Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, will be a featured speaker at an August 11 Erikson Institute Creativity Seminar at the Austin Riggs Center on the subject of “The Brightening Glance: Creativity and Childhood.”

“The brightening glance” is a phrase taken from the title of a Spitz book in which she “returns us to the vibrant experience of childhood to explain how the imagination emerges and develops.” The seminar will explore questions such as: What is childhood creativity and what does it tell us about the creative process in general? Are the roots of adult creativity in childhood, and if so, how? What interferes with the creative process in children and what does that tell us about obstacles to creativity in our adult lives? What in our adult creative lives links us to childhood and in what ways?

Other speakers include Daisy Rockwell, a painter and writer; Kelly Smedvig, a musician, model and mother; and Ruslan Sprague, a dancer and choreographer.

More information about the seminar can be found here.

Robert Provine, professor of psychology, appeared on the Irish radio station newsTalk’s Moncrieff program July 5th to discuss laughing’s purpose and its origins in human evolution.

“Laughter is literally the sound of play,” said Provine. “In fact, the human ‘ha-ha’ evolved from the labored breathing of our rough-and-tumble primate ancestors, whereby ‘pant-pant’ became ‘ha-ha.'”

You can listen to the discussion here, in segment 3 from the July 5th broadcast, beginning at 51:20 and continuing in segment 4.

Nicole King, assistant professor of American studies, appeared on WYPR’s The Signal on July 6th to discuss her new book Sombreros and Motorcycles in a Newer South: The Politics of Aesthetics in South Carolina’s Tourism Industry

King spoke with producer Aaron Henkin about the colorful history of the roadside attraction South of the Border and its owner and creator, Alan Schafer, as well as various issues of politics, commerce, and culture which revolved around South of the Border during its early years which coincided with the Civil Rights Era.

“I think South of the Border – and recreation in general, especially in the South – is important because it’s the politicized aspect of what we do in our free time,” said King. “We often think of politics… as happening in board rooms or in political spheres, but they actually happen in places that we go everyday, and especially in the South. If you look at a lot of cases about desegregation, they were bowling alleys, they were lunchroom counters, they were places that people hung out. So I think that they offer an important narrative about how politics happen when we don’t think we’re being political, especially when we’re going on vacation.”

You can listen to the full interview here.

The Imaging Research Center (IRC) recently filmed several faculty as they attempted to solve President Hrabowski’s favorite math problem. As told to Nagaraj Neerchal and Manil Suri, mathematics and statistics, and Anne Spence, mechanical engineering, the problem is as follows:

29 children are in a class.

20 have dogs.

15 have cats.

How many have both a dog and a cat?

Watch the video below to see the various methods and strategies used by the professors to answer the problem.

[vimeo 45245451 w=500 h=281]

UMBC Professors Solve F. Hrabowski’s Favorite Math Problem from ircumbc on Vimeo.

Tom Schaller, professor of political science, filed his latest Baltimore Sun column from Harare, Zimbabwe. Schaller’s piece, “U.S. seeks to influence a youthful world,” focused on the need for the United States to continue reaching out to global youth around the world with outreach programs concerning issues involving women, technology, education, and health matters.

Schaller concludes his column by noting the need for the United States to engage the world’s young on matters that go beyond the altruistic and into geopolitical necessity:

“Why does any of this matter? Here’s why: At top diplomatic levels, the United States worries about resource-hungry China’s deep investments in Africa. The Chinese are building literal bridges, but the metaphorical bridges the United States builds provide a critical counterbalance in the battle for the hearts and minds of millennial generations in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world.”

In a July 6 Gazette article entitled “Dream Act supporters take to the streets to win votes,” proponents and opponents of the Maryland Dream Act discussed the bill, which will be submitted to a referendum this November. The act allows undocumented workers to be eligible for in-state tuition if they have attended Maryland high schools for three years, then graduated and enrolled at a community college before transferring to a four-year state university, and whose parents have filed state income taxes during the period, among other benchmarks.

Lauren Hussey, assistant professor of political science, said that one factor may be President Obama’s recent suspension of deportations of younger undocumented immigrants, which may spur those supporting the president’s reelection to vote for the Maryland Dream Act. Hussey also noted the differences between the Federal DREAM Act and Maryland’s own proposal, with the former dealing largely with citizenship issues for undocumented students and the latter with tuition rates.

Donald Norris, professor and chair of public policy, was also source for the article, discussing issues involving partnerships between groups such as the immigrant-advocacy group Casa de Maryland and the same-sex marriage-oriented Equality Maryland.

A June 29 Huffington Post blog post focused on Baltimore’s online magazine What Weekly.

“The Baltimore Experiment: Getting Out From Under ‘The Wire'” detailed What Weekly‘s focus on more positive coverage as opposed to the more-or-less expected grim news dispatches so often associated with Baltimore, as well as its strong links with the city’s arts community who work and live there. Among the contributors listed was Lee Boot, associate research professor and associate director of the Imaging Research Center, whose column “Who We Aim” appears in the publication.

Boot’s clog, also entitled “Who We Am,” focuses “on building a transdisciplinary, online discourse about human behavior.”