Joe Tropea ’06 History B.A. and ’08 Historical Studies M.A, in the Baltimore Brew

A film by Joe Tropea ’06 History B.A. and ’08 Historical Studies premiers locally at the Maryland Film Festival next week.  The Baltimore Brew covered the film in a May 1 story entitled “A fiery act of civil disobedience in Catonsville still resonates, 45 years later.”

“Hit & Stay’ tells the story of nine Catholic activists who protested the Vietnam War by burning draft files in Catonsville on May 17, 1968.  Tropea and fellow filmmaker Skizz Cyzyk tell the story using old footage, recent interviews with surviving members of the group and their supporters, images of war horrors, and the reflections of eminences of the Left such as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Bill Ayers and Amy Goodman.

Tropea undertook the six-year process of making the documentary after writing on the subject for his masters thesis.  “I had had no idea about the amount of strategy and coordination and about how all these things were connected,” he said.

“Hit & Stay” will have two screenings at The Maryland Film Festival. (Tickets available here.)

• Thursday, May 9, 7:30 p.m. at Charles Theatre, 1711 N Charles St.
• Saturday, May 11, 1:30 p.m. at MICA’s Brown Center, 1300 Mount Royal Ave.

The anniversary of the action will also be commemorated with a May 10 event at UMBC, “Looking Forward from the 45th Anniversary of the Catonsville Nine Actions.”

Alumna Teresa Foster Awarded Fellowship

Teresa Foster ’09, gender and women’s studies and history, ’11 M.A. historical studies, and a LLC Ph.D. candidate, is the winner of the 2013-2014 Wing Graduate Fellowship in Colonial Chesapeake History from the Maryland Historical Society.

The purpose of the Wing Fellowship is to assist a graduate student in undertaking a significant project in Chesapeake colonial history.

Vivian Ekey ’11 Chosen as Rangel Fellow

Vivian Ekey ’11, political science and modern languages and linguistics, was recently chosen to be a Rangel Fellow.

The Rangel Graduate Fellowship is a program that aims to attract and prepare outstanding young people for careers in the Foreign Service in which they can help formulate, represent and implement U.S. foreign policy. Each year, the Rangel Program selects 20 outstanding Rangel Fellows in a highly competitive nationwide process and helps support them through two years of graduate study, internships and professional development activities, and entry into the Foreign Service.

Ekey will be earning an M.A in Latin American Studies and International Economics at the Johns Hopkins SAIS Bologna school.

Faculty Art Gallery Exhibits Work by UMBC Alumni (Catonsville Times)

This Friday, October 5, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m., Carolyn Forestiere (associate professor, political science) will host the grand opening of a unique gallery featuring work from five local artists. An article in today’s Catonsville Times describes how the Forestiere’s family converted part of their home to create the David Mikow Art Gallery, now displaying nearly 100 photographs by UMBC alumni Chrystal Smith, Kimberly M. Haines, Brittney Danielle, Marlayna Demond and Stephanie Ellis.

“We told them, ‘Do not think of this as a traditional museum. Treat it as a collage,’” Forestiere said she told the photographers. The public is invited to attend tomorrow’s opening. The gallery’s next show, a print-making exhibit, is planned for December.

Alumni Musicians to Perform for Benefit at Fine Arts Recital Hall

This month, the Fine Arts Recital Hall will be featuring five alumni returning to perform for the benefit of the Bridges Program in Baltimore, an organization which works to provide musical instruction to inner-city children.

Music majors Rachele Sills ’07,  Ryan Bridgland ’06 and Stefanie Watson ’05 will be performing Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 39, “Gypsy” and Schoenfield’s “Allegro” from Café Musicas as the Edwin Trio. Erin Terwilliger ’09, music, and Winnie Nham ’09, political science, will then join Sills and Bridgland on Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 12, “American” as the Malbec Quartet.

Speaking with Retriever Net on July 18, Nahm spoke of the musicians’ motivations in performing for the Bridges Program’s benefit. “Music has played an important role for us throughout our lives,” she said, “and we believe that every student should be afforded the opportunity to learn an instrument, regardless of socio-economic background. To us, this is truly a cause to perform for.”

The performance will begin at 3:30 p.m., Saturday, July 28. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for seniors, and free for students under 18 and families in the Bridges Program.

