility operations, county initiatives, and state services, Bucciantini notes that public service is one of her core values. In her work, which also includes writing for the Food Bank of the Rockies in Colorado and Wyoming, she hopes to bring her commitment to public service and interests in planning policy and racial discrimination together for the greater good.
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The real gift of this award for me is the opportunity to afford childcare for my youngest over the summer so that I can take an internship to further my skill building.
Originally approached with a quilting mystery that began in 1846, a summer CoLab pulled a group of Retrievers together to examine the evidence. The detective pack expanded their search into robust research and, along the way, discovered how the communal process of sewing storytelling quilts lets these works of art transcend time.
Those in the quilting community know that the charm pack is a pre-cut bundle of fabric squares that can be used to create the patchwork for the top layer of a quilt. This story begins with a team that can be considered a sort of Charm Pack: expert quilters Mimi Dietrich, Monique Crabb, and Christa Gilliam, and researchers Sarah Fouts, Kat Gill, Ben Kayes, and Alyssa Thomas.
Gilliam (center) discusses the measurements of different quilts. Left to right: Dietrich, Gill, Fouts, and Crabb.
The pack first came together to solve a mystery for art collector Henry Stansbury, who bought a quilt at an auction 35 years ago with the words “Elizabeth Stansbury 1846” stitched into it. Last year, Stansbury showed this quilt to Dietrich, along with a second one he bought, stitched with the names Elizabeth and Mary Stansbury. Dietrich ’70, American studies, a member of UMBC’s Founding Four, has written 17 quilting books and has been an active part of the Baltimore quilting community since the 1980s. One look at the quilts and Dietrich could identify the type of fabric, the stitches used, and the style of quilt—a Baltimore Album Quilt. But these details didn’t give any clues about the Stansburys.
Looking closely at the Stansbury Baltimore Album Quilt.
The pair turned to Sarah Fouts, associate professor of American studies and co-director of UMBC’s Orser Center for Public Humanities, for help. Fouts saw this as a great opportunity for a summer CoLab—where students and faculty conduct humanities research with a community partner and create public-facing projects. Enter the Storytelling through Baltimore Album Quilts 2025 CoLab.
Are the Stansbury quilts lost family heirlooms? Who are Elizabeth and Mary Stansbury? Are these two quilts telling the story of unrelated families with only the buyer to tie them together? The quick answer is no. “We never doubted they were related,” says Fouts. “There were just too many Elizabeths and Mary Stansburys that we couldn’t link it to a direct family line.” The longer, more complex answer is that all the threads led to a basement full of treasures and $10,000.
The sandwich
A quilt has three layers: the quilt top, the batting or insulating layer, and the backing or the bottom layer of fabric, formally known as the quilt sandwich. These pieces create the whole, and Fouts needed to find all the pieces of the sandwich, so she sent out a call for student interns to join the quilt-mystery-turned-humanities-research CoLab. Then she gathered a team of quilting experts: Dietrich, Crabb, M.F.A. ’22, and Gilliam, an associate professor of social work at Morgan State University who uses African-print fabrics to create quilts about her lived experience.
The original brochure for quilt makers in 1981. (Image courtesy of Dietrich)
The first to join was Crabb, a Mexican American artist, who began quilting in 2014 and uses plant dyes, photography, thrift fabrics, and various quilting techniques to create quilts that reflect personal histories and feminism. As an adjunct professor at MICA, Crabb teaches 16 fiber-related processes in her Intro to Fiber class. But before the project even began, it took a turn. Crabb liked the idea, but encouraged Fouts and Deitrich to go to the basement of City Hall. Crabb knew that if they thought the Stansbury quilt was a find, the bowels of City Hall would dazzle them. She was right. Hanging in front of them was not one, but several different types of quilts from the Great Baltimore’s Best Quilting Contest of 1981, and they realized one of the participants was standing among them.
The inaugural citywide quilt competition, which Dietrich entered, celebrated Baltimore’s transportation, architecture, industry, people, and plants and animals. “I was surprised to see that the quilts were in the basement,” says Dietrich. Hers is stored at the Maryland Center for Culture and History (MCHC). “I entered the contest because I’ve always lived in Baltimore County.”
Dietrich’s entry for the Great Baltimore’s Best Quilting Contest of 1981. (Image courtesy of the Maryland Center for History and Culture)
This treasure added multiple layers to the Charm Pack’s work. Now, it wasn’t about one quilt story, but many. Quilts made by residents from across Baltimore who, in 1981, chose to bring forth their vision of Baltimore through needle and thread. Who were these craftspeople? What was the history of the contest? And why did the Great Baltimore’s Best Quilting Contest have to live in the past?
“It’s good to learn something else from what you’re trying to find out,” said Dietrich, and with that, students across the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences took up the mantle of citizen investigators. Gill, an American studies and English senior; Kayes, a theatre design and production junior; and Thomas ’25, Asian studies, made the cut. They analyzed historical records, photographs, and documents from the Library of Congress, Maryland State Archives, Maryland Historical Society, and the Maryland Quilt Heritage Project, and quickly solved the first mystery. No records tied Henry Stansbury directly to the quilts. However, the trail did connect the deep red that bordered the quilt and was used throughout the blocks, as well as the indigo used to color bluebirds in mid-flight to Maryland and beyond.
“Wonderful natural dyes have dyed the fabric on this quilt. The red throughout is made from turkey red… matter root that is grown here in America,” said Gill, in a video the lab co-produced with the Baltimore Heritage organization. “We also have this wonderful indigo blue that is very vibrant on the bird, which is from the indigo plant and is also made here in America, but is also imported from Latin and South America as well.”
The quilts the students researched were examples of how one person’s quilt tells more than one story. From the thread and needle chosen to the types of dyes on a cloth, each piece can stand as its own narrative, but once stitched together, a more complex one can emerge. “Quilts became powerful analytical tools, allowing students to interrogate intersections of class, race, gender, and globalization and demonstrating how even the most familiar objects are embedded in complex and often unequal systems,” says Fouts.
The blocks
Blocks are individual units of fabric sewn together with other identical or different blocks to form the main pattern of a quilt top. With the Stansbury mystery partially solved, everyone turned their efforts to studying the technical, communal, and historic aspects of Baltimore Album Quilts, which were named after a book where each page commemorated a friendship, like the adjacent blocks of a quilt.
