The university is currently on Credit Hold with Apple due to outstanding balances. To help us resolve this quickly and restore normal ordering, we need your assistance.

If you have received an Apple order, please take a moment to ensure that a receipt has been entered in PAW. Promptly recording receipts allows invoices to be paid without delay and helps us maintain good standing with our vendors.

Your cooperation makes a big difference. By working together and keeping our orders up to date in PAW, we can resolve this credit hold and continue uninterrupted access to Apple products and services.

Thank you for your attention and partnership in keeping our processes running smoothly.

a. Invoices are needed if your event is:

i. In a specialty space (non-academic space)

ii. 50+ people are expected to attend 

🏆 It's Retriever SoundOff Season!! 🏆

The Retriever SoundOff (RSO) Competition has returned for the Spring 🌸 ! I know there were some opinions on last semester's theme, but we really locked in for this one and we think you'll love it! 😎 

What is an RSO? 🏅

It is a music creation competition that will have you pushing your creativity to the limits! Whether you compose, write songs, or produce, this event challenges musicians to create a song or piece in a week! With a unique theme for each competition, you'll be tasked with creating original works that fits this theme best. Don't miss out on the chance to showcase your skills and compete with other musicians!

What is in it for YOU? 🫵

This semester, we will be giving out a $30 UMBC Bookstore gift card as well as a unique Discord role that shows that you were the winner of this semester's RSO!

What is the theme? 😩

It's a secret - but not for long! This Sunday at 12:00 am, the theme and submission forms will be released on our discord server. You can get started right away, but make sure you submit your creation by Saturday, March 21st at 11:59 pm!

Any questions? Message any E-Board member and we will get an answer to you ASAP!

WILL YOU BE THE NEXT RSO WINNER?? 🔥 🤩 😏

The Graduate School at UMBC Dissertation Fellowship Summer 2026 Announcement

Overview: The UMBC Dissertation Fellowship provides promising doctoral candidates with the financial support necessary to focus on writing and completing their dissertations. This fellowship grants students the critical time and resources needed to expedite the final stages of their degree. 

Eligibility & Conditions: 

Except in extraordinary circumstances, these awards are limited to one term per student. To be considered, Ph.D. candidates must be in good academic standing. Additionally, they must have:

• No other financial support: This fellowship is strictly for students who do not have UMBC-administered financial support (such as an assistantship) during the summer term. Note: Funding status will be verified prior to application review and applicants with a GA contract through summer 2026 will not be reviewed.

• Time to commit and focus on writing: Recipients must commit at least 20 hours per week exclusively to dissertation writing for the entire summer term. No other work assignments, besides dissertation writing, may be associated with this fellowship.

Award Details (Summer 2026): 

The fellowship is awarded for the summer term only and includes:

• A maximum stipend of $5,000.

• Tuition remission for 9 credits of course 899 (billed at 2 credits). Please note: The university provides tuition remission for the cost of 899 tuition only. Fellowship recipients are required to pay all mandatory fees associated with 899 registration.

Selection Criteria:

A committee selected by the Graduate School Leadership Team will review applications. Priority will be given to students who demonstrate that this award will provide the critical support needed to complete their writing, finalize revisions, and successfully defend their dissertation within the fellowship period (by the end of the summer term). Selection is based heavily on the applicant's readiness to finish, and the quality and feasibility of their management plan.

Application Materials: Submit the following documentation with the Application Form as a single PDF:

1. Letter of Support from the Chair of the Dissertation Committee that:

• Describes the current state of the dissertation and the probable impact of the Fellowship on the student's progress.

• Verifies that no UMBC-administered financial support is available for the student.

Submission & Deadlines

• Deadline: Applications must be received by 11:59 p.m. EST on Wednesday, April 15, 2026.

• How to Apply: Email your completed application as a single PDF to dissertationfellowship@umbc.edu.

Kristina Gaddy came to UMBC as a Sondheim Public Affairs Scholar. Her passion for history and languages—Swedish, German, and Spanish—led her to graduate with a dual degree in history and modern languages and linguistics. Looking back on her time at UMBC, Gaddy is grateful for the opportunities the program provided, especially the chance to study abroad in Germany. There, she combined her proficiency in German with her historical training to research the foundations of her first book.

“The Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Program was wonderful because of the funding I received to support my research and the cohort of students,” says Gaddy. “We were all really interested and excited about social issues, public policy, and how these ideas could be used to improve the world.”

These interests inspired a career in historical nonfiction writing and led to her to write meticulously researched books: Flowers in the Gutter: True Story of the Edelweiss Pirates, Teenagers Who Resisted the Nazis (Dutton Books, 2020), Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022), and A Most Perilous World: The True Story of the Young Abolitionists and their Crusade Against Slavery (Dutton Books, 2025).

Digitizing public history

Her collaboration with Giddens isn’t the first time Gaddy has written a book about banjos. “My start in music research and writing started 15 years ago when I was an AmeriCorps working with multi-instrumentalist Gerry Milnes at Augusta [Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia], and the friends I made while living in Elkins helped put me on the path to writing Well of Souls and Go Back and Fetch It.” 

