UMBC’s 15th Digital Entertainment Conference

11:00am-5:00pm, Saturday, May 11, 2019

Commons Sports Zone, UMBC

The Digital Entertainment Conference (DEC) is an annual student-organized event that brings professional game developers from the area to UMBC to talk about their experience in the game industry. DEC’19 will be held 11-5 on Saturday, May 11 in the Sports Zone of the UMBC Commons building. Attend to meet professions from the local game industry, see games made by UMBC students, and network with game developers.

DEC’19 is free to attend and open to UMBC students, high school students, UMBC alumni and anyone interested in game development. A free catered lunch is provided and parking on campus is free on weekends on any lot marked A, B, or C.

This year’s speakers include: Greg Lane, Community Manager at Big Huge Games; Dorian Newcomb, Co-founder and Art Director at Mohawk Games; Andrei Shulgach, Composer for games and short films and UI Implementer at UX is Fine; Rebecca Bushko: Software Engineer at Big Huge Games; Eric Jordan, Senior Software Engineer at Firaxis Games and the first president of the UMBC Game Developers Club.

The DEC’19 is co-sponsored by the UMBC Game Developers club and Computer Science Education Club and funded by the COEIT Dean’s Office’s Collaborative Student Funding Program.

The post UMBC’s 15th Digital Entertainment Conference, 11-5, Sat May 11 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies is in need of a part-time graduate assistant (10 hours/week) for Fall 2019. The graduate assistant would be assisting Dr. Carole McCann with the preparation of a book manuscript. Duties would include: converting files; excepting primary texts; copy-editing; compiling bibliographic information; proof-reading; and maintaining a progress spreadsheet for a 60-essay anthology. Ideal candidate would have experience with Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Office Suite and be incredibly detail-oriented.

There is a possibility for the work to begin during the summer and extend into the spring.

Compensation is $20/hour with the possibility of health insurance and/or tuition remission.

Please submit a cover letter and CV (addressed to Dr. Carole McCann) to Elle Everhart at eaver@umbc.edu.

I am writing in response to Maxi Wardcantori’s article about the school’s new logo, and also in response to the letter to the editor published recently which remarked on that article. I believe that Wardcantori’s argument is exactly correct: The logo includes confederate symbology, which is completely inappropriate. The letter to the editor attempts to argue that the red-and-white cross design is not a confederate symbol, yet admits that “use of the cross bottony design by Confederate soldiers cannot be denied,” and that it was adopted as a “symbol of postwar reconciliation.” Does the author of this letter have any conception of what “postwar reconciliation” entailed, in 1904? As recounted in many histories, most recently Henry Louis Gates’ “Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow,” around 1865 the civil war initially seemed likely to end with full citizenship for Black Americans. However, white state governments in the south embarked on a plan to revoke that citizenship in piecemeal fashion, and in 1877 the federal government pulled its troops from the South. Jim Crow laws, permanently embedded by the Plessy v. Ferguson supreme court decision, disenfranchised Black citizens. What came next was a massive campaign to defend white supremacy and reshape the popular conception of the war as “about” states’ rights, instead of slavery; a viewpoint that was widely accepted, across political lines, until quite recently. This campaign of white-supremacist viewpoints disguised as “reconciliation” is what the cross bottony symbolizes: A reconciliation between white northerners and white southerners, united by their prejudice. To showcase this pattern on a state flag may be excused as historical, but to embed it in a newly-created logo is distasteful in the extreme.

In addition, UMBC’s address is 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, Maryland. While we are located outside the beltway, our address is in Baltimore, Maryland. This is what “technically” means.

Sam Saper, Media and Communications Studies Major, Class of 2019

The unveiling of UMBC’s new logo, and Ms. Wardcantori’s article couldn’t be timelier. I am currently enrolled in Myth, Memory, and the American Civil War, History 496, with Dr. Anne Sarah Rubin, and writing my History capstone on the Maryland State Flag. The article referenced the Calvert crest doubling, during colonial times, as the “unofficial Maryland Flag”, which is incorrect, we had no flag but a State Seal. The newly formed United States of America had shed its English roots and a decidedly Republican image was created. In 1852, Governor E. Lewis Lowe restored the Seal but sadly misinterpreted the original design. Black was substituted for the Crossland red, and the gold/black paly of six was rendered as five. It was not until 1872, in the Old Treasury Building in Annapolis, that the Seal used by Cecil Calvert was discovered. Confederate soldiers did adopt the cross bottony symbol but were unaware of the original color. Early in the Civil War, Baltimore was under martial law and the wearing of ‘secession colors’ (red and white) was forbidden but not the cross bottony design itself. In 1880, the ‘flag’ was carried in the Baltimore Sesquicentennial Parade by the 5^th Regiment, comprised of both Union and Confederate soldiers, and again in 1888 during the Maryland Union Monument dedication ceremony in Gettysburg.

While use of the cross bottony design by Confederate soldiers cannot be denied, the State Flag was adopted in 1904 as a symbol of postwar reconciliation, rather than in defiance of Federal authority or in response to the 20^th century civil rights movement. And “technically” Ms. Wardcantori, the University is not located in the City of Baltimore but outside the beltway.

Catherine Sansone, History Major, Class of 2020

Description

Class Details

Register Today!