To learn from the masters behind the craft, Dietrich introduced the students to 20 Baltimore quilt-makers. Kayes interviewed Crabb about the natural dyes and contemporary quilting practices. Thomas interviewed Gilliam about embellishments and Black quilting traditions in Baltimore. Gilliam is a fiber artist and member of the African American Quilters of Baltimore, and a former Maryland Folklife Apprentice of Vera Hall, a prominent Maryland African American master quilter.
Gilliam with the “Golden Time of Day” quilt she quilted, left, and “She Who Wears the Crown,” applique, machine quilted, by Gilliam, right.
With nearly a decade of experience in quilt making, Gilliam once created a quilt titled “She Who Wears A Crown,” to help her students understand the 2019 Crown Act that protects against discrimination based on race-based hairstyles by extending statutory protection to hair texture and protective styles such as braids, locs, twists, and knots in the workplace and public schools.
“What excites me most about my work is the ability to work in community and meet so many young people who are interested in learning about the history of quilting,” says Gilliam. “Quilting allows us to learn and teach the stories that connect us to the past.”
The binding
When all the measuring, cutting, dying, and stitching have told the story, the quilter binds it together by sewing a strip of fabric around the edges to cover the raw edges of the quilt sandwich. It acts as a protective border to prevent fraying and provides a polished look.
After four weeks and 130 hours of research, the CoLab, in partnership with Baltimore Heritage, co-produced five oral histories on Dietrich, Crabb, Gilliam, Stansbury, and Catherine Rogers Arthur, vice president of collections and chief curator of MCHC.
But there was still one more loose thread. Crabb didn’t think the Baltimore Album Quilt story should have ended in 1981. The 1981 competition was hosted by Baltimore City Hall, with a grand prize of $1,500. In 2025, Fouts reached out to City Hall for support to resurrect the competition. The positive response was not only immediate but backed with a $10,000 prize for the contest. Maryland State Art Council had already committed $7,000 to operations.
With the support of Baltimore City’s Mayor’s Office of Arts, Culture, and Entertainment and Maryland State Art Council’s Maryland Folklife Network, the CoLab has renewed the competition, titled “Homage to Baltimore Quilting Competition.” By April 1, 2026, 52 people submitted quilts. After Gilliam, Crabb, and Dietrich judged the final round of quilts, a $5,000 grand prize was presented at the opening exhibition on June 6, 2026, at Current Space.
“Homage to Baltimore Quilting Competition” exhibit at Current Space on June 6, 2026. (Image by Vivian Marie Doering)
The winning quilt does it all: each of the 18 blocks of the hand- and machine-stitched quilt tells the story of Baltimore’s history using a lens from the present. Created by Piecing with Purpose Quilt Collective, “Baltimore Citizens, from Past to Present, on a Zoom Call” unites the city’s legendary movers and shakers in conversation with each other.
First place: “Baltimore Citizens, from Past to Present, on a Zoom Call,” by Piecing with Purpose Quilt Collective. (Image by Vivian Marie Doering) Left to right: Second place, “The Doorway of a Rowhome at Dawn’s Early Light,” by Sharon Coffman. Third place, “All My Dreams Started in East Baltimore,” by Kianga Jinaki. (Images courtesy of Fouts)
Two of the 1981 quilts were also on display at the Current Space exhibition, along with a zine by Abby Wheatley, a junior graphic design major, illustrating the history of the 1981 competition. “It’ll be exciting to see the continuity of themes over the 45 years of the competition,” Fouts says, “and, through the historical side, we can bring to life some of the co-lab’s archival work.” The top three winning quilts in the competition will be displayed in public schools. The Mayor’s Office has committed to continuing the competition in the future.
What began as a 19th-century quilting mystery evolved into a colorful and accessible competition—celebrating a wide range of voices and inviting people to wrap themselves up in Baltimore.
“I was fascinated with the CoLab experience and how the students shared their progress,” says Dietrich. “I love seeing how UMBC has grown. It’s amazing to see it through the eyes of someone who was here when it opened. There are so many different choices for engaged learning.”
Balmory Moran II ’24, history, used to describe himself as a soccer player above all else. The soccer field and his team were where he felt most at home. In high school, an injury ended his hopes of playing at the collegiate level, and doubts about his future settled in until he met Joe Thompson, a professor of history and political science at Montgomery College (MC), and Andrew Nolan, teaching professor of history at UMBC. They instilled in him a passion for history, and their support helped him transfer to UMBC as a history major, where he learned not only about the past but also interpersonal and mentorship skills that he now puts to practice every day as a coach for the Latino Youth Development Program in Rockville, Maryland.
As a coach, Balmory imparts performance strategies and techniques to middle school and high school students in the program while also emphasizing essential team skills such as collaboration, active listening, empathy, and accountability, both on and off the field. This strategy led the team to win the league championship in fall 2025.
After years of coaching and time away from the classroom, Balmory is ready to balance soccer and the classroom once again as he begins applying to a master’s in social work. He credits his sister, Alexandra Moran ’15, social work, a current social worker, for the inspiration to join the field. Take it away, Balmory!
Q: What was your journey to UMBC?
A: I began my undergraduate experience at MC. I was a bit lost, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but Professor Thompson changed all that. I had a 200-level U.S. history class with him. He made our class so entertaining, enticing, and interesting at both a personal and an academic level. It really showed me that history didn’t have to be boring or slow.
After seeing how attentive I was in his classes, he encouraged me to pursue a degree in history. Professor Thompson showed me multiple examples of students in different fields of work with a history degree. It prompted me to take more history classes at MC, which laid the foundation for studying history at UMBC.
I made my way to UMBC after Professor Nolan visited MC multiple times to talk to students about life as a history major at UMBC and the careers it could lead to after graduation. He also explained the many ways UMBC would further nurture my academic aspirations. I was so involved with the history program at MC that it felt like a natural next step to continue my undergrad degree in history at UMBC.
Moran at his 2024 graduation from UMBC.
Q: What was your experience studying history at UMBC?
A: Once at UMBC, I dove into the multitude of classes on aging, women’s studies, sociology, and, of course, history, which all helped me gain a better understanding and appreciation for the communities I grew up alongside. I learned that there was a history of pretty much everything, as long as there was some interest. So many people think history is just old people in wigs, but it’s everywhere, from political history to sports history. There is always a story to be told as long as someone is willing to listen and learn.
Q: Who in the UMBC community has inspired you or supported you?
