The Director of Cultural Affairs for the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA) is a full-time, exempt position, reporting to the Chief Operating Officer. This position is responsible for meeting the organization’s mission to make Baltimore a more vibrant and creative city by developing, implementing, and directing cultural arts initiatives. BOPA is the city’s designated arts council charged with engaging city residents and arts organizations by providing public programs, funding opportunities, and professional support.

Responsibilities

COEIT Advising will be closed Thursday, Nov 23rd, and Friday, Nov 24th.

If you contact advising during this time, you will receive a response after the holiday.

Job type: Part Time

Compensation: $12/hour

Description: Museum Educators lead interactive tours of museum exhibits and hands-on activities for school field trips, adult and senior tours, and scout programs and birthday parties. Programs range in duration from 60 to 90 minutes, with multiple programs occurring on any given day. Additional responsibilities include set-up, clean-up, and preparation of education materials. Hours vary depending on the needs of the groups scheduled and availability. This position is primarily scheduled on weekdays.

A reflection by student staff member, Sydney, about her experiences with body image, working out, and how these things connect with her feminism and self love.

Trigger Warning: This blog deals with body image, body dysmorphia, and unhealthy eating practices. Please use self-care.

We live in a day where thick (curvy, slim-thick) is in but what this really means is women with thick thighs/large butts/ big boobs and a TINY waist. One thing thick still doesn’t seem to mean is fat. The media, men, and other women are still always critical of unwanted fat/cellulite/stretch marks and ways to get rid of them… especially in a time where “Fitspo”  has become popular. Let me start off by saying I’m a feminist who believes in radical self love… I’m also a feminist who has a love-hate relationship with working out. I grew up being a year round competitive athlete, basketball, cross country, track, soccer (you name it!), so any time outside of school was spent in gyms or outside practicing skills. I never thought about my body much as an athlete- let me rephrase that… I never thought about the good my body was doing when I was an athlete. I knew I was strong but I thought it was because I was large. “I’m bigger than my friends therefore I have to be stronger than my friends”. Was I actually bigger than my friends though? The photos say no. It never occurred to me that my perception of my body was completely warped. I saw myself as overweight, much bigger than my friends, and was constantly aware of what I was wearing and how people perceived me. And as a young girl who was in Catholic School (Catholic guilt is the real deal), didn’t know much about feminism , and had a mother with body image issues, I was stuck in the perfect storm. My body was always at the front of my mind. I binge ate, starved at some points (why did I throw away so many lunches when I LOVE food?), and was just overall unaware of how toxic my mentality was.

When I graduated high school, I stopped playing sports and focused on school. I turned to feminism and activism to help me understand myself and the world, and I still worked out pretty regularly… I also gained 40 pounds. But guess what else happened? I learned to love my body. Now don’t get me wrong, I still look at my stretchmarks or fat rolls and sometimes feel like a “lazy loser” but I also know that my body does amazing things just to keep me alive, that I am strong, and that all bodies are good bodies. Here’s an important disclaimer though- I’m overweight, my doctors bring it up, my friends notice it, my parents comment on it, and guys tend to tell me “I love bigger women” but overall I’m still seen as “normal” by society. I can still find clothes in most stores, my fat is distributed pretty equally over my body, and I can still move throughout space with ease. I realize that due to this I experience both thin privilege and fat shame at different times. I have come to understand that my experience is a privilege because I CAN find a break from the constant judging in certain spaces.

Like I said, I still like to workout. I like the discipline of it that I learned through sports, and I think I always will. There are major benefits to working out. I like to go into the gym and lift weights or kickbox or do something that makes my muscles scream afterwards. For me, this is a form of radical self love, but it isn’t for everyone, and moreso this love can turn to hate really easily. I workout to feel strong, not skinny, but those two are easy to conflate and I often find myself walking the fine line, and falling on the toxic side if I’m not careful. What is supposed to be about strength and love can turn into weight and fat in the blink of an eye, and it is a constant game of checks and balances (going to the gym…but not twice a day… appreciating my body…but not weighing myself) to make sure I don’t go there. So just as much as I workout to get in a good mental space, I also often have to stop working out to remain in that good space. Even when doing this, I constantly struggle with the guilt over not working out or the guilt of working out for the wrong reasons. Let me just say this- deciding to love your body does not mean your body issues disappear.

