Lia Purpura, English writer in residence, was featured in a Q&A in City Paper about her participation in Baltimore’s CityLit Festival and commented on the creative, artistic community at UMBC.

“It’s a completely vibrant, alive place and diverse in every possible way—students from all over the world, of all ages and backgrounds,” Purpura said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had more rigorous or engaged discussions on complex issues with undergraduate classes. My students are curious, brave, unselfconsciously creative, eager to learn, prepared to discuss.”

Purpura is reading at CityLit with colleagues Michael Fallon and Holly Sneeringer, along with three UMBC English majors covering all genres.

“CityLit is a totally unique, homegrown, but in no way provincial event—it presents nationally known authors alongside emerging voices and local talent, and it represents writers of all genres,” Purpura added.

To read the full article in City Paper, click here.

A group of UMBC students needs your help! The Students for Environmental Awareness (SEA) is currently seeking funding to host their Earth Day Festival on April 23.

SEA’s mission is to think locally and act globally, and they work to raise awareness for environmental causes and how everyone can make a difference.

And what better way to raise awareness than an Earth Day festival bringing the whole school together around peace and interconnectedness? SEA has worked tirelessly to secure space, funding and partner organizations to make this the best EcoFest yet! This year the students have a week of events planned, with the biggest being the Earth Day Festival, celebrated on April 23.

The funds raised will be used to pay for parking passes for SEA’s off-campus organization guests, printing posters, stenciling t-shirts, craft supplies for button-making and others, and covering other unanticipated costs.

Everyone is welcome to join in the festivities on April 23. We’d love you to be there in person or in spirit!

Help our students raise $200 to host EcoFest!

Kimberly Moffitt, an assistant professor of American studies, participated in a panel discussion on The Marc Steiner Show on April 10 that focused on what the true meaning of “happiness” is in the context of WEAA’s Happiness Spring Membership Drive.

The panelists discussed the pursuit of happiness and what it meant to the founders of the United States, what it means to Americans today and how it’s possible to create a world where everyone has the right to happiness. During the program, Moffitt weighed in on her view of the definition of happiness.

“I think it does mean freedom, and I think that’s what our founders wanted it to mean. I think where we are now is that we see freedom in very different ways,” Moffitt said.

“In some respects I think we’ve moved away from what the original founders wanted to see in terms of this idea of freedom. At the same time of encouraging freedom, we’ve created so many social hierarchies that make it difficult to actually have the freedom to do much of what we’d like to do,” she added.

Other panelists in the discussion included Jeff Singer, Founder and former Executive Director of Health Care for the Homeless and instructor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and Alex Boston, former director of Homeless Services in Baltimore City and Country Director for the Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan and Jordan. To listen to the full segment on The Marc Steiner Show, click here.

As part of Environment Month at Writer’s Voice, a national radio show and podcast featuring author interviews, readings, and reviews, Public Policy Professor John Rennie Short was interviewed about his recent book, Stress Testing the USA (Palgrave MacMillan). In his book, Short applies the stress test concept to four major events the United States experienced at the start of the 21st century: the invasion of Iraq, the financial meltdown, Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill.

“These four major events are the equivalent of an incredible cardiovascular workout for the United States where you saw things that didn’t work so well. When everything is going along well, there is economic growth, and things are progressing and everyone is happy, the system is self-justified,” Short said.

“But when things go wrong, that’s when it reveals things that often we don’t want to discuss or are hidden below the surface,” he added.

To listen to the full interview on Writer’s Voice, click here. The interview was scheduled to air on Writer’s Voice broadcast stations across the country throughout the week of April 7.

Language, Literacy and Culture doctoral student Kevin A. Wisniewski was recently named a 2014 Michael Denker Chesapeake Chapter Fellow at the American Printing History Association. The fellowship is named after a former Chesapeake Chapter president, and it offers a one-year membership and active participation in the association’s various activities throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, including a presentation of original research at an upcoming symposium on the history of colonial printing and typography.

Wisniewski will also be presenting a paper at the upcoming American Literature Association’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C. with professors from Ohio University, the College of William and Mary and the University of Massachusetts from May 22-25 in a panel entitled, “Graphic Humor in the 19th-Century Periodical.”

Finally, Wisniewski’s review of Michael David Cohen’s monograph Reconstructing the Campus: Higher Education and the American Civil War (University of Virginia Press, 2012) is forthcoming in the journal Civil War History, and he is awaiting the publication of sections he completed on the early American republic for a forthcoming online, Open Access American History textbook entitled American Yawp. 

The project is edited by Joseph Locke (University of Texas-Pan American) and Ben Wright (Rice University) and boasts an impressive editorial board that includes Edward Ayers, Kathleen Brown, Joyce Chaplin, Woody Holton, James Merrell and Richard White.

Honors College Professor Ellen Handler Spitz recently traveled to Sewanee, Tennessee to the University of the South, where she was invited as a guest lecturer in the pioneering program, “Child, Family and Community Development in Rural Appalachia.”

The program is sponsored by the University of the South, The Yale Child Study Center and Scholastic. A major goal of the program is to help children and families in poverty-stricken Appalachia while building community and fostering a rich cultural life.

As part of the program, Spitz lectured and read story books to four groups of children ranging from three to six years old and met with colleagues and planners, sitting in on a variety of sessions and classes that involve the program, the arts, children’s literature and psychology.