A: The last two years have really pushed me to be the best version of myself in my work as well as my mentorship. I’ve learned from Melissa Blair, associate teaching professor of history, as well as other professors throughout the history department, how to approach different types of students. These lessons have helped me teach these young men right from wrong in ways that they can understand.
UMBC gave me the tools to be creative in how I tackle challenges and debates with my players. I guide players by equipping them with the tools to grow and improve, as Blair and other professors supported me in the classroom, rather than stepping in.
So many people think history is just old people in wigs, but it’s everywhere, from political history to sports history. There is always a story to be told as long as someone is willing to listen and learn. —Balmory Moran ’24
Q: Is there a concept you learned in your classes at UMBC that is applicable outside of the classroom?
A: The professors I had at UMBC showed me that there are many ways to get important information across that don’t feel like a lecture. They taught me how to be an effective problem-solver. These lessons were within a history class setup, but felt applicable to how I wanted to coach and mentor my players. So many people get the wrong idea when they hear the term “history degree.” It’s not just about curating museums and lecturing. It is also about what makes us who we are, helps us understand where we come from, and what values we hold onto.
* * * * *
UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what Meet a Retriever is all about.
Manil Surimoved to the United States after spending the first 20 years of his life living in a 400-square-foot room in Bombay, India, with his father, Ram, and mother, Prem, to whom he dedicated his latest book, A Room in Bombay. The rest of the apartment was shared between three other families. “In the apartment lived my family, which was Hindu, and three Muslim families. We had a lot of fights, but those fights were really not about religion. They were about the shared bathroom, or the shared kitchen, or resources, or money, or space,” explains Suri, a professor of mathematics at UMBC.
Some of the envelopes from letters Suri sent to his mom, Prem, in India once he moved to the U.S. (Image courtesy of Manil Suri)
Suri is also an award-winning author of three novels named after Hindu gods: The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva, and The City of Devi. His fourth book,The Big Bang of Numbers: How to Build the Universe Using Only Math, is a humanities-based approach to mathematical concepts. They all paved the way for Suri’s most personal and most recent book. In three parts, Suri shares his life growing up in this room in Bombay and his life in the United States, drawing on more than 2,700 letters he wrote to his mother, which she saved in bundles organized by year, beginning with his time as a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. The letters chronicle his life in the U.S., including his relationship with his partner Larry, whom he took twice to meet his parents in the room in Bombay.
Q: Who is your book for?
A: I think it’s a book that, first of all, I want to work as a story. People who like a good narrative will enjoy it. It also ties into a different idea of immigration. You hear drastic tales of how immigrants are being shunned and put into prisons. But there’s another side of immigration, too, a little more subtle, perhaps. People immigrate for all sorts of reasons—including “finding themselves,” as I did.
Aditya Desai ’09, English, a fellow writer, editor, teacher, and activist in Baltimore, and a great fan of Suri’s work, interviewed Suri during an Asian Studies Program book event in spring 2026. (Brad Ziegler/UMBC)
Also, I’ve already received a few pieces of feedback from people who are taking care of their aging parents. There are a huge number of people in various generations who are doing that. So I think it’ll appeal to them and help them negotiate the very difficult road ahead that many will face.
Q: How did the timing for publishing this memoir come about?
A: I have published three novels and a book on math. I felt I had to write the math book as a public service, since I had one foot in the humanities and one in the sciences—and needed to make something out of it. Once this math book was done, there was this other lingering project [the memoir] that I actually started around 2010.
(l-r): Suri’s mom, Prem Suri, in Bombay (date unknown), Prem in 1946, and Suri with Prem and his father, Ram, at Juhu Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai in 1961.
My mother passed away in 2013, and there was a big gap before I really got into writing the memoir. I needed that distance, since it would have been too much to have written it too close to her passing.
Q: Your mom had this intense love for you, which you wrote was sometimes overwhelming. How did that carry on through the room and through the rest of your life?
A: I think what happened with my mother was that my identity almost melded with hers when I was growing up. It’s only once I came to the U.S. that I was able to separate the two a little and move on. She would always say, “The U.S. has made you unemotional.” It was something I learned after coming here, to keep some distance, and move away from that merging of personalities.
Keeping boundaries is always hard, but it also tunes you to being more conscious of them. I don’t have any kids, so I don’t have to worry about that boundary.
Q: How did you feel coming to the United States?
A: When I first came to the U.S., I spent one week with a typical American family, and suddenly I had my own bedroom. That was exhilarating, but also a little weird. After that, I was in a dorm room with a roommate, so that was again a shared room for one year.
But after that year, I moved into an apartment where I had my own room. Since then, I’ve always had my own bedroom. Even though I’m married now, I need my own bedroom.
Q: A Room in Bombay centers around four families with very different backgrounds that often argue and have major disagreements. How does that tie into today’s world?
A: I think the book actually offers a lesson pertinent to our times. Although it was my Hindu family and three Muslim families sharing this apartment, the fights we had—and there were a lot of them—were really not about religion. They were about the shared bathroom, or the shared kitchen, or resources, or money, or space.
The same applies to most of the clashes going on in the world. Even though people try to put a religious spin on them, there are so many other reasons underlying all this strife. It’s property and boundaries, space, and resources.
Very rarely is it really religion. It’s not the cultural differences that are the cause of friction, it’s other things. Look deeper, and you’ll probably find an economic reason.
Q: Why did you choose to write the book as a memoir as opposed to an epistolary novel?
A: First of all, in terms of the letters, what I wrote are not letters to be treasured like Letters Between a Father and Son, a collection of intimate letters between Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul and his son. Most of my letters are very ordinary and come with no claim of literary value. I was desperately trying to find things to say, and wrote three or four times a week just to keep my parents happy and engaged.
A letter Suri wrote to his father, Ram, in 1979.
There’s also so much more that happened that is not covered by the letters. I did keep some journals, especially once my mother came to the U.S. In fact, I had too much material. The first draft of this novel was about 50 percent longer, excess that I had to edit out.
Q: How do you choose what parts of the book to keep and what to cut?
A: That can be a painful decision, but fortunately, my editor helped by telling me what could be trimmed or shortened. Eventually, I had to get ruthless enough and ask myself: Is the story coming across? How much do I really need to put in for that? What examples have already been included to illustrate something—if there are two of them, let’s get rid of one.
A lot of nice, entertaining experiences had to be jettisoned in the interest of a story that keeps moving. You know, that’s what they say to writers: Kill your darlings. It’s a hard, murderous task to be a writer.
