The UMBC community welcomed U.S. Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden to campus on April 13, 2017 for a conversation on her new role heading the oldest federal cultural institution in the nation. Hayden focused her National Library Week talk on a major issue in the library world, and for the Library of Congress in particular: expanding digital access to the country’s unparalleled collections, “a treasure chest just waiting to be opened.”

The lecture was a homecoming for Hayden, former director of Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library, who spoke of her longtime friendship with UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski. But before Hayden took the stage, Jessica Berman, director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities, shared a powerful personal reflection on the impact of public libraries.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today without librarians,” said Berman. She described how it was a public library that opened doors previously unimaginable for her family, particularly her mother, who grew up in a low-income family in New York.

“My mother’s eyes still tear up when she describes receiving her first library card. It was a talisman,” Berman shared. Her mother went on to receive an undergraduate degree from Smith College and, years later, her doctorate in social work, the same year Berman earned her own Ph.D.

As a young academic, said Berman, “When I first moved to Washington D.C., the Library of Congress was my intellectual life.” She described the rush she felt sitting in the Jefferson Reading Room for the first time and how she still gets the same feeling when she steps into that space 25 years later.

It was with a “personal passion and gratitude for all she has done and all she represents,” that Berman welcomed Hayden to UMBC’s Linehan Concert Hall to present UMBC’s 2017 Daphne Harrison Lecture.

Hayden began by sharing how she made the difficult decision to leave the Pratt library to head the Library of Congress.

For years, Hayden focused her attention on cultivating Baltimore libraries as community spaces and community resources. During the 2015 unrest in Baltimore, she reflected, “the public library was the lifeline for so many people.” She had concerns about “moving from a library that was connecting to people every day” in such an essential way, to serving as the leader of a national institution — broadly impactful, but perhaps less closely connected with city residents’ everyday lives.

Hayden recounted meeting with then-President Barack Obama before her nomination. Together, at the Library of Congress, they viewed personal letters that Rosa Parks wrote after her arrest in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 for refusing to give up her bus seat. Looking at the letters, Obama spoke with Hayden about the immense potential of historical records to directly inform, affirm, and inspire people across the nation. What was needed, he expressed, was someone to bring the library’s 160 million items directly to the public.

Once she formally stepped into her new role, Carla Hayden resolved to open the “treasure chest,” as she describes the Library of Congress, for all the nation to see. Through her own @LbnofCongress Twitter account, she says, “I invited everyone to discover with me” the collections’ riches. After all, Hayden noted, “This wonderful treasure chest is just a mausoleum if people can’t read and see [what’s inside].”

So great are the library’s treasures that Hayden still regularly comes across collections that astound her and excite colleagues who have worked at the library for decades. Many know about the draft of the Declaration of Independence in Thomas Jefferson’s handwriting and Abraham Lincoln’s draft of the Gettysburg Address. Fewer people know about the personal correspondence between Jackie Robinson and scout Branch Rickey or the letters Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein wrote to one another.

“The biggest surprise is how much is there that even people who have worked there [for years] don’t know [exists],” she says. “It’s just there…waiting to be opened,” in room after room, across hundreds of miles of shelves.

It’s these discoveries that affirm for her, every day, that digital access isn’t an add-on, it’s a core part of her mission, and that of the library itself.

“This is America’s library. This is your library,” Hayden shared. “We want to be part of people’s lives.”

Carla Hayden’s 2017 Daphne Harrison Lecture, which took place during National Library Week, was sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities, Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery, Africana studies department, and English department.

Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

A recent gift by Stanley B. Burns, M.D. substantially increases the holdings of daguerreotypes at UMBC. Dr. Burns, historian, collector, and physician, donated 252 daguerreotypes from his large photography collection, continuing his long relationship with UMBC.

Tom Beck, chief curator of UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library notes that the donated works are both signed and unsigned daguerreotypes:

More than seventy different photographers are represented among the signed works, including recognized daguerreotypists such as Charles Deforest Fredericks, Rufus Anson, John Plumbe, Jr., Samuel Broadbent, and Jessie Whitehurst. The unsigned works are unattributable to any specific artist but hold significant value for the uniqueness of the imagery, the interesting representations of nineteenth century people, and the material culture characteristics.