I found Bikram Yoga to be a very healthy way to workout and feel strong- I was feeling confident and in touch with my body while not worrying about weight. The problem- Bikram Yoga as well as fitness classes are EXPENSIVE (I’m talking over $100 a month here), which leads me to my next point. Fitness is a feminist issue AND an intersectional one. Some women don’t want to workout to feel self love. Some do and can’t afford it, and some aren’t represented in the fitness world at all. Sidenote, if you hate running, don’t do it! Hate the gym? Don’t go! What works for some and what some see as self love isn’t for all and it would be pretty antifeminist to try and insist it does.

We know poor women are more likely to be overweight and that curvy figures are more accepted by women of color, but what does this mean for women who want to workout or engage in health related activities but don’t have the funds or don’t see themselves represented? If you search “fit woman” on the internet what do you get? White women. White women with muscles. White women with no body fat. Now that, in itself, is an issue, but add in that these women are all able bodied (Inspiration Porn is real too yall, don’t even get me started), they are feminine, and they have all the trendy gear and equipment they need.

Let’s be real here, I haven’t worked out in months. I’m a grad student taking a full course load and working two jobs- when that’s done, I just want to go to bed. I still miss it… specifically lifting… but right now self care means something different. I also still feel guilty about it- especially when my clothes don’t fit or I’m “feeling fat”, but I’ve also been better about putting things in perspective and keeping a healthy mindset. I don’t have all the answers here. Fitness and feminism is a hard issue and not everyone has a healthy relationship with working out, (like I said, sometimes I don’t either) but I needed a space to discuss the fact that this is a conflicting issue with me, that I struggle, and that I’m trying my best. I think other women could use this space as well. So here’s to figuring it out together,

“All bodies are good bodies. You do not need to lose weight to have a good body. All bodies are real bodies. You are perfect at whatever size you like best. I preach this loud and proud to my friends, to my niece, to my mother, to my girlfriend. Honestly, I truly believe it. I also believe in giving a big middle finger to society’s standards of beauty, and I think it’s completely true that anyone can be healthy at whatever size they are.” – Sarah Hansen

Note: I purposefully left my weight out of this blog. I went back and forth on this decision but ultimately decided it would not do any good or help my point by just adding numbers in.

Links for further reading:

The complicated relationship between feminism and fitness
How to work exercise out of self love not fat shaming

Intersectionality of fitness

About how you don’t always have to love your body

Some other blog posts about bodies:

Making my body a brave space

How my feminism intersects body consciousness with health benefits

Galatians 5:16, 25 (NIV) – “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh…Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”

As Christians, our understanding of God’s will is much more ‘dynamic’ than ‘static.’ Static means just pursuing an outcome or desire we believe we are to have or be or do or accomplish. Whereas dynamic implies that our lives are moving with the Spirit and the immediate plans of God in our present circumstances. In this dynamic understanding of God’s will for our lives we “seek to always being open to what God is doing…now.”

The Christian reality, this Spirit-filled life of love, is not necessarily set on a destination, it is lived out in an hour by hour relationship with the Lord and His people. It is dynamic by nature because the will of God is relational at the core. Seeking the will of God is first and foremost realized in walking, living, and keeping in step with the Spirit.

Understanding God’s will for our lives in the framework of His direction doesn’t imply that we don’t seek destination or a particular outcome. We should pray and wrestle with the future plans or decisions (or outcomes) until we find the deep Spirit-led resolution in our hearts. For in those honest and vulnerable moments before the Lord, perhaps with the encouragement and care of His people, we will be more clear and able to live fully today, making the most of every opportunity that Lord has planned for us now. May we never sacrifice the precious experiences and steps of the Spirit today for the sake of our unresolved worries and dreams of tomorrow.

Today, let’s do spend time in prayer for the decisions/outcomes we need or desire to have God’s resolution in. Seek the Lord, pray continually and be open to His answers, changes in us, and desires.

– TR

This fall, the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC), celebrates the launch of four significant projects by research professor Maurice Berger, who through his curatorial work frequently explores issues of race, society, and culture, examining difficult subjects through the lens of art, photography, and visual media.

The new projects include the unveiling of exhibition websites for For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights and Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television, the creation of a online home for Berger’s “Race Stories” essays, and the extension of a national tour of For All the World To See through the National Endowment for the Humanities’ On the Road program — all of which will broaden public access to this research.