Q: There is a lot of stigma still in South Asian cultures around coming out. Did you intentionally want to address that?
A: Yes, the South Asian LGBTQ+ community is definitely one of the audiences I aimed for in this book, and in particular, their parents. Because even with my mother, who was so enlightened in many ways, there was this up and down that she went through after I came out to her. I think it really eats away at you if you cannot come out to your parents.
At the end of part two in the book, I talk about coming out to my dad. It happened after he took me to his friend’s house to introduce me to his 19-year-old daughter. Afterwards, my father said, “Well, what did you think of the daughter?” And I said, “You can’t be serious. First of all, she’s like half my age.” I ended up telling him about my relationship with my partner, to which he said, “I didn’t know, I didn’t know.” But then I noticed he was still looking expectantly at me. I realized then that he was still waiting for an answer to his question about whether I wanted to marry his friend’s daughter!
I always wanted to have a long conversation with him, which I thought I would have the next time I went back. But he passed away two months later, so that opportunity never came. I found out from my uncle that he had told all his brothers I was gay, even in that short period. So even though my mother always said, “He won’t be able to handle it. Don’t tell him,” as it turned out, he was fine with it.
As far as creating a supportive atmosphere for coming out in the South Asian LGBTQ+ community goes, I’d love to help in any way I could. It would be a good thing for members to give the book to their parents, “Here is someone else’s experience. It may help you.”
Q: Out of the twelve letters that you kept from the hundreds your mom wrote to you, is there one that really stands out to you?
A: The one that’s at the end of the book. It’s a full letter that really crystallizes a lot of things about how she viewed my coming out and how she was aware of losing some of her faculties in terms of memory and concentration. All those things are in that letter, which is why it’s probably the most poignant.
After Shanika Freeman ’24 walked across the stage, she had something on her mind—basic human rights. For the past four years, Freeman’s research has focused on the reentry experiences of formerly incarcerated women in the United States and Maryland. Basic human rights—including access to healthy food, education, housing, healthcare, clothing, and job skills development—are difficult to access for people in the reentry process due to limited to no financial resources, support networks, services, and stigma.
“In Maryland, over 15,000 women are released from prison every year. Just imagine, you’ve been released, and unfortunately, you couldn’t get a transitional program or reentry program, so you are basically by yourself,” said Freeman during her individualized study major’s capstone presentation. “You go out, you kiss the ground because you know you are free, but you are only given about $50 to $100 of gate money to find transportation and all your basic needs.”
Reentry programs are not the root of these obstacles. During her research, Freeman learned that the U.S.incarceration system’s emphasis on punishments rather than rehabilitation means many women are released without workforce skills needed to meet the demands of a changing job, let alone recreate a new life. All of these factors increase recidivism rates.
“I wasn’t born to be caged up and chained up,” is a quote by Susan Burton that inspired Freeman to continue her research on successful reentry pathways. Burton is the founder of A New Way of Life Reentry Project, a non-profit organization in California that provides safe housing, pro bono legal services, advocacy, and family reunification for formerly incarcerated women. Leading with compassion inspired Freeman to seek similar approaches in her own work.
She didn’t know at the time that her search would lead her to Norway, whose incarceration system is widely recognized as one of the most humane rehabilitative institutions in the world. Their rehabilitation process emphasizes mentorship, skill-building, communal living, mirroring regular life based on the Norwegians’ belief that the only right a person loses through incarceration is liberty. As a result, Norway has one of the lowest rates of recidivism in the world. Thanks to a 2025 – 2026 Fulbright U.S. Student Program award, Freeman crossed the Atlantic to Bergen, Norway, to conduct research on the reentry experiences of Norwegian women into the community after incarceration.
Janteloven, a culture of humility
For the first time, Freeman boarded a plane, leaving the United States and Baltimore for Bergen, a city on Norway’s southwestern coast known as the city between the seven mountains. Freeman quickly found that life in Bergen is about enjoying nature. She remembers walking from her small studio apartment to the University of Bergen and seeing hikers everywhere. While cross-country skiing is the official national sport, hiking is an integral part of Bergen culture. Freeman joined the locals on both activities, and suited up with hiking boots and cross-country skis—also a first.
Left: Freeman cross-country skiing in Gausdal, Norway. Right: Freeman enjoys a walk in the mountains.
“I love this city. It’s not crowded. You can take a hike up a mountain any day of the week. Mount Fløyen is the closest and most popular mountain in Bergen,” said Freeman. “So many beautiful views and at the top, you can also get hot chocolate, coffee, and Norwegian waffles. It’s all really nice.” While she enjoyed the outdoors, Freeman did have some first-day jitters when it came time to join the research team.
“I was a bit hesitant when I arrived because I had just graduated with my bachelor’s, and most of my colleagues had a Ph.D. or were earning one. I was a bit worried about fitting in. But they welcomed me with open arms,” says Freeman. “Bergensere really value you and your voice, no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you have a degree or not, they really value you and make sure your voice is heard.”
This practice of equality and community above all is called Janteloven, a Scandinavian cultural, social, and literary concept that emphasizes equality, humility, and collective conformity over individual achievement. Freeman’s welcome was an example of Janteloven. This extends to architecture, clothing, and even standing in line.
“
I was a bit hesitant when I arrived because I had just graduated with my bachelor’s, and most of my colleagues had a Ph.D. or were earning one. I was a bit worried about fitting in. But they welcomed me with open arms,” says Freeman. “Bergensere really value you and your voice, no matter what. It doesn’t matter if you have a degree or not, they really value you and make sure your voice is heard.
Shanika Freeman ’24
Individualized Study
“From my perspective, a lot of Norwegians are sort of hard to crack because they don’t usually do small talk. Back in Baltimore, if you’re standing in line at the grocery store, you can strike up a conversation with anyone. Not here so much,” explains Freeman. “They’re not being rude. They value your time, and they value their time as well, and don’t want to inconvenience anybody. It’s a cultural norm.”
Janteloven in the prison system
Possibly because of this norm, it took time for Freeman to find participants who wanted to focus on their own story. “It’s such a sensitive subject that I researched. One of the challenges I faced was helping participants feel comfortable speaking,” said Freeman. “I talked about their feelings during incarceration and reentry. It’s a very vulnerable state to be in.” Her Fulbright research advisors stepped in and connected Freeman with a few participants and guided her to pivot from solely focusing on reentry to include the system side of the process by speaking with experts in the field of criminology and penology—the philosophy, management, and effectiveness of prison systems and rehabilitation methods.
