Call for Chapters - Current Trends in Graduate Historical Research Book Series

Attention Professors, Doctoral Candidates, and Graduate Students:

We are pleased to announce that Eastern Illinois University has partnered with Common Ground Publishing to publish the first in a yearly series of peer reviewed edited collections consisting of work by graduate and doctoral students. Applicants will be expected to participate in the peer review and will gain experience in the publishing process while competing for publication in a professional edited collection. We seek papers in all periods and fields of history and are particularly interested in original and innovative primary research projects that make demonstrated contributions to the relevant historiography.

The Obama Effect 2.0 Conference

October 27-29, 2016

University of Maryland Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD)

Graduate Research Assistantship in Participatory Action Research Project Work with K-12 Teachers in Baltimore, Maryland

• a shared reframing of the narrative around critical educational issues (such as teacher evaluation and attrition; the place of testing in the broad view of assessment; effective classroom practice that addresses the whole child; social justice-oriented, project-based teaching; and the place of teacher union activism in the lives of teachers)
• the production of an on-line, locally specific, social justice curriculum available to all city teachers

For more information about the TDP project, please contact: Dr. Helen Atkinson, Executive Director, Teachers' Democracy Project, helen.atkinson@umbc.edu or Dr. Bev Bickel, Clinical Associate Professor, Language, Literacy and Culture Doctoral Program, bickel@umbc.edu.

From Provost Philip Rous:

I am pleased to announce that Shawn Bediako, Associate Professor of Psychology, has been named the inaugural recipient of the Marilyn E. Demorest Award for Faculty Advancement. This annual award is provided through an endowment established by Marilyn E. Demorest, Professor Emerita of Psychology and former Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, to support the advancement of all UMBC faculty members in their academic careers; to facilitate their professional development; and to recognize their contributions to faculty advancement and success at UMBC.

Dr. Bediako is recognized for his deep commitment to fostering the professional excellence and career advancement of a wide range of faculty and postdoctoral scholars at UMBC and beyond. His mentoring activities emphasize methods that enhance scholarly productivity and support a meaningful work/life balance. Most recently, in collaboration with Claudia Galindo (LLC), Brandy Wallace Harris (SOCY/ANTH), and Angelica Herrera (formerly of SOCY/ANTH), Dr. Bediako created the UMBC Summer Writing Accountability Group (S.W.A.G.) to help participants maintain their work/life balance and increase their research and writing productivity within a supportive community environment. Over the course of 19 weeks, a total of 60 faculty, administrators, and instructional staff collectively logged more than 1,800 hours of writing time toward advancing their manuscripts, book chapters, and monographs.

During his tenure as the Demorest awardee, Dr. Bediako will work closely with the Faculty Development Center (FDC) to offer a series of faculty development workshops during the Spring 2016 semester that will help faculty and instructional staff members:

Learn why and how to align institutional priorities, personal values, and long-term goals
Avoid the time management mistakes that many faculty and instructional staff make
Develop a consistent daily writing routine to increase research and scholarly productivity
Develop a network of support and accountability for academic writing.
Also, Dr. Bediako will consult with Dr. Linda Hodges, Director of the FDC, and other experts on campus to identify the best methods for assessing the effectiveness of the workshops. The evaluation results will be used to determine if this form of professional development should be institutionalized to further promote an intellectual sense of community at UMBC.

Dr. Bediako is a leader in the field of community health psychology and is internationally known for his research on the clinical implications of sickle cell disease stigma and its impact on health-related outcomes. His honors include, among others, the Innovator in Academic Hemoglobinopathies Research Career Development Award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health and the Champion Award from the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America. He also is a member of the UMBC Executive Committee on the Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement of Underrepresented Minority Faculty and one of the founders of the UMBC Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity.

“I am deeply honored to be the first recipient of this award. Dr. Demorest’s generous gift will provide an opportunity for me to collaborate with faculty colleagues across campus and find innovative ways to align our personal and professional goals with the institution’s vision” says Dr. Bediako. “I’m particularly excited about the possibility of partnering with our Faculty Development Center to complement their program and services.”

Dr. Demorest admires UMBC for its commitment to academic integrity, to diversity and the overall success of all of its students. “I am very proud of UMBC and what it has accomplished in the last 50 years,” says Dr. Demorest. “[There are] good reasons why we’ve been the number one up-and-coming national university in the country.” With her gift to UMBC, she hopes that this legacy can continue through the next 50 years.

Please join me in congratulating Dr. Bediako on this recognition and supporting his work with the Faculty Development Center.

At a recent symposium held at Uppsala University, Sweden featuring prominent international modernist research, Jessica Berman, director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities and professor of English, presented an invited lecture about her research on transnational movements of people in the development of twentieth century media, with a focus on global radio.

Berman’s talk “Radio Relations and Transnational Listening” examined listening in the early days of radio in India. She argued that the diverse nature of the radio environment that used several languages, particularly in programs sent out over the All India Radio airwaves, helped to create a community among the listeners that resisted the directed messages coming to them from the center of the British Empire.

The talk was part of a symposium with the theme “Intimate Modernism.” The event forms part of a collaboration between the Department of English, Uppsala University, and the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow. For more information about the symposium and other scholars who presented, visit Uppsala University’s English department website. Read more about Jessica Berman’s research.

In advance of the annual Conference on D.C. Historical Studies, the Washington Post highlighted research by George Derek Musgrove ’97, history, associate professor of history, that identifies four distinct waves of gentrification in Washington, D.C. and reflects residents’ viewpoints of how it has impacted the city.

At the D.C. historical studies conference, Musgrove presented a talk with his colleague Chris Myers Asch at the University of the District of Columbia titled “We Are Headed for Some Bad Trouble: Gentrification and Displacement in Washington, D.C., 1920-2014.” Musgrove and Asch were part of a panel discussion to assess how historical patterns of race- and class-based inequality shape today’s urban landscape in Washington.

The talk was previewed in the Washington Post by columnist John Kelly. In his research, Musgrove identified the first wave of gentrification in 1920s Georgetown: “[Musgrove] said that when gentrification later moved across other neighborhoods, people would say they didn’t want them to end up ‘like Georgetown,’ which was seen as exclusive — and nearly exclusively white.

“Our purpose in writing this was to give people an idea of how old gentrification is in the city and, in the process, to give people an idea of why older residents in particular react to it in the way that they do,” he added.

Last year, Musgrove was interviewed by WAMU’s Metro Connection program about his gentrification research.