Having acquired his first photograph in 1975 (a medical image), Burns founded the “Burns Archive” in 1977 at his New York City home. The Archive began receiving recognition in 1978 by such prominent publications as New York magazine, Aperture magazine, and the New York Times. Art& Antiques Magazine labeled Burns “one of America’s Top 100 Collectors.”

As an historian, Burns has written over 1,100 articles and over forty books on subjects ranging from Victorian funeral portraits to early oncology. His books Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography In America, and Forgotten Marriage: The Painted Tintype & The Decorative Frame, 1860-1910, A Lost Chapter in American Portraiture both received American Photographic Historical Society awards for best publications, and Sleeping Beauty was praised by Pulitzer Prize winning author John Updike in American Heritage magazine. Images from the Burns Archive have been utilized for such nationally and internationally distributed television programs and motion pictures as The American Experience, Hannibal, The Knick, and Silence of the Lambs. 

Images: Header image is UMBC Library, by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. Daguerreotype is “Sea Captain in Typical Distinguished Pose,” by J. H. Young, 1850s. Photography Collections, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery.

As the ensemble Musica Spira, featuring UMBC affiliate artist and keyboardist Paula Maust and soprano Grace Srinivasan, steps onto the stage in Linehan Concert Hall on Wednesday, April 5, audience members will be treated to the sounds of a new custom-built harpsichord.

A keyboard instrument most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque eras, the harpsichord superficially resembles the piano. Its sound, however, is distinctive and more delicate, produced by plectrums that pluck its strings as the keys are depressed, rather than by hammers striking strings, as with a piano. The instrument is also visually remarkable. Harpsichords were often exquisitely painted and designed with elaborate ornamentation, and UMBC’s new acquisition is no exception.

The harpsichord is one of a number of instruments obtained by the department of music through the construction of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, and has been designed and hand-built by Owen Daly, a maker of historically-informed harpsichords and clavichords in Salem, Oregon, since the late 1970s. Daly explains:

UMBC’s new instrument is closely modeled upon a harpsichord by Pierre Donzelague, made in Lyon, France, in 1711. The 1711 Donzelague is one of the earliest known harpsichords made with the five-octave range that later became standard for large French harpsichords, rather than representing the enlargement of an earlier instrument with a smaller range.
 
The elaborate ‘wedding-cake’ rose in the soundboard, and the extravagant floral soundboard painting were both closely modeled on those elements in the original Donzelague by Berkeley artist Janine Johnson.
 
As was the case with harpsichords in their original period, the plectra are made from the shafts of feathers, in this case those of wild Canada geese, and the wire is a newly-developed material based closely upon the metallurgy of surviving samples of original wire.

Musica Spira’s program will feature music by a variety of Baroque composers, including Henry Purcell (1659–1695), George Frideric Handel (1685–1759), Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665–1729), Peter Philips (1560/61–1628), Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer (1705–1755), and Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757).

Keyboardist Paula Maust shares:

The harpsichord is modeled on a French instrument, so a substantial portion of the music on the program is French. The Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre suite for solo harpsichord is from 1687, and we know that the composer was still giving recitals in Paris into the 1720s, so she may have played this music on a similar instrument. This suite is all about subtlety, nuance, and ‘good taste,’ and the new harpsichord works quite well for these pieces.
 
The Bourgeois cantata was written in 1708, so it is a close contemporary of the instrument UMBC’s new harpsichord was modeled on.
 
I’ve also chosen some later French pieces for solo harpsichord by Royer to demonstrate the instrument’s capacity for bombastic, loud, and virtuosic works (as a contrast to the Jacquet de la Guerre suite).
 
Each piece on the program was chosen to highlight the instrument’s various capabilities, for example to be loud and percussive, soft and sustained, to clearly showcase rapid passage work, and to produce and support lyric melodies.