“One of my main findings was that Norway’s successful reentry is shaped primarily by its welfare system. It is set up to help with social support, housing, education, and job support. They have something called the import model,” said Freeman, “which means that they rely on external public services like healthcare, education, and libraries that are delivered by community providers rather than the prison staff themselves.” Freeman notes that this is in stark contrast to what she found in her research on the U.S. reentry process, where these services are usually contracted out. In Norway, staff are almost always civilians from the same communities into which the residents—Norway doesn’t use the term inmate or prisoner—will be released.
Freeman found a successful example to observe at WayBack, a Norwegian nonprofit foundation that supports formerly incarcerated individuals’ return to society by coordinating services and building networks for successful reintegration. However, the process doesn’t end there. WayBack’s approach to intervention is also based on peer-to-peer mentorship, a form of rehabilitation support Freeman has rarely seen in Baltimore.
Freeman presents her research at Bergen Global. (Image courtesy of Freeman)
“Norway’s welfare state and broader cultural belief systems, Janteloven included, reinforce the idea that the conviction and sentence to prison itself is the punishment,” Freeman explained. “So while you are inside, rehabilitation should be the main priority.”
But nothing is perfect. Another of Freeman’s findings includes the shortcomings of the Norwegian incarceration system. Freeman explained that there are prisons where women have limited gender-specific support and lack the services needed to overcome major barriers, including trauma, addiction, and mental health. “There was a recent report criticizing Trondheim Prison, a few hours from Bergen, due to human rights violations,” said Freeman, after submitting her research. “This was extremely surprising to me. They were in violation of mishandling medication, isolation, and unsanitary conditions, to name a few. So, despite all of the progress, there are still things that aren’t being addressed as quickly as others might want, but at least they are working to address it.”
Human rights in Bergen and Baltimore
After four seasons in Norway, Freeman is packing up and preparing to return home to Baltimore, leaving with a greater appreciation for Janteloven. She is hopeful that one day she will return to the city between the seven mountains either for travel or to pursue a master’s program to continue her research. In the meantime, Freeman is already working on adding a visual element to her research, as she plans to spend the summer filming a documentary on the impact of incarceration on Baltimore communities and families.
“Having both the reentering system and the criminal system perspectives made my research stronger. My main goal is to work with reentry programs or even programs inside the prison system,” says Freeman. “I want people to think about the human rights of people in the prison system. No matter what they did, just because they were inside, it doesn’t mean they don’t deserve basic human rights.”
Quinn shows his poem published in the 1979 – 1980Bartleby edition. (Catalina Dansberger Duque/UMBC)
“Bartleby NEEDS YOU!” This was the handwritten call to arms in 1979, for writers and poets to submit their work to Bartleby, UMBC’s creative arts journal. The sentiment of this flyer is not that different from its first publication in 1972 and from today’s social media posts alerting students to upcoming submission deadlines.
This unwavering spirit brought Howard Quinn ’80, English, back to campus in spring 2026 for the Bartleby 50+ celebration. He shared his memories as one of six editors of the 1979 – 1980 edition and reveled at the Bartleby covers and works, displayed in showcases at the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery, some with typed-up poems printed on newsprint or cardstock and stapled together like the edition with 35 pieces that he helped edit—including his own poem, “Wind Down Wind” about loss.
In 2026, Bartleby—under the recently chartered Student Media Collective—editors read 200 art submissions, 120 poetry submissions, 60 fiction submissions, and 23 creative nonfiction submissions. The ensuing 160-page publication is book-bound and printed on glossy paper. Over five decades, Retrievers have continued to creatively express the personal and political events that have defined their lives, including war and national identity, rebellion, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ identity, social isolation, and joy and love.
Quinn came to Bartleby’s retrospective to celebrate the publication’s ongoing impact and to share a message from his friend Martha Campbell ’82, American studies, a Bartleby editor for three and a half years.
“I know that Bartleby has endured because people showed up to create art, give voice, share ideas, and they did that work year after year,” wrote Campbell, perhaps inadvertently echoing a line from her poem published during her tenure: “And the clock moves on, slow, but certain in its ways.”
Left to right: Howard Quinn, Andrew Coulbourne, current editor (middle), and Sean McNutt ’24, anthropology, editor of volume 43, at the Bartleby 50+ exhibit. (Brad Ziegler/UMBC)
Ten minutes south of True Grits, food is also being prepared for the local community. It’s 8:30 on a Wednesday morning in the parking lot of Arbutus United Methodist Church. To the right of the church building is the Southwest Emergency Services (SWES) office, where the clanking of canned goods on metal shelves and the rustling of brown paper bags echo in the back warehouse. Legacy volunteers, a UMBC Shriver Peaceworker Fellow, and Shriver Center undergraduate student volunteers quickly stock shelves and prepare to fill grocery bags with donated goods for families in the surrounding 21227 or 21229 zip codes in need of food assistance.
Rosmery De Jesus Dinzey Santana, a senior psychology student, pops out of the dried goods room to check the first order. She writes the number three on a sticky note and sticks it to a grocery cart that gets passed around from volunteer to volunteer, until it gets all the way to the back to Joan Birmingham. She is clad in a long-sleeved flannel, baseball cap, and plastic gloves to keep somewhat warm as she moves in and out of freezers—one for chicken, one for beef, one for pastries. Birmingham, a volunteer of 20+ years, quickly spins the cart back around, pushing it down the long hallway, the wobbly wheel hitting the metal, making a ding sound like it’s announcing it’s ready to check out.
While UMBC and SWES have been in close proximity for decades, it’s relatively new that an intentional cohort of Retrievers regularly volunteers there. This shift was led by a UMBC Peaceworker Fellow, Megan Hamilton, who began working with SWES for 20 hours a week in fall 2025. The Peaceworker Fellows Program, based in UMBC’s Shriver Center, offers a master’s degree in social change leadership for returning Peace Corps Volunteers. Fellows are required to complete 20 hours a week of service with community partner non-profits, government agencies, or campus-based service-learning for the entirety of the program, says Charlotte Keniston, Ph.D. ’24, language, literacy, and culture, an alum and current director of the program. “We now have weekly undergraduate volunteers working with the legacy volunteers, UMBC staff supporting grant writing, and a team of graduate students creating a data management system for them,” Keniston says.
