Voices of Change
Storywork In Activism, Education and Public Service
September 22-27, 2015

Program Management Specialist (Job 034)

Gender and Women’s Studies 

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) seeks an individual to provide administrative support to the Gender and Women’s Studies Department, its diverse faculty, students, and courses.  Gender and Women’s Studies is an interdisciplinary academic department that offers an undergraduate major, two undergraduate minors, and both an undergraduate and graduate certificate. It also is a participating member of the Language, Literacy and Culture PhD Program. Specific duties include: greeting visitors; answering phones and email; preparing correspondence and materials for department meetings, annual reports, and recruitment maintaining financial, curricular, student, personnel records, and Department web resources; processing payroll; scheduling courses, updating course catalogs, assisting the Chair and other faculty with course scheduling, recruitment, advising, enrollment activities, lectures, meetings and special events; and performing other duties as assigned.    

Requires:a Bachelor’s Degree (preferably in women’s studies or a related social justice field) and at least two years experience in administrative staff work.  Must have knowledge of Microsoft Office, PeopleSoft and Adobe applications, excellent customer service, organizational, written, communication, interpersonal and cultural competency skills, including the ability to work both independently and collaboratively.  Note: Additional related experience and formal education in which one has gained the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for full performance of the work of the job class may be substituted for the education or experience requirement on a year-for-year basis with 30 college credits being equivalent to one year of experience.  Starting salary is $36,178.  Position is full-time and includes a full university benefits package. 

Applications are available for download on our website at: http://hr.umbc.edu/employment/employment-application/ or by calling 410-455-2337 (a resume and cover letter may be attached in addition to the application form). Interested and qualified candidates must submit a UMBC application (indicate position title and Job #034 on the application) no later than July 24, 2015 to:  UMBC Department of Human Resources, 532 Administration Bldg., 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, Maryland   21250.

UMBC is an EOE/AA

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines the shifting attitudes toward the Confederate battle flag. “The image was at once mundane and historic. In Alabama last Wednesday, on the order of Gov. Robert Bentley, workers took down the Confederate battle flag on the grounds of the state Capitol and were photographed as they did. The camera, whose role it was to record a reality — and thus to make visible its compelling details of the world — now documented a symbol’s imminent invisibility,” notes Berger, but adds, “In the end, retiring an icon is not the same as dealing with the underlying institutional, emotional, economic and historic complications that it represents.”

Read “Making a Confederate Flag Invisible” and view the photographs at The New York Times Lens blog.

Berger’s Race Stories column, which appears monthly on The New York Times website, is “a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race.”

Linda Dusman, Music, and Eric Smallwood, Visual Arts, were interviewed by The Baltimore Sun’s Tim Smith about their app Octava, which is designed to enhance the audience experience at symphony orchestra performances. Read the full article on the Sun’s website here.

“The app, called Octava, is aimed at enhancing the musical experience for listeners by delivering information via Wifi, synced with the music being played in the concert hall,” says Smith. In development for several years and formerly known as Symphony Interactive, the project received a $150,000 Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) grant in 2014 (read more here).

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.