Musica Spira performs in Earl and Darielle Linehan Concert Hall on Wednesday, April 5, at 7:30 p.m. (see additional event information).

Header image: The harpsichord’s painted soundboard and intricate woodwork. Both photos by Willie Santiago, concert coordinator.

With art, ideas, and entertainment, UMBC will add spark to the second annual Light City Baltimore festival, running from March 31 through April 8 in the Inner Harbor and throughout the city. The evening celebration of light and its companion series of daytime innovation conferences — the Labs@LightCity — will prominently feature UMBC faculty, staff, students and alumni as artists and thought leaders.

Launched by the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts in 2016, Light City Baltimore is the first large-scale international light festival in the United States, and last year attracted more than 400,000 visitors.

Members of the UMBC community (alumni, faculty, staff, students, and friends) are invited to visit the Black and Gold Lounge on Saturday, April 1, from 8 to 11 p.m. at the Harbor Club at Pier V, right on the path of the BGE Art Walk, offering an incredible elevated 180-degree panoramic view of Light City. Attendees to this free event will enjoy complimentary food and drink, and can pick up glow-in-the-dark swag (first come, first served).

Featured Artists
Two visual arts faculty — associate professor Eric Dyer and professor Timothy Nohe — are among the major artists on the BGE Light Art Walk, which will feature large-scale artworks that were selected through an international competition.

Dyer’s work, Shabamanetica (detail above), which will be located on Pier 5, “takes the form of two large spinning sculptures that evoke ships’ wheels,” explains the artist.

Spin a sculpture, and images on its face come to life with the aid of an over-arching strobe light. The animations combine imagery from Shanghai, Panama, and Baltimore: three places connected anew by the recent expansion of the Panama Canal and dredging of the Port of Baltimore in preparation for the gigantic Super Neopanamax container ships. One sculpture considers industrial heydays — Baltimore’s past versus China’s young and blossoming — with umbrellas as the common thread, set over a landscape of Panamanian highland waterfalls. The other presents the awe-inspiring ‘machine’ of canal operations and questions what it’s all for.

Nohe’s creation is also interactive and will be positioned near the National Aquarium. Entitled Electron Drawing — Visual Music (top image), the artwork will be “projected on a big LED screen mixes live electronic drawing with the ‘switched-on’ synthesizer music of the 1960s,” he describes. “Audiences sculpt the live ‘electron drawings’ and music with a wave of their hands.”

The Labs@LightCity
The daytime Labs@Light City, a series of six innovation conferences dedicated to sparking social change, will explore topics such as education, health, and design. The Labs will be held at the University System of Maryland (USM) Columbus Center on Pratt Street. USM will sponsor EduLab on Wednesday, April 5, at which UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski will discuss “The Path to the Future” with author Alec Ross, exploring how we look to the education system, business, and government to help cities like Baltimore tap into the promise of the industries of the future.

At HealthLab on Monday, April 3, Gymama Slaughter, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, will speak on “The Body as a Battery,” in which she will discuss how the body’s chemical energy can be harnessed to power wearable and implantable sensors that diagnose and monitor diseases. Additional UMBC faculty who will speak at the Labs include Chris Swan, associate professor of geography and environmental systems; Lee Boot, director of the Imaging Research Center; and Kimberly R. Moffitt, associate professor of American studies and affiliate assistant professor of Africana studies and language, literacy, and culture. Lab attendees will also hear from UMBC alumni Maritha Gay ‘84, health science and policy; Greg Cangialosi ‘96, English; and Joseph T. Jones ‘06, social work.

UMBC SPARK Gallery
UMBC SPARK, a pop-up gallery of engaging, projection-based artworks, will be open at Calvert and Water streets nightly, 5 – 10 p.m.

Made possible through the vision and generosity of PNC, the gallery is produced by the Downtown Partnership of Baltimore and features the work of UMBC faculty (including Kelley Bell, Cathy Cook, Symmes Gardner, Lisa Moren, Jules Rosskam and Sarah G. Sharp) and graduate students. The gallery is curated by Joe Reinsel, a Baltimore based artist who uses new media, video, and sound to explore ideas about architectural space, time, and touch.