A call to serve
For Hamilton, the experience has been deeply fulfilling. “Community service is one of the happiest things I can do with my life,” she says. “I think in this particular time, people have lost track of the joy of service a little bit.” The Retrievers at SWES are working to bring that back.
Back at SWES on Wednesday morning, it’s getting close to 9:00 a.m., and a stream of cars fills the parking lot. Hamilton greets each client with a genuine ear-to-ear smile as they walk in the door. When Hamilton sees Birmingham, she grabs the cart, calls on the family of three, and helps them get the cart out of the narrow doorway into the parking lot. Diane Moberg, a church volunteer and SWES board member, steps into the dried goods room to help unfold grocery bags while she waits for the next financial services client to arrive.
Hamilton has a booming, happy voice and laugh. She has deep roots in Baltimore’s grassroots organizing and co-founded the Creative Alliance in 1994, a performance and art community space in the city. Her big heart has also taken her around the world in the service of others, including her Peace Corps service in Albania.
Megan Hamilton at SWES. (Brad Ziegler/UMBC)
Hamilton was beaming this morning because the Maryland Foodbank, which donates food to SWES, had just conducted a site visit and was impressed with how SWES is committed to shifting to a choice food pantry—a labor of love for Hamilton. Choice food pantries function similarly to a grocery store, where clients select the food they take, increasing agency and reducing waste.
“The loving energy catalyzed when the students meet, learn from, work with, and teach their elders is awe-inspiring,” says Hamilton. “It has meant worlds to the elders and the students, and those friendships are laying the groundwork for SWES’ long-term sustainability.
In the future, SWES is also looking to evolve its financial assistance program, where families receive partial funding to prevent evictions, utility shut-offs, and prescription costs. SWES covers part of the bill, and the family covers the rest. SWES hopes to leverage the renewed partnership with UMBC’s Peaceworkers and Shriver Center volunteers to develop a financial literacy skills program to help families become economically stable and prosperous, and pass those skills to future generations.
Powered by volunteers inspired by the community
Hamilton says part of what’s making the relationship between SWES and UMBC work so well is the physical proximity, as well as a shared commitment to service in the Baltimore area.
Dinzey Santana, the only Spanish-speaking volunteer, provides language support for Spanish-speaking families, helping to translate their needs to the rest of the team. She is quiet but fierce in her service, consistent, a master of organization, and overall just awesome, Birmingham says.
“I went to high school in Silver Springs with a lot of Latinos. Coming to UMBC, I learned so much about what is possible, and yet there is still so much that I have to learn. I want to go back and work with other Latinos to show them that it’s possible to go to college and give to your community at the same time,” says Dinzey Santana, almost at a whisper, smiling, and gliding between carts, bags, and shelves without stopping or looking—muscle memory. While she started UMBC on a pre-med track, after taking some psychology and social work classes, she was drawn to community-engaged work. Birmingham, Moberg, and Hamilton can feel her resolve. “I want students not to get frustrated if their path is unclear. Sometimes, the best path for you is not the one you set your heart on. There isn’t one path, and there is help. Everyone deserves help.”
Rosemery De Jesus Dinzey Santana writes the names of the families picking up groceries. (Brad Ziegler/UMBC)
Working on a prayer
The UMBC volunteers serve alongside legacy volunteers from the community and surrounding areas who have, in some cases, been volunteering for decades. Star legacy volunteer Naomi Morris is ninety-two and has volunteered at SWES for thirty-years. Birmingham says that although SWES has seen its share of challenges, she is continually touched by the people she meets and the way they make it work.
Before becoming part of the SWES volunteer team, Birmingham worked in warehouses for 36 years, stocking and organizing shelves. “I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do after I retired,” she says. “I found out that [SWES] needed help through my church. I thought I would give it a try.” She started hanging clothes for their clothing donation shop for a day or two. “But I saw everything that SWES was doing, and it was unbelievable. It touched my heart. The people I have met here are just unbelievable.”
Moberg, who is a certified public accountant, joined the board and became a volunteer to support the financial assistance program. “I recognize things are really hard. Let’s face it, expenses have gone up exponentially. Gas, everything. Low to mid-range wages are not keeping pace. So, it’s really disheartening, which is why the finance mission is an extremely important one for me. “
Sometimes, when the pantry and the financial assistance dwindle, and there doesn’t seem to be an answer to how SWES will serve its community, Birmingham throws out a request to the heavens. “I learned it from my friend who volunteers with me. She just calls it out, ‘We need more of whatever it is,’ and sure enough, the next day someone walks in with what we need. Last week it was pasta, this year it was volunteers—both came in abundance, and Megan, Rosmery, and all the UMBC volunteers are now helping us legacy volunteers to keep it all going.”
Finley Bandy spent last summer in the cool temperatures and dim light of UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery Special Collections—the perfect environment to preserve rare books, photographs, manuscripts, archives, and artifacts. As part of UMBC’s 2025 Co-Lab interdisciplinary undergraduate summer research program, Bandy learned techniques to produce “Special Collections 101”, an informative video about how to use the resources in the collections. Bandy also loves being surrounded by thousands of historical narratives and working with Special Collections staff Beth Saunders, associate director and curator, and Lindsey Loeper, reference and instruction archivist. The infinite possibilities housed in Special Collections and the people who ensure historical narratives aren’t forgotten have inspired Bandy to join the cadre of museum and archive professionals.
“I was accepted into UMBC’s master’s program in historical studies,” says Bandy. “I love the process of using my historical and archival research to write about what I’m finding so that other people are aware that this piece of history exists. That’s why I want my master’s research to be an online exhibit that is accessible to the world.”
Museums and archives are only two of Bandy’s passions. When Bandy transferred to UMBC from Lamar Community College in Colorado, they brought their love of Russian language, history, and culture, and their deep love of Baltimore City.
Q: Did you come to UMBC already knowing what you wanted to study?
A: When I started at UMBC, I was all set to learn Russian and study Soviet history, but then I decided to go broader and major in history. I did finish all the Russian language courses, so I can speak Russian. I’m still interested in Russian history, and I love Russian music. I really love the language and like Eastern European culture.
Q: Where does your passion for Russian language and culture come from?
A: In my community college, I took a 20th-century world history class, and learned about the Cold War, which lasted from 1947 to 1991. A lot of the history really broke my heart. It made me want to learn more about it. I took a lot of Russian history classes and started reading Russian and Soviet literature. I really love how unique it is.
