In his latest Baltimore Sun opinion column, UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller focuses on the US tax policy debate. “We talk a lot about spending cuts but rarely, if ever, about revenue increases. Why the asymmetry?” Schaller asks. Read “The Gospel of Tax Cuts” to find out.
The Maryland Humanities Council (MHC) has elected seven new members to its Board of Directors, including Stephen J. Sfekas, a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge who previously taught health care law and administrative law at UMBC. According to Baltimore Citybizlist, Sfekas has served on the boards of The ARC Baltimore, the Maryland Disabilities Law Center, the Society for Values in Higher Education, and the President’s Advisory Council for UMBC. MHC board members are involved in strategic planning, fundraising and fiscal management for the group.
On Thursday, November 10, Michael Fallon, senior lecturer of English, will read from his two new books of poetry: “Since You have No Body,” winner of the 2011 Plan B Press Poetry Chapbook Competition “Overall, Since You Have No Body is about making peace with the organic, as well as the ontological world, with death, with the shadow, and hence with the void…” -Contest Judge, poet Corey Mesler and “The Great Before and After” In The Great Before and After, George C. Tumulty, a comic everyman, contemplates the origins and fate of himself, humanity, and the universe, raising the big… Continue Reading Michael Fallon, English, to Read from and Sign Books
Timothy Nohe, associate professor of Visual Arts, will exhibit his work Candles for Faust at the in/flux gallery, 307 West Baltimore Street, from November 5 through 19.Nohe remarks, “Candles for Faust portrays candles, burning at both ends, that eventually extinguish themselves and fall from sight. Stereo recordings were produced of the drumming sound of dripping wax falling on printmaking paper. I imagined the candles as ‘musical instruments’ producing unique and chaotic drum patterns. As the candles attempted to reach equilibrium, teetering back and forth, they tattooed a pattern of wax scatter on the paper below. The resulting wax splashed detritus… Continue Reading Timothy Nohe, Visual Arts, to Exhibit at in/flux Gallery
A video piece created in 2010 by Vin Grabill (associate professor and chair, Visual Arts) and his son, Elliott, was accepted as one of nineteen finalists for the Rosebud Film & Video Festival. The 8-minute video “Kings Highway/Stillwell Ave., Brooklyn” will be screened along with the other eighteen works on Saturday, November 12, and an awards ceremony will take place Sunday, November 13, in Arlington, Virginia. “Kings Highway/Stillwell Ave., Brooklyn” started as a piece of music for piano written by Elliott Grabill. Vin Grabill made a video recording of his son playing “Kings Highway” at a performance in Washington, D.C.… Continue Reading Vin Grabill, Visual Arts, in Rosebud Film & Video Festival
Kelley Bell, assistant professor of Visual Arts (and Visual Arts MFA ’05) has created one of the most visible artworks in Baltimore: she is illuminating the clock faces on the downtown Bromo Seltzer Tower. The Baltimore Sun‘s Mary Carole McCauley wrote a major feature that appeared on the paper’s front page on November 4, and the City Paper‘s Baynard Woods contributed a feature in the paper’s November 2 issue. Both features include videos. Professor Bell’s projections on the clock faces begin at sunset on Saturday, November 5 and will continue for approximately five weeks.
“It would have been easy in recent days to mistake Courtroom 5D as the site of a Maryland political convention rather than the forum for a public corruption trial,” wrote the Washington Post‘s John Wagner, on the defense of Sen. Ulysses Currie. Prominent character witnesses were brought to the stand over several days to vouch for Currie’s integrity in light of corruption allegations — a potentially risky move for some, considering their own career ambitions. “I don’t know whether a jury will look at politicians saying nice things about other politicians in a cynical way or a laudatory way,” said… Continue Reading Donald Norris, Public Policy, in the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun
On Tuesday, November 1, Rebecca Boehling spoke at the Leo Baeck Institute about her new book, “Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust: A Jewish Family’s untold Story.” Boehling was joined by her co-author, Uta Larkey. The institute, which is located in New York, is a research library and archive that contains the most significant collection of source material relating to the history of German-speaking Jewry, from its origins to its tragic destruction by the Nazis and continuing to the present day.
Katie Smallwood ’09, American studies, is one of the organizers of a new project entitled “Baltimore: Place to Place.” Smallwood and her co-organizer, Katie Shinsato, randomly distributed Baltimore sites among about 25 participants, who shot, framed, and reflected upon their assignments. The results of the project will be on display at the Windup Space through November. “We wanted to celebrate place and how the space around you can be important to different individuals for various reasons. We wanted people to have to go to places they either knew really well or had never been to before and to have an… Continue Reading Katie Smallwood ’09, American Studies, in Urbanite
Sonya Caesar, cohort 13, Language, Literacy and Culture, appeared on a PBS Nightly Business Report segment on student debt. Caesar is on staff at the Community College of Baltimore County, where she is spearheading a campus-wide financial literacy campaign. She discusses what students know and don’t know when it comes to taking on student debt – the challenges of managing their money and paying back student loans which are never erased from their records. The espisode aired on Tuesday, October 25, and can be watched here. The segment on financial literacty begins at about 17:00. Caesar previously wrote and co-produced… Continue Reading Sonya Caesar, Language, Literacy and Culture on PBS Nightly Business Report
“Art and Psyche,” a book by Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, has been translated into Serbian.Through the book, Spitz explores three principal psychoanalytic approaches to art. The first considers the relations between an artist’s life and work; the second focuses on the work of art itself; and the third encompasses the intricate relations between a work of art and its audience or beholders. To illustrate her discussion, Spitz draws on a variety of art forms, including painting, sculpture, literature, music, and dance.The book was originally published by Yale university Press, and has previously been translated to… Continue Reading Book by Ellen Handler Spitz, Honors College, Translated to Serbian
Professor of the Practice of English Christopher Corbett’s latest essay in Style magazine discusses the complications surrounding recent improvements made to his home. “They say no jobs were added to our economy last summer but that is just simply wrong. Half my neighborhood was under construction. The other half was thinking about it. And I was doing my part, too. I have the canceled checks to prove it,” he concludes. The essay, “Home Improvements,” is featured in the November 2011 issue of the magazine. Corbett was also interviewed by the Associated Press about the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental telegraph.… Continue Reading Christopher Corbett, English, in the News