UMBC SPARK also features a schedule of special events, including performances by UMBC’s Baltimore Dance Project and the UMBC Percussion Ensemble, a special showing of films by Stan VanDerBeek (former chair of visual arts), an animation workshop by assistant professor Corrie Parks, and a visiting artist talk by Elizabeth Daggar.

“We’re very excited that film, video, animation, and projection art works by visual arts faculty, alumni, and graduate students are prominently featured in UMBC SPARK,” says Preminda Jacob, chair of visual arts. “Some highlights include an animation workshop for the public on Wednesday, April 5, that will be conducted by our talented undergraduate students in the UMBC Visual Arts Club. On Thursday, April 6, we will welcome visual arts alumni to the exhibition with a special hospitality event.”

On Demand
Artworks by UMBC faculty, staff, and students (including Cathy Cook, associate professor of visual arts; Corrie Parks, assistant professor of visual arts; and Catherine Borg, arts publicity coordinator) will be featured in “On Demand,” a Light City celebration of digital content along the BGE Light Art Walk.

For complete information on UMBC’s presence at the 2017 Light City Baltimore festival, visit UMBC’s Light City webpage.

Images: Where not specified, images are courtesy of the artists.

Lisa Moren, professor of visual arts, has received a production fund award from the from Johns Hopkins University’s Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund in Film and Media for the collaborative project NONUMENT 01::The McKeldin Fountain. The award includes $70,000 of funding to develop an augmented reality app.

“The Nonument app is a virtual memorial to the demolished McKeldin Fountain” says Moren. “The spirit of Nonument is to validate public spaces that are important to real people, making stimulating places full of rich textures.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxFh2oofleM]

As the project website explains:

Viewers will hold up a smartphone or tablet like a protest sign in order to see the lost fountain, hear the waterfalls and nearly forgotten stories from the past 35 years. Sound scores and first-hand stories will remember Occupy Baltimore, the Black Lives Matter movement and protests in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray in the hands of Baltimore Police, the National Guard on the site, the activists group Women in Black, controversial comedians, a marriage proposal, artists using soap bubbles, mermaid performances and many other personal, poetic and political stories imbued with frailty in this tenuous free speech zone.

Videos and animations further illustrate the history of the site in the app.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cOLZ3VOPvY]

NONUMENT 01 is part of a larger NONUMENT research project conceived by the Museum of Transitory Art (MoTA) in Lubljana, Slovenia. It addresses the perception of public space and its role in urban everyday life. NONUMENT was developed within the ARTECITYA network co-financed by Creative Europe, devoted to artistic and technological innovations with the aim of improving the quality of life in cities.

The NONUMENT 01::The McKeldin Fountain website further explains that NONUMENT is “an international initiative that seeks to honor hidden urban spaces that carry symbolic value for ordinary people.” Rather than using bronze or stone, the project “installs new and emerging media forms in order to capture the transitory nature of everyday experiences.”

NONUMENT01::The McKeldin Fountain is the first implementation of the project in collaboration with Baltimore artists Lisa Moren and Jaimes Mayhew ’10 M.F.A., intermedia and digital arts, and Martin Bricelj Baraga and Neja Tomšič (artist-in residence in UMBC’s department of visual arts in fall 2014). The NONUMENT01::The McKeldin Fountain website, project videos, 3D model, and animations were produced with support from the Imaging Research Center at UMBC, the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund, LABStudios, and CEC ArtsLink.

The McKeldin Fountain, plaza area, and walkways were built in 1982 and designed to serve as public space at the corners of Pratt and Light Streets, adjacent to the Baltimore Inner Harbor. The redevelopment of the Inner Harbor was the culmination of a period of transformation for the area from an industrial space to a tourist and residential district, envisioned in the 1960s by Mayor Theodore McKeldin.

The plaza was often a public gathering spot for tourists, residents, and workers. It was designated a free speech zone and was a gathering point in the city for demonstrations and protests. The decision by former Mayor of Baltimore Stephanie Rawlings Blake and the Downtown Partnership to demolish the fountain without concrete future plans was controversial among city residents. The City of Baltimore’s plans for the site remain unknown.