Q: Is there a modern piece of Russian culture that you enjoy, or are you focused on the history?
A: I think it’s really interesting to see how Soviet culture is beginning to meld with Western culture.
Soviet rock bands are really, really cool. There’s this great rock band that has been around since the ’70s called Akvarium or Aquarium. They were underground for a long time due to the war. I listen to them a lot. There’s also a current pop musician named Monetochka. She’s really cool.
I’ve never travelled abroad or have a passport, but one day I would like to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg, and travel all over Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
UMBC’s proximity to Camden Yards makes for a great trip to cheer on the Orioles! (Image courtesy of Bandy)
Q: Do you have a community to speak Russian with and immerse yourself in Russian culture?
A: Yes! UMBC’s Russian Club is a really tight-knit group. In the past, we hosted many holiday celebrations. In post-Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe, they still celebrate Christmas, but New Year’s is celebrated more because during the Soviet era, atheism was promoted and New Year’s didn’t have religious ties. Towards the end of the fall semester, we organized a giant Novy God [New Year’s] celebration. And then in the spring, we celebrated Maslenitsa. In the Russian Orthodox Church, this is the last week to feast before a period of fasting that ends at Easter. We also hung out a lot and talked about different Eastern European cultures. It’s called the Russian Club, but we have students from all over Eastern Europe—Ukraine, Armenia, and Belarus.
Q: Why do you love Baltimore City?
A:. Even though I was in Colorado for community college, I spent a lot of my childhood in Baltimore City because my grandmother worked in the city and my mom lived there. I have a connection to Baltimore, but I never really knew its history. I took “The History of Baltimore” at the Lion Brothers Building downtown. Every week, we took field trips to historic sites in Baltimore City to connect what we were learning with real-world experiences.
Q: Why did you change your major from Russian to history, and who has inspired you in this path?
A: I decided to switch majors from Russian to history while doing research in Professor Melissa Blair‘s “The History of Baltimore” class. It inspired me to pivot and focus my work on Maryland’s transportation history. The experiential learning and field work inspired me to better understand Baltimore and its history. I think Baltimore is a very unique city with a rich history that is often ignored by the historical record. I enjoyed interacting with other public historians and museum professionals within the city through that class.
Students from King’s class, “Preserving Spaces, Making Spaces in Baltimore,” participated in a Community Archiving Day event. The class planned this event to engage with residents and community members from neighborhoods in Southwest Baltimore and to gauge interest in developing a Community Archive to preserve their histories. (l-r) Amina Thiam ’24, history, Em Schumacher, a geography and environmental systems senior, Bandy, Tristan Diaz ’25, cultural anthropology and sociology, and Bandy’s fiancé, Max Taylor (who is not a UMBC student). (Image courtesy of King)
I’ve also worked a lot with Professor Nicole King in American studies—I took her “Preserving Places, Making Spaces in Baltimore” class twice. In 2025, we worked with the Poppleton Now Community Association and the Southwest Partnership Historic Preservation Committee on a Public History and Preservation Study. It included my research on the “Highway to Nowhere,” a 1.4-mile stretch of U.S. Route 40 in West Baltimore, built in the 1970s, that ends abruptly. The highway cuts off a section of Poppleton, one of the city’s oldest historically Black neighborhoods. We also created an online story map.
Q: Why are you passionate about transportation equity?
A: I don’t have a car, so I rely on Baltimore’s terrible public transportation. I love public transit, and I need it to be better. In the Baltimore history class, I realized the bus schedules, the bus routes, and the history of highway construction in the city have limited transportation, not expanded it. I conducted research with American studies Professor Michael Cassiano, my public humanities advisor. I presented my research, “Our City Is a City Without an Expressway: A Historical Review of Transportation Injustice in Baltimore City,” at URCAD. I’m interested in exploring these topics in my master’s program.
Bandy presents her research at the 2026 Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day. (Image courtesy of King.)
Q: What is a challenge that you love?
A: I love creative writing. I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I think it’s a natural segue into history, because history is narrative-based. It’s very humanistic. I won’t say it comes naturally to me. It takes me probably an hour to write a sentence because I overthink my word choices a lot. But I love using language to evoke certain feelings and really press home on an idea. I try to choose the right word to fit what I’m talking about and its context. I also try to support students in the writing process as the History Student Council president. Last semester, we organized a bi-weekly writing group to encourage community and motivation within the major.
Q: What advice do you have for undergraduate and transfer students?
A: For undergraduate students, I would say to be realistic. Don’t put too much on your plate. That’s been the biggest challenge for me. I’ve been suffering a lot of burnout, because, in addition to my classes, I am a teaching assistant for “Introduction to the University for Transfer Students.” I started getting better at saying no to things. I encourage students to get out there, explore new things, but also recognize their limits. Prioritize making space for something that brings you joy.
For transfer students, I would say time management. Most of us work full-time or part-time, are raising families, and have other commitments. We’re not fresh out of high school and can sometimes internalize a feeling of being behind or not doing college “right.” It’s important to get over that because it doesn’t really matter. When I was 18 years old, my coworker was 40 years old. They had been working for decades. Once you leave high school, age doesn’t matter the same way—people are people, and everyone is busy. I wouldn’t focus on trying to get things done in a way that’s expected of you. Instead, focus on what you need to do to succeed.
This spring on Thursday evenings, students filled room 424 in the Fine Arts building for their Asian Diaspora in Motion: Media, Culture, Identity, and Activism class. At the head of the classroom was Zareen Taj, who designed the new 300-level class based on her experiences as a documentary filmmaker and activist defending the rights of her community—the Hazara women of Afghanistan, a community that has for over a century experienced extreme ethnic, religious, and gender oppression, including multiple massacres and starvation, under Taliban rule.
It’s a reality Taj grew up with as part of the Hazara people, a religious and ethnic minority. In the 1990s, when the Taliban increased their killings of the Hazara people, Taj and her family fled to a refugee settlement in Pakistan. There, Taj started speaking out against the systemic oppression of Hazara women. Her activism made her a Taliban target. With a scholarship from the Feminist Majority Foundation, Taj fled once more, this time to Towson University, where she earned a bachelor’s in political science and women’s studies and a master’s in women’s studies.