Shana Palmer ’15, MFA in Visual Arts, Exhibits in Finland

Shana Palmer, an MFA candidate with Visual Arts for 2015, is participated in the Invisible Time exhibition at the MUU Gallery based in Helsinki, Finland. Palmer contributed  to the track “Lunar Storm” from her band Secret Secrets’s latest album Chiromagica, to the “Wall of Sound” portion of the exhibit, alongside ten other track by other participating artists. Secret Secrets is a duo of Palmer on vocals and electronics with drums provided by Melissa Moore.

Invisible Time opened at the MUU Gallery on June 8th and closed on June 21st. More information on the exhibit and its participants can be found here.

Dance Piece by Josephine Kalema ’13, Dance, Performed in D.C. in July

Josephine Kalema, a senior dance major, will have her piece Past, Present, and Future performed at the Washington, D.C. performance space Dance Place as part of the  annual New Release Choreographer’s Showcase this coming July.

It will feature dancers Arnesha Reives, Jonique Holcomb, Alexis Renee, Candice Grace, and Jasmynn Speight, and  mixes traditional and modern African dance. Kalema dedicates Past, Present, and Future to her Ugandan family, as well as “every culture that has gone through life changing barriers,” according to Dance Place’s website.

The dates for the New Release Choreographer’s Showcase are July 7th at 8 p.m., and July 8th at 7 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at Dance Place’s webpage for the event, located here.

Seth Sawyers ’99, History, in The Baltimore Sun

For Father’s Day 2012, The Baltimore Sun published an essay written by alumnus Seth Sawyers ’99, history, entitled “Driving with Dad.” Sawyers, who teaches essay writing for the English Department, recounted his memories of riding around Western Maryland with his father and brothers as a boy. The piece is at times poignant, but often humorous, such as when Sawyers remembers one incident involving his father convincing another driver to go through a broken light which only flashed red.

He writes:

“Somebody behind us honked. Dad craned his neck, looking at the light. Somebody honked again. Dad yanked on the parking brake handle and opened his door. ‘Don’t let anyone touch those,’ he said to Jake, pointing at the pedals. We watched him, easy, loose, walk up to the first car. He leaned in to the driver’s-side window. There was gesturing. Dad pointed to the light and then, finally, the other guy nodded. Dad jogged back and slid into the Escort. He put the car in gear and when the cars in front of us went through the red light, we followed.

‘Light’s broken,’ he said, his front teeth flashing in the sun. ‘Had to do something.’”

Sara Patenaude ’11 Wins Arnold Prize

Sara Patenaude ’11 M.A., historical studies, has won the Arnold Prize for Outstanding Writing on Baltimore’s History.

The Arnold Prize is named for Joseph L. Arnold, a professor of history at UMBC who died in 2004.  He was a vital and important member of the faculty for three and a half decades, as well as a leading historian of urban and planning history. He also played an active and often leading role with a variety of private and public historical institutions in the Baltimore area, and at his death was hailed as the “dean of Baltimore historians.” The Arnold Prize rewards outstanding research on Baltimore history.

Patenaude’s essay, entitled “Playing Fair: The Fight for Interracial Athletics in Baltimore,” is a chapter from her master’s thesis at UMBC.   The prize, which comes with a $500 award, is presented by the Baltimore City Historical Society.

Seth Sawyers ’99 in The Millions

Seth Sawyers ’99, history, and adjunct faculty in English, has a new essay in the online literary magazine The Millions.

This essay, which is a chapter is from his recently completed memoir about growing up in the hills of western Maryland, is entitled “Baseball, Finally.”  It appeared on the website on April 4.

 “….I can still feel the rhythm of the infield drill. I did thousands of them, the movements deep inside me like the steps of a dance, like the bass lines to certain Beatles’ songs.I loved turning double plays, taking the throw from third or from short, quickly hopping backward off the bag and, in the same motion, flinging a sidearm shot to first. It was the only dance I was ever any good at,” he writes.

“…we would never again, it turns out, be quite so free, quite as on the edge of something as beautiful and deep, and strange. Way out ahead of us was the unknowable everything, but just within reach was seven innings of baseball, a game we knew better than maybe anything else in the world.”