Asian Studies is co-sponsoring this event with The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at UMBC.
                   
Room 132 in the Performing Arts & Humanities Building

Dr. Alfreda Murck, historian of Chinese visual culture, will present a lecture on the work of Lo Ch'ing, the Poet-Painter. Her lecture seeks to place the artist in the context of the millennia-long tradition of Chinese Landscape Painting and coincides with the CADVC's current exhibition, The Poet's Brush: Chinese Ink Paintings by Lo Ch'ing.

Formerly the Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1978 to 1991), Dr. Murck is the author of Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle Art of Dissent (Harvard, 2000). She has published numerous articles in English and Chinese on China's visual arts and poetry, and co-curated the exhibition Mao's Golden Mangoes and the Cultural Revolution at The Museum Reitburg.

In 2015, for the book William Kentridge: Notes towards a Model Opera, and exhibition at the Ullen's Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, she wrote "Kentridge and Chinese Painting". For the San Francisco Asian Art Museum's 2016 exhibition catalogue Emperor's Treasures: Chinese Art from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, she contributed an essay "A Millennium of Imperial Collecting and Patronage".

Dr. Murck received her Ph.D in Chinese Art and Archeology from Princeton University. From 1991 to 2013, She lived in Taiwan and China. In Beijing, she was a consultant to the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City and a researcher at their Painting and Calligraphy Research Center. From 2000 to 2013, Dr, Murck worked with The Henry Luce Foundation on a series of workshops supporting the development of western art history as a discipline in China.

Wednesday, March 14th 7-8 p.m. 
UMBC's AOK Library, 7th Floor 

Achieving the American Dream or Not: Immigrants' Narratives Following the Great Recession with Dr. Claudia Strauss 

This is a FREE event! 

Reception following lecture.

See attached flyer for all the details!

Staff member, Missy Smith, takes a deeper look into cryptocurrency trend.

Every winter break or summer season, I choose something to study and dive into when I’m in between “stuff” with a little more time to grow a hobby or a part of my dream. Last summer, I scratched my creative butch itch and learned how to do some woodworking. I sanded and polyurethaned a bench in my driveway in the hot summer sun. The result is pretty awesome! Here is an after and before pic. 

Someone asked me what I learned in the process. I made a list. 

1. Sanding by hand is tedious, but I got to know the wood better by taking my time and using patience with each stroke, resting when necessary, and being more perceptive of changes when I come back to approach the canvas.
2. No shortcuts. I cannot rush the work. When I rushed or tried to take shortcuts, the end result was blegh. 
3. There are not a lot of women hanging out at Home Depot and sometimes I had to figure things out on my own or wait for a long time before anyone would help me.
4. I met a lot of cool folks in the woodworking and refurbishing community!

This past Winter break, I decided to dive into creative work and finish some lingering music projects from 2017. After reading headlines about something called Bitcoin and pondering my own investments, I accidentally stumbled into cryptocurrency. Like Home Depot, when I started researching, I didn’t see a ton of women (or African Americans) talking about it. I did some digging. To no surprise, I quickly learned that there are not a lot of queer folks, women, or women of color in the crypto universe, just like STEM, corporate America, and higher education. But I know we exist. I see us all the time, and I am one of the few in these spaces sometimes. Being an outlier is not new to me, so I was curious about crypto. If the boys can do it, why can’t I? Why can’t we?

What is it? A Blockgeeks Inc. guide explains it well. “If you take away all the noise around cryptocurrencies and reduce it to a simple definition, you find it to be just limited entries in a database no one can change without fulfilling specific conditions.” Even more simple, your bank has a ledger that accounts for transactions, but in the crypto world a network of your peers owns the ledger. Everything is tracked, there are not mistakes (so far. And yes, I know things get hacked. Banks get robbed too!). If you are still confused, here is an image that links to a deeper dive.

Why am I so interested in cryptocurrency? I think that for the first time in a long while (however long that is), there is something that is leveling the playing field for folks who might not have a chance to get ahead. Millenials know that should save money and invest in their retirement. Some folks are fortunate to be able to do it, and others may not be so fortunate. For me, I am in the weird generation before Millennials, and I have a unique outlook on tech, financial security, and I’m DIY enough to want to make my own way. Beyond investing, there are some great companies doing innovative work and reimagining the ways we send, spend, and receive money. 

I found some Facebook and Reddit groups for my identities as a woman and as a black person investing in crypto. There are minority professors and business leaders working as admin, holding FB live chats to talk about new coins and market strategies, all while growing the network of folks who are looking for a different way to make and spend money, digitally. I even learned about an LGBT cryptocurrency that wants to showcase the buying power of small(er) and mighty communities!  

Working at the Women’s Center has exposed me to global issues that impact women, and after studying eco feminism for one of our events last semester, I was excited to hear about sustainable currency initiatives. There are a lot of women and minorities working in the crypto space, leading companies that are offering innovative solutions to 20th century problems, thinking forward and manifesting a better future.  I learned about Power Ledger ($POWR), an Australian company that wants to recreate buying and selling of energy using blockchain technology. Their CEO, Dr Jemma Green is taking her team from Down Under to work in North America, earning headlines as “the woman powering the energy industry on the blockchain” from her peers! 

Lympo ($LYM), a new coin that may change the healthcare industry, is led by CEO Ada Jonuse. Her company is changing the way the internet uses healthcare, data, and fitness apps and incentivizing wellness. There are even some companies that are making it easier to send money to family members in other countries. They do it faster and cheaper than traditional currencies. Women are also creating their own powerhouses networking groups to support each other and teach the world about crypto. So after all my digging over break, what did I learn? For starters, I am not a financial advisor.  But also . . . 

1. Coming back from break is hard, but I get to know myself by studying the pieces of my bigger dream. I’m in school to make my dream concrete, so I continue to dive into work that I love. By thinking of the future, I am able to find joy vs stress in the work.
2. There is no quick way to make money. I cannot rush the calendar year. When I rush, I stress and become obsessive. Be careful with your spending. Learn about investing and how to use the different exchanges! 
3. There are not a lot of women working in the crypto space. I had to search for us, and I know we are knowledgeable about making money in the crypto world. We make our own networking groups to empower each other #girlsclub 
4. I learned about a ton of cool people (people that look and live like me) making big headlines and leading 21st century companies, global entities, that will change the world.

Many mornings, I wake up and find headlines about women in crypto. We are leading and contributing and the world is taking notice. Crypto will not last as another boy’s club, not if we can change the narrative. If you want some more reading, here are a bunch of recent articles, mostly about women and crypto, that have made my morning coffee more enjoyable! Have fun!

• The Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Cryptocurrency Investing
• Where Are The Women In The Blockchain Network?
• Women in Cryptocurrency: Bring On The Revolution
• Bitcoin’s Gender Divide Could Be a Bad Sign, Experts Say
• 20 African Women To Watch In Blockchain And Crypto

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