It’s not just documents that Gaddy used in her first banjo book—which are accessible on her blog—but also sound clips, performances, and interviews. While many historical records can be found online, many more have yet to be digitized. Gaddy, who also digitized and archived the West Virginia Upshur County Historical Society‘s local history collection, has made digitization an integral part of her process. 

“Having come from the public history side of UMBC’s history department, I strongly believe in people having access to information as it pertains to their own history. It was one of the reasons I wanted to write Well of Souls,” says Gaddy, about her second book. “I had gathered all this information, and I could have shared it with just a few people, but I wanted anybody who wants access to banjo history not to have to go to some expensive conference to hear about it.”  

A revolutionary collaboration

Giddens, a MacArthur recipient and Pulitzer Prize winner, is grateful for Gaddy’s dedication to digitizing and broadening access to historical material culture. While working on pieces of music highlighting 18th-century North American, Scottish, and Irish traditions for Ken Burns’s 2025 PBS documentary The American Revolution, Giddens was looking for samples of Black music from the Revolutionary War. She wasn’t having much luck until she explored Gaddy’s website, where she not only found what she was looking for but also the inspiration for their co-authored book, Go Back and Fetch It.

“I just kept going back to Kristina’s website, where she had put up these JPEGs. I would download them, lose the JPEG, and I’d go back and, like, download it again. And then I was just like, ‘Kristina, why don’t we put all of these in a book?’ explained Giddens at the 2025 Michigan University Arts Initiative interview on Go Back and Fetch It with Gaddy.

The book is their third collaboration. In 2018, Giddens invited Gaddy and her husband, Pete Ross—banjo maker, researcher, and musician—to present at a banjo symposium during the inaugural North Carolina Folk Festival, which Giddens curated. Gaddy presented her research on the African American roots of the banjo, an experience she credits as the inspiration for Wells of Souls, for which Giddens wrote the foreword. They also collaborated in 2022 on one episode of the 10-part series The Banjo: Music, History, and Heritage for The Great Courses project. 

“The idea behind the book was that there were all these little pieces of music in archives, in published books, in manuscripts that were sprinkled throughout the historic record of Black music in the Americas,” explains Gaddy in the same interview. “They weren’t compiled in one place. Rhiannon, as an artist, was frustrated that she couldn’t access them.”

For their book collaboration, they selected 19 pieces of music from 1687 through the 1860s. Gaddy wrote a historical research essay for each song explaining the types of banjos used, how and when they were played, and their socio-cultural significance across communities in the Americas and the Caribbean. Giddens transcribed the songs into modern treble clef and banjo tablature, which shows finger placement, rather than the Western classical notation tradition, making early Black Atlantic banjo music accessible to banjo players today, in the future, globally, and across all genres. 

Following the banjo around the world

Gaddy’s last five years have been busy. But once you dig a little deeper, ask more questions, and do a lot of listening—just as she does for all of her interviews—you learn that Gaddy really started her musical performance research in high school while playing traditional Swedish music with her mom and traditional American music with her uncle and aunt. After college, she fell in love with the banjo while living with other artists in West Virginia, developing a connection with a vast, diverse community passionate about banjo culture and history—including in Baltimore City, where Gaddy and her husband performed some of the songs from Go Back and Fetch It at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in September, right before she moved to Nottingham, England.

Gaddy has also expanded her digital research presence to Substack, where she posted the news of her fully funded doctoral program at the University of Nottingham, where she will research Black fiddling in the 19th-century British Caribbean.

And even though she is a whole ocean away, Gaddy still feels the support of her UMBC history department.

“One of the most exciting things for me is to see other students and scholars diving deeper into these subjects. My former history professor, Dr. Michelle Scott, recently put me in touch with Amina Thiam, a UMBC graduate student who is writing her thesis on Black banjoists and string instrumentalists in Maryland during the colonial period. I can’t wait to see what she uncovers.”

Learn more about Kristina Gaddy’s work and UMBC’s History department.

Kristina Gaddy ’09, saves and gathers manuscripts, sheet music, pictures, maps, drawings, and anecdotes, sharing them on her blog to make public what she finds hidden in archives, private collections, and museums. For her fourth book, Go Back and Fetch It: Recovering Early Black Music in the Americas for Fiddle and Banjo (University of North Carolina Press, 2025), Gaddy teamed up with Rhiannon Giddens, a Grammy Award-winning musician who is equally passionate about digitizing and broadening access to the historical material culture of the banjo. 

Gaddy came to UMBC as a Sondheim Public Affairs Scholar. Her passion for history and languages—Swedish, German, and Spanish—led her to graduate with a dual degree in history and modern languages and linguistics. Looking back on her time at UMBC, Gaddy is grateful for the opportunities the program provided, especially the chance to study abroad in Germany. There, she combined her proficiency in German with her historical training to research the foundations of her first book.