Moren was named among the first cohort of Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund Bold Voice, New Paradigms Incubator Fellows in October 2016 to develop the Nonument app concept. Johns Hopkins founded the fund in March 2016 through a $1 million grant from the Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation. Zaentz was an Oscar-winning producer who died in 2014. The incubator supports Baltimore artists by networking them with others to develop and realize their ideas in Baltimore. The deadline for applications for the third incubator program, which begins in late April, is March 31.

Image and video: Courtesy of the NONUMENT 01::The McKeldin Fountain artists.

See coverage in the Baltimore Sun: Baltimore artists to receive funding for film, media projects from Johns Hopkins fund 

A group of five UMBC students recently made the trip to Washington, D.C. to serve as leaders and collaborators during the 2017 National Campus Leaders Summit. The event, held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, was centered around the themes of cultivating community and redefining civic engagement.

UMBC was consulted during the planning of the summit after David Hoffman, assistant director of student life for civic agency, Corrine Janet, coordinator of student life for leadership, and Emily Melluso ’17, interdisciplinary studies, made a connection with the summit’s principal organizer at last year’s Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement meeting.

The leadership summit was co-presented with Citizen University, and a description of the program provided by the Holocaust Memorial Museum explains that the event was designed to bring together students to explore how, “In these turbulent times, civic leadership and an understanding of history are more important than ever.” They note, “The Museum is pleased to collaborate with Citizen University and to welcome student leaders and change-makers from ten universities to dive deeply into the history of the Holocaust and explore its relevance for today’s college students.”

Jasir Qiydaar ’18, media and communication studies, is one of the UMBC students who attended the event. He became interested in it after participating in the Imagining America National Conference in Milwaukee last fall.

“I thought having another opportunity to discuss the social issues that affect so many of us with people from other institutions would be valuable,” Qiydaar explains.

The students participated in a two-hour guided tour of the museum and engaged in discussions about the fragility of democracy and the role of civic engagement during the Holocaust. They also examined how the social and psychological dynamics that influenced people’s decisions during the Holocaust can continue to be relevant in the world today.

Qiydaar says that the event served as a powerful learning experience and it provided important historical context for many contemporary issues.

“My key takeaway from the event was a reinforcement for the need for an intersectional approach to solving social problems. The atrocities of the Holocaust were an escalation of Jewish marginalization perpetuated by inaction while their rights were being violated. Today the same issues of ‘othering’ people who are different still exist, and it’s important to understand that this is largely allowed to continue through the inaction of people who aren’t personally affected by it. Collectively people have the power to combat this othering by speaking out against all oppression, especially when it doesn’t harm them personally.”

Qiydaar attended the summit along with Emily Melluso, Andrew Thompson ’19, gender and women’s studies, Hannah Aris ’18, chemical engineering, and Gerardo Herrera-Cortes ’19, visual arts. The other universities that participated in the summit include: Case Western University, Fort Hays State University, George Mason University, Mount St. Mary’s University, New York University, University of Florida, Valdosta State University, Weber State University, and Yale University.

Image: Students from ten universities attended the 2017 National Campus Leaders Summit. Photo courtesy of Corinne Janet. 

As a form of public service, public historians can help create historical understanding with a variety of partners by sharing authority and inquiry in the communities that they serve. But what does studying the origins of public history reveal about the discipline?

Denise Meringolo, an associate professor of history and director of public history, recently published an article that studies roots of this question on the National Council on Public History website (NCPH). She contributed the article as part of the “Radical Roots: Civic Engagement, Public History, and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism,” a collaborative research project that “identifies new historical precedents for the values and practices that have come to define the field, particularly those now associated with civic engagement,” according to the NCPH website.

In her article, Meringolo argues how public history largely centers around collaborative scholarship, community-based education, and university-community partnership.

“By identifying experiments in community-based education less strictly tied to university and college departments of history, we can open up more nuanced critical perspectives on the intersections among teaching, learning, and community development,” she wrote.