“I have a lot of faith in visual media to communicate powerful and even life-changing ideas about this country,” says Berger, whose previous work includes exhibitions such as Notes in Time: Leon Golub and Nancy Spero (1995), Adrian Piper: A Retrospective (1999); Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations 1979–2000 (2002); White: Whiteness and Race in Contemporary Art (2003); For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights (2012, photo above); and Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television (2016). Since 2012, Berger has contributed monthly “Race Stories” essays for the Lens Blog of The New York Times, exploring the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race, and complementing many of the issues explored in his curatorial work.

The online version of the exhibition Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television, which toured nationally from 2015 to 2017 and was co-organized by CADVC and the Jewish Museum in New York, explores how modern art served as an influence and a model for shaping the new medium, from the 1940s to the 1970s. Visit the site here.

For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, co-organized by CADVC and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened in 2010 and continues to travel in a smaller, lower-security version through the NEH on the Road initiative. The exhibition was the first to comprehensively explore the historic role of visual culture in shaping, influencing, and transforming the fight for racial equality and justice in the United States from the late-1940s to the mid-1970s. Visit the new online version of the critically acclaimed exhibition here.

“Websites are incredibly valuable teaching tools,” explains Berger on the importance of these new resources. “They reach more people than come in the door of the average museum. Most exhibitions actually have a relatively small audience. For All the World to See is the exception, which has had a million visitors and counting. That’s virtually unheard of. The typical art or visual culture exhibition, no matter how many venues, will probably reach no more than 100,000 visitors. A website is not bound by geography, or the fragility of art, or the enormous cost of shipping and maintaining an actual exhibition. Visitors can pop in from all over the world. Yes, there is nothing like experiencing real works of art or important examples of visual culture. But these online exhibitions augment the original exhibition in powerful ways, disseminating its ideas far and wide.”

The launch of the Race Stories webpage brings together in one convenient place links to Berger’s monthly “Race Stories” column, which explores the relationship of photography to concepts, themes, or social or regional issues around race not usually covered in the mainstream media. Visit the site here.

“I wanted to find ways to make the ‘Race Stories’ series available to as broad an audience as possible,” says Berger. “I think it’s important for college and university students to read these essays. So putting them on the CADVC website has made all of them available, in one convenient place, to our students at UMBC as well as the thousands of outside visitors to our website. I always write my essays for The New York Times and curate my exhibitions on race and visual culture with young people in mind. My ideal reader is a smart high school student — because if you can inspire a young person to see the world in new ways, then you can inspire anyone. I get a lot of emails from high school teachers and college professors, who tell me they routinely assign my ‘Race Stories’ essays to their students. I’m an educator, first and foremost. The principal purpose of my work is to teach racial literacy through visual culture.”

After a successful national tour, the exhibition For All the World To See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights received support from the On the Road program of the National Endowment for the Humanities, providing the opportunity for it to continue to tour the country in a reduced format. NEH on the Road is designed to create wider national access to the ideas, themes, and stories explored in major exhibitions funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Recently, the NEH extended its support of For All the World To See through 2023, the first time the endowment has doubled the national tour of an exhibition, allowing travel to an additional 47 geographically diverse national venues through 2023. Information on the NEH On the Road version of For All the World To See is available here.

Voices in AI – Episode 20: A Conversation with Marie desJardins

Byron Reese interviewed UMBC CSEE Professor Marie desJardins as part of his Voices in AI podcast series on Gigaom. In the episode, they talk about the Turing test, Watson, autonomous vehicles, and language processing.  Visit the Voices in AI site to listen to the podcast and read the interview transcript.

Here’s the start of the wide-ranging, hour-long interview.

Voices in AI – Episode 20: A Conversation with Marie desJardins

Byron Reese interviewed UMBC CSEE Professor Marie desJardins as part of his Voices in AI podcast series on Gigaom. In the episode, they talk about the Turing test, Watson, autonomous vehicles, and language processing.  Visit the Voices in AI site to listen to the podcast and read the interview transcript.

Here’s the start of the wide-ranging, hour-long interview.

Voices in AI – Episode 20: A Conversation with Marie desJardins

Byron Reese interviewed UMBC CSEE Professor Marie desJardins as part of his Voices in AI podcast series on Gigaom. In the episode, they talk about the Turing test, Watson, autonomous vehicles, and language processing.  Visit the Voices in AI site to listen to the podcast and read the interview transcript.

Here’s the start of the wide-ranging, hour long interview.

The post CSEE Professor Marie desJardins interviewed for Voices in AI podcast appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.