Rebecca Adelman, an assistant professor of media and communication studies, was recently interviewed for a story in Discovery about the narratives and sensational news headlines surrounding shark attacks. In the article, Adelman said that common language describing such attacks can often minimize the role of humans.

“It neatly erases any kind of human culpability for the shark bite while underscoring the notion that humans […] ought to be able to roam freely and safely anywhere on the planet, regardless of what other creatures might have preceded them there by millions of years,” she explained.

“Yet it also makes a kind of sense out of the event of a shark biting a hapless child, swimmer, surfer, or fisherman by attributing a kind of malevolent agency to the offending creature. It deflects the question of whether the human might have made a mistake by being in that part of the ocean at that time (or might have made a faulty calculation about the risk associated with their actions), but also provides a defense against the terrifying idea that bad things just happen,” she added. The full article can be accessed here.   

In light of the International Day of Yoga, Mathematics Professor and New York Times Contributing Opinion Writer Manil Suri wrote about the viewpoints surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plans to promote it within the country: “Some Muslim preachers and opposition politicians have accused Mr. Modi of using the day to foist Hinduism on religious minorities under the guise of yoga.”

However, Suri explains in his column that, “Yoga is big business, estimated at $10 billion a year in the United States alone, and India needs to be associated with it — not just to attract tourists to yoga retreats, but also to assert its intellectual rights. The country has been fighting attempts by Western gurus to patent yoga poses, assembling a repository of over 1,500 asanas to keep them free.”

He added: “Within India, the goal is different. Those on the Hindu right have always harbored the vision of returning to India’s greatness as an ancient civilization. A practice with Vedic origins that has nevertheless attained such secular popularity is the perfect vehicle to create a shared national consciousness. The physical engagement, mental discipline and sublimation of desire enshrined in yoga meld seamlessly, yet discreetly, with the more militaristic tenets of organizations like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.”

To read the full column titled “India and the Politics of Yoga,” click here. Suri also appeared live on CNN International on Sunday, June 21 to discuss his column.

Joan Shin, education professor of practice, recently published an article in The Conversation that examined the power of using children’s songs to introduce children to different cultures and the world around them. “Without realizing it, children learn language and content simultaneously. Songs build skills that help children distinguish the sounds of a language, and connect sound to script and assist with vocabulary building,” Shin wrote.

Shin discussed the teaching approach she developed that combines her song research and search for cultural materials to teach English as a global language. Shin’s “international children’s song approach” uses songs from around the world as a method of teaching English to young children.

“Whether children are learning English as a second language, or even a third or fourth language, they are being exposed to it at earlier and earlier ages worldwide. Using international children’s songs from around the world is an effective approach for teaching English as a global language to kids. Language is a carrier of culture, and English is uniquely positioned to communicate across cultures around the world. Materials to teach itshould embrace all cultures,” Shin described.

To read the full article “How should kids learn English: through Old MacDonald’s farm or Ali Baba’s farm?” click here.

An article published June 18 in the Baltimore Sun examined a digital history project documenting the unrest surrounding the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Denise Meringolo, an associate professor of history, is collaborating with the Maryland Historical Society and University of Baltimore to collect images, oral histories, and videos taken by everyday citizens documenting the events. Meringolo, who is featured in the article, set up a website for the project.

“I decided to establish a site that allows people to participate directly in the act of collecting,” Meringolo said. “When you study social movements from the past, sometimes what’s missing are the experiences and perceptions of the people who were in that moment. You find the official reports, but it’s very difficult to get a sense of what that protest was like viscerally from the ground view.”

To read the article in the Baltimore Sun, click here.  For additional coverage by the Associated Press, click here. To learn more about the project, visit baltimoreuprising2015.org.

Following the recent arrests of FIFA officials, Sunil Dasgupta, director of UMBC’s political science program at the Universities of Shady Grove, wrote anarticle for International Relations and Security Network (ISN) News about the arrests illustrating a key feature of American soft power.

“Rather than blaming the media or the public for paying more attention to a sporting controversy than to developments in the South China Sea, this unlikely legal move by the U.S. Department of Justice should be taken as evidence of the symbolic nature of power in contemporary international politics. On the symbolic terrain of soft power, the governance of football may indeed be more important than the geopolitics of Chinese island construction projects. If so, the FIFA arrests may indicate that the United States is more capable of shaping certain elements of the international system than reports of its decline have suggested,” Dasgupta wrote.

In the article, he also discussed what the FIFA controversy says about governing on an global scale: “…the football controversy promises to define new rules for governing non-state international organizations—a type of entity left outside the post-World War II institutional order. It also offers a new methodology for solving problems: state action on behalf of a global, rather than a national, public, which is a novel and potentially exciting model for reorganizing the international system.”

To read the full article titled “Football or Atolls? Why Football Matters More than Chinese Island Construction for World Politics,” click here.

Hi Everyone!

I hope you are having a great summer break! Here is some information that I would like to pass along.

Next month, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) will be hosting a LawSchool Forum  in Washington DC for prospective law students.

LSAC Law School Forums are the only events that allow prospective lawstudents to chat with up to 185 ABA-approved law school representatives in one convenient setting. Attendees also have the ability to go to exclusive workshops, including About the LSAT (Meet an LSAT Developer), Financing a Legal Education, The Application Process, Diversity Information Panel, and more.

All LSAC Law School Forums are free to attend. Each year, thousands of prospective law school students attend the forums, which make them great networking events.

I have attached a flier provides dates and how to sign up. If this interests you, please check out the website.

See you in fall!

Hyperrhiz 12
Special Issue: "Mapping Culture Multimodally"
Summer 2015

A public artwork by John Craig Freeman with critical commentary by Jessica Auchter

Lisa-Katharina Förster and Folker Metzger

Félix Burgos

Petra Johnson

Marta Carrasco and Sergi Selvas

Caroline Gausden and Helen Smith

Alys Longley, James Hutchinson, Charlotte Šunde, Sasha Matthewman, and Karen Fisher

Michelle Ferrier

Craig Saper and Lynn Tomlinson

Scott Rettberg

Produced by Roderick Coover and Scott Rettberg

Produced by Roderick Coover and Scott Rettberg

Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg

Dean Casale

Jessica Floyd

Tissa J. Thomas