Meringolo references The American Civilization Institute (ACIM) of Morristown, New Jersey as an early example of community-based education and teaching due to its engagement with local students and faculty in its community.

“Founders of the ACIM recognized that growing interest in historic preservation provided them with an opportunity to connect research and interpretation to political activism and advocacy,” she wrote.

Professor Meringolo is leading a project to archive materials from the Baltimore Uprising through a website that was launched in 2015. The aim is to gather and preserve a diverse range of perspectives and experiences from the events surrounding the Uprising, and there have been thousands of submissions from community members. Read more about her work on the history department website.

Image: Denise Meringolo. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

An ambitious and moving photography project by UMBC student Amy Berbert ’17, visual arts, has captured the media’s attention for its powerful impact on audiences across the Baltimore-Washington D.C. region.

Berbert began taking photographs at crime scenes in Baltimore City last year with the goal of bringing visibility to the traumatic impacts of violence on people and communities. After exhibiting some of these photographs in the Montgomery County suburbs around Washington D.C., just 40 miles from the Baltimore neighborhoods she was photographing but distant in many ways, she gained a greater understanding of the potential of her images to tell powerful stories and build connections. She soon set out with a new, much larger, vision: to use photography to memorialize every single person who was a victim of homicide in 2016 in Baltimore.

Berbert has been posting photographs of the project on the Instagram feed @stainsonthesidewalk, describing it as, “An Exploration of Homicide in Baltimore City. Same Day. Same Time. Same Place. One Year Later.”

It is her Instagram sharing that launched a recent flurry of media attention on the project. Though just begun at the start at 2017, the series has been featured by SPIN, the Baltimore Sun, and ABC2 News in the past week.

The photographs “are respectful of the people involved,” she told Mary Carole McCauley in the Baltimore Sun. “They don’t judge anyone. It’s just a moment of silence to remember these people, and the fact that they lived and died in that place.”

In an interview with Skyler Henry from ABC2 News, she explained, “I want to give them more of a legacy than just a couple lines in an article.”

“Amy’s project places her right in the middle of a very real and pressing issue in Baltimore, namely, its high murder rate. The media attention will I think lead to more awareness and dialogue about the issue, as well as paying tribute to the individuals who were killed,” says her professor Lynn Cazabon.

She noted, “The media coverage also shines a light on a great example of the type of unique…work that UMBC visual arts undergraduates are engaged in.”

As her undergraduate thesis project, Berbert’s photography will be displayed in the 2017 Visual Arts Senior Exhibition at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) from May 23 through June 9. That exhibit will conclude her college career, but she is dedicated to continuing the rigorous project through the end of the year, planning her life in 2017 around the lives that were lost in Baltimore in 2016.

Baltimore Dance Project returns to UMBC’s Performing Arts and Humanities Proscenium Theatre for its 33nd year with a dynamic program. The company will premiere several new works: Doug Hamby’s Square Breath for six women with an interactive sound score performed by Eliza Triolo and Christian Hartman; Hamby’s Letting Go, a meditative solo on loss and memory performed by Maia Schechter; Hamby’s Two Songs by John Cage with music performed live by mezzo-soprano Janice Jackson and percussionists Tom Bryant and Josh Miller; Carol Hess’ vibrant LightForest featuring five dancers, colorful projections and score by Timothy Nohe via wearable sound devices; and a new duet by Desiree Koontz-Nachtrieb.

The program also includes encore performances of 2016 favorites Lost, Sandra Lacy’s mysterious solo, and Image in Red, Carol Hess’ reconstruction of Janet Soares’ sumptuously beautiful solo choreographed on Hess in 1980. Hess re-constructed Image in Red and set it on Franki Trout. Trout ’13, dance, now teaches dance in Anne Arundel County’s first Performing and Visual Arts Magnet Program at Annapolis High School.

These works will appear on stage February 9–11. Integrating innovative sound and visuals through collaborations with artists such as Nohe, professor of visual arts, they reflect the company’s deep commitment to an interdisciplinary approach.