“The Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Program was wonderful because of the funding I received to support my research and the cohort of students,” says Gaddy. “We were all really interested and excited about social issues, public policy, and how these ideas could be used to improve the world.”

These interests inspired a career in historical nonfiction writing and led to her to write meticulously researched books: Flowers in the Gutter: True Story of the Edelweiss Pirates, Teenagers Who Resisted the Nazis (Dutton Books, 2020), Well of Souls: Uncovering the Banjo’s Hidden History (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022), and A Most Perilous World: The True Story of the Young Abolitionists and their Crusade Against Slavery (Dutton Books, 2025).

Digitizing public history

Her collaboration with Giddens isn’t the first time Gaddy has written a book about banjos. “My start in music research and writing started 15 years ago when I was an AmeriCorps working with multi-instrumentalist Gerry Milnes at Augusta [Heritage Center in Elkins, West Virginia], and the friends I made while living in Elkins helped put me on the path to writing Well of Souls and Go Back and Fetch It.” 

It’s not just documents that Gaddy used in her first banjo book—which are accessible on her blog—but also sound clips, performances, and interviews. While many historical records can be found online, many more have yet to be digitized. Gaddy, who also digitized and archived the West Virginia Upshur County Historical Society‘s local history collection, has made digitization an integral part of her process. 

“Having come from the public history side of UMBC’s history department, I strongly believe in people having access to information as it pertains to their own history. It was one of the reasons I wanted to write Well of Souls,” says Gaddy, about her second book. “I had gathered all this information, and I could have shared it with just a few people, but I wanted anybody who wants access to banjo history not to have to go to some expensive conference to hear about it.”  

A revolutionary collaboration

Giddens, a MacArthur recipient and Pulitzer Prize winner, is grateful for Gaddy’s dedication to digitizing and broadening access to historical material culture. While working on pieces of music highlighting 18th-century North American, Scottish, and Irish traditions for Ken Burns’s 2025 PBS documentary The American Revolution, Giddens was looking for samples of Black music from the Revolutionary War. She wasn’t having much luck until she explored Gaddy’s website, where she not only found what she was looking for but also the inspiration for their co-authored book, Go Back and Fetch It.

“I just kept going back to Kristina’s website, where she had put up these JPEGs. I would download them, lose the JPEG, and I’d go back and, like, download it again. And then I was just like, ‘Kristina, why don’t we put all of these in a book?’” explained Giddens at the 2025 Michigan University Arts Initiative interview on Go Back and Fetch It with Gaddy.

The book is their third collaboration. In 2018, Giddens invited Gaddy and her husband, Pete Ross—banjo maker, researcher, and musician—to present at a banjo symposium during the inaugural North Carolina Folk Festival, which Giddens curated. Gaddy presented her research on the African American roots of the banjo, an experience she credits as the inspiration for Wells of Souls, for which Giddens wrote the foreword. They also collaborated in 2022 on one episode of the 10-part series The Banjo: Music, History, and Heritage for The Great Courses. 

“The idea behind the book was that there were all these little pieces of music in archives, in published books, in manuscripts that were sprinkled throughout the historic record of Black music in the Americas,” explains Gaddy in the same interview. “They weren’t compiled in one place. Rhiannon, as an artist, was frustrated that she couldn’t access them.”

For their book collaboration, they selected 19 pieces of music from 1687 through the 1860s. Gaddy wrote a historical research essay for each song explaining the types of banjos used, how and when they were played, and their socio-cultural significance across communities in the Americas and the Caribbean. Giddens transcribed the songs into modern treble clef and banjo tablature, which shows finger placement, rather than the Western classical notation tradition, making early Black Atlantic banjo music accessible to banjo players today, in the future, globally, and across all genres. 

Following the banjo around the world

Gaddy’s last five years have been busy. But dig a little deeper, ask more questions, and do a lot of listening—just as she does for all of her interviews—it turns out that Gaddy really started her musical performance research in high school while playing traditional Swedish music with her mom and traditional American music with her uncle and aunt. After college, she fell in love with the banjo while living with other artists in West Virginia, developing a connection with a vast, diverse community passionate about banjo culture and history—including in Baltimore City, where Gaddy and her husband performed some of the songs from Go Back and Fetch It at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in September, right before she moved to Nottingham, England.

Gaddy has also expanded her digital research presence to Substack, where she posted the news of her fully funded doctoral program at the University of Nottingham, where she will research Black fiddling in the 19th-century British Caribbean.

And even though she is a whole ocean away, Gaddy still feels the support of her UMBC history department.

“One of the most exciting things for me is to see other students and scholars diving deeper into these subjects,” says Gaddy. “My former history professor, Dr. Michelle Scott, recently put me in touch with Amina Thiam, a UMBC graduate student who is writing her thesis on Black banjoists and string instrumentalists in Maryland during the colonial period. I can’t wait to see what she uncovers.”

Learn more about Kristina Gaddy’s work and UMBC’s History department.