After graduation, Taj worked for Voice of America as an international broadcaster and producer. At UMBC, she worked for Chartwells in the HR department first and then as an accounting associate at The Shriver Center. A year later, Taj was accepted into the language, literacy, and culture (LLC) doctoral program. During her studies, she raised two children and created four short documentaries about Hazara women while teaching in the global studies, Asian studies, and American studies departments.
This semester, Taj successfully defended her dissertation, “Journey of a Scholar-Activist: An Autoethnographic and Multimodal Inquiry,” which includes written narratives and her fourth documentary short film titled “For My People.” The project marks the first time she took the time and space to reflect on her life.
“I learned from this journey that I am different. I look different. I work differently. I see things differently, but my difference is not a problem,” says Taj about her experience at UMBC, where she hopes to become a professor. “My experience is an asset. It’s my wealth. The UMBC community, particularly the LLC and my professors, were very supportive of what I’m doing. So they supported me at each stage of my life.”
Q: What was your journey to UMBC?
A: I studied in a refugee displacement settlement in Pakistan, so it was very hard. But I got the Feminist Majority Scholarship and moved to Maryland in 2000 to attend Towson University. I could not speak English well. I saw a computer for the first time in my life. It was very hard because I came from a very war-torn country. We don’t have that advanced education system, and it’s often interrupted by war. Every minute, I reminded myself about the other Afghan girls who didn’t have this opportunity, so I couldn’t give up.
I always wanted to get a Ph.D. That was my dream. I put all of my experiences into my academic world. In 2018, I applied to the LLC doctoral program. I talked with Carole McCann, professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies, about what I wanted to do. She said yes to being my advisor right away. Joby Taylor, Ph.D. ’05, assistant vice provost and co-leader of The Shriver Center for Public Service and Community Engagement, and Tania Lizarazo, associate professor of modern languages, linguistics, and intercultural communication, and global studies, also lent their support as co-chairs.
Q: How did you decide on the topic for your dissertation?
A: My master’s thesis, titled “Dual Identity, Dual Oppression of Hazara Women,” didn’t follow the same research path as a traditional thesis because there were no official documents that I could use for my research. I felt frustrated. My thesis was informed by my firsthand research trips to Afghanistan. This work represents the first contribution of its kind in the academic field. My personal experiences and frustrations motivated me to return to my country, which ultimately shaped and grounded the development of my thesis.
For my dissertation, my committee wanted me to talk about myself, to write a book. I appreciated them encouraging me, but I continued to focus on Hazara women until Dr. Tanya Saunders, associate professor of sociology, pointed out all the different types of ethnography I was doing and encouraged me to focus on myself to do an autoethnography. I was surprised that I could do that, and that’s how I started.
That gave me a kind of confidence in my writing. I’m always reflecting on all of these things I’m doing, but not reflecting on myself. I never had the chance, or I never thought of doing it. I never thought I would be allowed to talk about myself, so I didn’t. I come from a culture where we never talk about ourselves because this is taboo. Women would be told, “Why are you talking about yourself? We have bigger issues, bigger things to talk about.” That’s the culture, especially for Hazara women. We never talk about ourselves, our pain, our joy. Everything is internalized.
I am reaching a stage of very clear realizations about how this academic process is a very healing process for me. I’m making my people visible and bringing awareness to the cause. We’ll get to know people, my people, my ethnicity, their suffering, and also the resilience of these women.
Q: Why was this dissertation process a healing process?
A: My short documentary, “For My People,” which I produced for my dissertation, helped me process the anger and isolation I have carried after years of fighting for survival and against oppression. This process led to exploration and, for the first time, I explored healing and the shift to joy, community, and belonging I have found with the Hazara women who resettled in Washington, D.C., my global network of activists, and my UMBC community.
The more work I’m doing in the form of writing an article, creating films, or public speaking, the more visibility I have to those dimensions, those identities. It’s helping me feel that I do justice for them. That’s the process of healing. The more I work to bring community sustainability and collectiveness, the stronger my sense of belonging, satisfaction, and deep attachment to my community.
Q: What inspired the topics for your other films?
A: I was doing my master’s thesis about Hazara women, but there wasn’t much data. I decided to go back to Afghanistan for the first time since fleeing Pakistan to document the living conditions and experiences of Hazara women living under the fear of genocide. When I returned, I had 40 hours of videotapes, 700 photographs, and 20 hours of cassette recordings that helped me make my first film, “The Oppression of Hazara in Afghanistan.”
But I didn’t just want to show the oppression of Hazara women as victims. I wanted to show the resistance and leadership of Hazara women. After the fall of the last Afghan government in 2021, some Hazara refugees came to the Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia area. We have a lot of activists and advocates like Azra Jafari, the first woman in Afghanistan to hold the office of mayor. They were willing to be interviewed for “Our Face Tells: Seeing the Genocide of Hazaras in Afghanistan.”
Last year, I collaborated with several organizations and led efforts to train Hazara women to create and share their own stories. The Hazara Women of Afghanistan Share Digital Stories event trained and supported Hazara women to tell their own stories. That inspired “Voices of Resistance.”
Q: How have you passed on your documentary film skills to your students?
A: UMBC has given me so much and helped me to contribute to it. I taught three years in the global studies program as a visiting lecturer, and I designed, established, and taught Global Studies 409: Documentary Film as Global Activism. Students had to make a documentary about their families from any part of the world. They had to document where their identity and sense of belonging came from. Their films reflected their family backgrounds as well as their personal passions and engagement with social issues.
I still remember a student whose grandparents came from Ethiopia. His film was about them, and afterwards told me that when he was given the assignment, he said to himself, “If this lady, this lady from Afghanistan, can do these films, I can do that too.” It made me smile
Q: Looking back on everything that you have experienced and accomplished, has your purpose changed?
A: In 2021, when the Taliban returned, it was like the loss of a 20-year-old child. It was hard not to despair. But in all the chaos, some Hazara were able to get out and needed help arriving to live in the United States. That service rescued me from that vulnerable situation. Community work changed me again. It lifted me up.
Zareen Taj (first row, second from the left), at the Hazara Women of Afghanistan Share Digital Stories event. (Image courtesy of Taj.)
After the Hazara Women of Afghanistan Share Digital Stories event, I realized I do not need to feel the responsibility to speak for Hazara women, as they are now able to articulate and share their own stories with the world. This is my message for Hazara around the world, especially Hazara women who feel like their stories do not matter. You need to tell your story because your story is our history. And your story is our future. Sharing our stories will hold us together and make us known to the world.
