Catonsville personalities remembered what they were doing on and after September 11, 2001, in a Patch.com story entitled “Recalling the Days After September 11, 2001.”

Among those that remembered their reaction to the day was Rebecca Adelman, assistant professor of media and communication studies. She remembers how she was struck by how everyone was processing what they were seeing, and that interest eventually led her to study the imagery of the War on Terror.

As part of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Humanities Forum presents a lecture by Ilan Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture (Spanish) at Amherst College, who will speak on “Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language,” Wednesday, October 5, 4 p.m., on the seventh floor of the Albin O. Kuhn Library.

Stavans will explore the cultural and linguistic significance of this distinctly American language, comparing it to other languages of minority groups in America such as Yiddish and Black English. He will explain who speaks Spanglish, why it has so many varieties and what its existence says about the United States. He will also speculate on whether it will ever become a standard language.

Stavans has taught courses on a wide array of topics such as Spanglish, Jorge Luis Borges, modern American poetry, Latin music, Don Quixote, Gabriel García Márquez, Modernismo, popular culture in Hispanic America, world Jewish writers, the cultural history of the Spanish language, Pablo Neruda, the history of the Spanish language, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Yiddish literature, Jewish-Hispanic relations, cinema, Latin American art, and U.S.-Latino culture. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University.

This event is sponsored in part by the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication and the Language, Literacy & Culture Ph.D. Program.

Rebecca Boehling, professor of history and director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities, appeared on Philadelphia’s WIP-AM on Sunday, September 11. She discussed her new book, “Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust” on the program “Conversations with Peter Solomon.”

In a story entitled “Scientists Hint at Why Laughter Feels So Good,” the New York Times reports on a study that attempts to pin down exactly why laughing until it hurts feels so good.

The study suggests that the pleasure lies in the physical act of laughing. The simple muscular exertions involved in producing the familiar “ha, ha, ha,” he said, trigger an increase in endorphins, the brain chemicals known for their feel-good effect.

Robert Provine, professor of psychology and a noted expert on laughter, said he thought the study was “a significant contribution” to a field of study that dates back 2,000 years or so.