Baltimore Dance Project is a professional modern dance company dedicated to presenting the creative work of Doug Hamby and Carol Hess, professors of dance at UMBC who are described as “two of the most exciting choreographers in Maryland.” Formed in 1982 under the name Phoenix Dance Company, the company is known for its edgy collaborations with composers, directors, sound artists and visual artists, and for infusing visual media and technology into riveting dance performance. The company features outstanding professional dancers and has been honored with numerous grants and awards. Hamby, Hess, and company veteran Sandra Lacy have received a total of twelve individual artist awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and their work has appeared in theaters and film festivals across the United States.

Complete performance information and tickets are available through the UMBC Arts & Culture Calendar.

Image: Franki Trout ’13 performing Image in Red in 2016. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

A new iPhone app developed at UMBC is poised to change how students and teachers think about language in the classroom. Valuable Voices provides 12 ready-to-implement exercises for students and teachers to build linguistic awareness and English language skills.

Christine Mallinson, an associate professor of language, literacy, and culture (LLC), created the app with her longtime collaborator Anne Charity Hudley, an associate professor of linguistics at William & Mary. Aureanna Hakenson ’15, modern languages, linguistics, and intercultural communication, provided development assistance.

The app provides monthly exercises that can be adapted for elementary, middle, and high school classrooms, as well as higher ed, in a range of content areas and disciplines. Examples of exercises include analyzing the language of poetry, Shakespearean innovations, and linguistic heritage. Teachers can follow instructions for how to incorporate each exercise into their lesson plans.

Valuable Voices also highlights the importance of linguistic diversity, showing teachers and students alike the rich variation within even a single language, such as English. From word choice to sentence structure, different populations may use the same language in different ways, reflecting different social networks, regions, age groups, life experiences, and the ongoing evolution of language.

“Students don’t leave their language patterns at the door when they get to their classroom—any classroom, from English to biology,” says Mallinson. “This project really exemplifies applied research. With this app, teachers have tools at their disposal and can incorporate their own language background and those of their students. As a result, students are more engaged, and this is really applicable across all fields.”

Hakenson, who minored in computer science and now works as a cyber threat and intelligence analyst, built the app to share the positive impact linguistic awarness can have on students and educators.

“The goal was to make something that would be both interesting and easy to use,” explains Hakenson. “I also know that linguistics isn’t a very widely understood discipline, so being able to share that with students and teachers and possibly help to inspire a student to take in interest in linguistics is really exciting.”

Mallinson has showcased Valuable Voices on the national stage and its visibility continues to grow. She presented the app at the “Language and Educational Justice” symposium sponsored by the Linguistic Society for America and the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, held in January in Austin, Texas. On February 19, Valuable Voices will be featured at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston as part of the symposium “Leveraging Linguistics to Broaden Participation in STEM,” invited by the Linguistics and Language Science Section. Mallinson also presented Valuable Voices through a panel focused on linguistic diversity in education at the Maryland Language Science Center.

Since it launched, the free app has been well-received by educators, and downloaded nearly 200 times.

“Teachers and students thrive when they all have a deeper understanding of linguistic and cultural diversity, and this app is a natural extension of our efforts to bring that message into the classroom,” shares Mallinson.

“The value of using an app for this kind of project is that you’re presenting the new concepts to educators in a format that is not only familiar and convenient, but also fun,” adds Hakenson. “This means that the app format could be used across areas of study and with students of all ages, in addition to educators.”

Later this spring, Mallinson’s team will conduct a study with K-12 teachers who have used exercises from the app in their classrooms. Teachers who are interested in participating can contact Mallinson at mallinson@umbc.edu.

Update (2/10): Mallinson was featured in a Baltimore Sun article and video about language variations in Baltimore. “Language changes and develops for a lot of different reasons, and some of those are your social networks, your family networks, your mobility, residential patterns and migration,” Mallinson told the Sun. She is working to publish her research on Baltimore speech in the Journal of English Linguistics later this year.

Header image: Christine Mallinson uses the Valuable Voices app in her office. Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.