Race and the Civil Rights Movement in Music and Media (2/13)

On Wednesday, February 13, at 4 p.m. in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery, the Humanities Forum will present “Race and the Civil Rights Movement in Music and Media.”

This discussion will feature Marc Steiner, host of “The Marc Steiner Show,” Derek Musgrove, assistant professor of history, and Michelle Scott, associate professor of history.

The panel respondent will be Daphne Harrison, Emerita Professor, Africana Studies, and a founder of the UMBC Humanities Center. The panel will be moderated by Kimberly Moffitt, assistant professor of American studies.

Manil Suri, Mathematics, in Baltimore Magazine

Baltimore magazine reviewed Manil Suri’s latest book, The City of Devi, in the February 2013 issue.  Calling the book “a preculiar love story that’s both tawdry and hopeful,” the magazine says that it is “super-charged by religion, sexuality, and the overarching political conflict.”

The magazine also posted a Q and A with the mathematics and statistics professor on their website, where they asked Suri about teaching a math class for non-math majors.  “It taught me that without at least some basic motivation on the part of the learner, it’s simply impossible to engage people in mathematics, no matter how interesting or fun you make it. The subject is difficult, and for the students who were genuinely curious (and were ready to put in the effort), it was a great class. I’ve now taught a bunch of such courses, and they’ve been essential experience for a ‘math novel’ I’m working on,” he said.

Suri will read from The City of Devi on Febraury 6 at 7 p.m. in the Library Gallery.

Morality Beyond Demands (4/11)

There has been a resurgence of interest in discussing morality as a system of demands — more specifically, the idea that moral obligations, duties, and responsibilities are to be understood as actions we can demand of one another.

In the philosophy department’s annual Evelyn Barker Memorial Lecture, part of the Spring 2012 Humanities Forum, Margaret Little will discuss “Morality Beyond Demands.” She will argue that the notion of what we can demand of one another is a crucial one, well worth keeping for the important work it does, but it is a deep mistake to think that it exhausts the morally deontic realm; the fact that an action or its forbearance is not something we can demand of someone does not settle the question of whether it is morally wrong.

Margaret Little is the director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics and associate professor of philosophy at Georgetown University.

The lecture will take place on Wednesday, April 11 at 4 p.m. in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery.  It is sponsored by the department of philosophy with support from the Dresher Center for the Humanities.

Approaching Authenticity: Locating Living Cultural Memories, Identities, and Traditions in the 21st Century (4/3)

In a Humanities Forum lecture entitled “Approaching Authenticity: Locating Living Cultural Memories, Identities, and Traditions in the 21st Century,” Maryland Traditions brings together a panel of scholars to discuss what ‘authenticity’ means with respect to our living cultural memories, identities and traditions of today.

In this increasingly globalized world, where ideas are shared, taken and/or sold instantaneously and where the boundaries between communities, groups and individuals are more fluid than ever before, this panel will focus on what makes one cultural expression, memory or tradition more authentic than another, and who decides what is authentic and what is not.

Maryland Traditions is the Folklife Program of the Maryland State Arts Council.

The lecture will take place on Tuesday, April 3 at 4 p.m. in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery. It is sponsored by Maryland Traditions with support from the Dresher Center for the Humanities

Women’s History Month is Here!

Women’s History Month at UMBC begins a few days early this year. Thanks to GWST and Humanities Forum Korenman Lecture taking place on Monday, February 27th. For all the other great Women’s History Month events happening throughout the month, please visit the Women’s Center’s myUMBC group page at http://my.umbc.edu/groups/womenscenter/news/12363 to download a detailed calendar of events.

Some Highlights Include:

• A Viewing and Discussion of Ironed Jawed Angels on Monday, March 5th in the Women’s Center
• International Women’s Day Potluck on Thursday, March 8th at 12noon in the Women’s Center
• A Viewing and Discussion of The Glass House documentary on Thursday, March 8th at 7pm in ACIV003
• The Other F-Word: A Discussion of Feminism on Wednesday, March 14th at noon in the Mosaic Center
• 1 out of 100,000: The Power of One on Wednesday, March 14th at 4pm in the UC Ballroom

And More!

For more information about Women’s History Month, contact the Women’s Center at ext. 5-2714 or womens.center@umbc.edu.

Africana Studies Presents “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Intellectual Ancestors” (11/9)

The Department of Africana Studies presents the annual W.E.B. DuBois Lecture, “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Intellectual Ancestors: Reassessing the Works of Alexander Crummell and James McCune Smith,” given by Carla L. Peterson of the University of Maryland College Park.

To this day the debate between W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington has dominated post-Reconstruction African American intellectual history. Often obscured however has been the influence of two forefathers, Alexander Crummell (1819-1898) and James McCune Smith (1813-1865). Carla Peterson’s reassessment of their works clarifies these antecedents that allowed both Washington and Du Bois to reach their respective positions on education, and Du Bois to shape his thinking on race and culture.

Carla Peterson completed her Ph.D. at Yale in 1976. Her expertise includes nineteenth-century African American women writers and speakers in the northern US, African American novelists, and gender and culture in historical literature.

Peterson is the author of Black Gotham: African American Family and Community in Nineteenth-Century New York. This book is about nineteenth-century black New Yorkers, viewed from the perspective of family histories.

The Du Bois lecture will take place on Wednesday, November 9 at 7 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom. It is part of the Humanities Forum.

Humanities Forum Presents “Medea as American Other” (10/19)

From the nineteenth century onwards, Euripides’ “Medea” has been the single most performed Greek tragedy on the stage in the United States. The play’s resourceful foreign heroine succeeds in winning justice, although at a terrifying cost.

On Wednesday, October 19, Helene Foley, professor of Classics at Barnard College, Columbia University, will explore “Medea” multiple incarnations as a wronged but empowered “Other” from the 1840s to the present.

The lecture will take place at 4 p.m. in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery. You can find more information here.

Humanities Forum: Rebecca Boehling Reads (9/14)

In 2002, Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg, professor of biology, found hundreds of WWII-era family letters in her parents’ home. She contacted Rebecca Boehling, professor of history and director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities, and the result is was a collective biography about a German Jewish family in Nazi Germany.

Co-authored with Uta Larkey, of Coucher College, Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust reveals the family’s struggle over whether to go or to stay while confronting ever increasing obstacles to emigration and immigration. The book documents family members’ hopes and fears as they are scattered over three continents, forced to contend with wartime postal delays and the deafening silence of loved ones left behind.

Boehling will read from and sign copies of Life and Loss on Wednesday, September 14, at 4 p.m. on the seventh floor of the Albin O. Kuhn Library.