The College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences has announced its faculty research fellowships for the summer and upcoming academic year. The complete list can be found below.

CAHSS Research Fellowships: These fellowships, available to tenured associate professors and full professors, support outstanding research and creative activity by permitting release time for one semester to focus on scholarship. Preference is given to associate professors preparing for promotion review in subsequent academic years. Recipients for 2015-16 are:

• Terry Bouton, History: “Foreign Founders: How European Financiers Helped Write the U.S. Constitution”
• Kathy O’Dell, Visual Arts: “The Dot: A Small History of a Big Point”
• Michele Osherow, English: “Staging Shakespeare at the Folger”
• Elaine Rusinko, Modern Languages, Linguistics, & Intercultural Communication: “Andy Warhol’s Mother”

CAHSS Dean’s Research Awards: These grants, new in spring 2015 and to be available twice each year, are awarded through a competitive process and recommended by the faculty members who comprise the CAHSS Research Advisory Committee. The inaugural recipients are

• Linda Baker, Psychology: “What Factors Contribute to the Academic Success of College Students with a Reading Disability”
• Piotr Gwiazda, English: “Translation of Zero Visibility: Poems by Grzegorz Wroblewski”
• Tyson King-Meadows, Political Science & Africana Studies: “Racial Priming and Support for Congressional Action to Address Income Inequality”
• Susan McDonough, History: “Vile Sluts and Gassy Whores: Prostitutes in the Medieval Mediterranean”
• Susan McCully, Theatre: “Production of Kerrmoor – a new play by Susan McCully”
• Calla Thompson, Visual Arts: “Interviews with Lesbian and Gay Activists Regarding 1981 Riots and Aftermath”

MIPAR/CAHSS Summer Faculty Research Fellowships:

• Amy Froide, History: “Eighteenth Century England’s Charitable Corporation:  A Cautionary Tale of Microfinance, Fraud, and Government Bailouts”
• Nancy Miller, Public Policy: “Facilitators and Barriers to State Provision of Medicaid Community-based Long-term Services and Supports for Children, Youth and Adults with Significant Mental Health Conditions”

Dresher Center for the Humanities/CAHSS Summer Faculty Research Fellowships:

• Michael Nance, Philosophy: “Anarchy, Legitimacy, and Economic Planning in Fichte’s Jena Political Philosophy”
• Piotr Gwiazda, English: “Translation of Zero Visibility: Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski”
• Nicoleta Bazgan, Modern Languages, Linguistics, & Intercultural Communication, “Parisiennes: City Women in French Cinema”

Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA)/CAHSS Summer Faculty Research Fellowships:

• Brian Kaufman, Music: “El Sistema and Music for Social Change”
• Peggy Re, Visual Arts: “Design, Desire and Consumption: Contemporary American Textiles, Contemporary American Wallpaper and American Containers and Packaging”

Imaging Research Center/CAHSS Summer Faculty Research Fellowships:

• Kate Brown, History: “Mapping Contours of Community”
• Matt Baker, Geography & Environmental Systems, and Tim Nohe, Visual Arts: “Urban Forest Stewardship Projects”
• Lisa Moren, Visual Arts, and Marcus Zupan, Engineering, “Monuments Baltimore”

Hrabowski Innovation Grants:

• Nicole King, American Studies, and Bill Shewbridge, Media & Communication Studies: “Baltimore Stories: Emerging Media Across the Curriculum”

In a new article published in the journal Citiscope, School of Public Policy Professor John Rennie Short argued that “cities are a focal point for action on climate change — and in time, climate action will seem as compelling to urbanites as the introduction of clean water systems in the late 1800s.”

The article was a combination of a recent talk Short gave at the Conference on Communities and Urban Sustainability hosted by the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. and a subsequent Citiscope interview. In the article, Short highlighted the importance of cities in an interconnected world.

“Cities are points in a network. The map shows the world divided into nation states. Actually a much more important way is to see the globe as a network of cities. Most flows of globalization move between city regions in different nations. So rather than think of a world of nation states, see it as a network of globally connected cities — for knowledge, for best practices,” Short said. “Cities are also key because nation states can be too big to connect with local communities and often too small to influence global events. Cities are a powerful point of leverage and connection to get things done.”

Short also commented on the growing need for better metrics of urban sustainability: “We need a system that’s comprehensive, reliable, and predictive. Because urban sustainability is the right, smart, only thing to do. Environmental issues are still like fighting the good fight. While economic measures — especially jobs — often seem more compelling. We need to bring sustainability to the same level as jobs, or saving money.”

To read the full article “The world’s cities: the “sweet spot” of climate change,” click here.

On Memorial Day, The Conversation published a series of insights into wars that have been waged and their aftermath. Anne Rubin, an associate professor of history, published an article that gave voice to the Union soldiers in Sherman’s Army and their view of their impact on the end of the Civil War.

“Sherman’s veterans, at least those who spoke and wrote publicly about their experiences, were remarkably untroubled by the war they made against civilians. They looked at the march not as something that broke the laws of war, but instead as one of the great experiences of their lives,” Rubin wrote.

“For all their minimizing of hardships and the horrors of war, they well understood what they fought for, and they believed wholeheartedly that their march, their efforts, had brought the war to an end,” she added. “They never wavered in their belief that the march was necessary. The Confederacy had brought destruction on itself by tearing apart the Union, they believed, and it was the duty of these soldiers to reunite the nation, by any means at their disposal.”

To read the full article titled “The grand review of Sherman’s Bummers,” click here. Rubin is author of Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman’s March and American Memory (UNC Press 2014).

The UMBC Relationship Violence Prevention Advocates program, sponsored by a Verizon Foundation Grant, is a comprehensive program designed to educate the UMBC Community on specific relationship violence prevention information.

The program includes:

• a dating/relationship/intimate partner violence prevention communication campaign
• enhanced online relationship violence prevention resources specific on UMBC community websites
• relationship violence prevention advocates training

UMBC Relationship Violence Prevention Advocates are UMBC community members who:

• are able to provide relationship/dating/intimate partner violence prevention information to their community networks
• observe the UMBC community and take notice of and report community issues to relationship violence advocate trainers
• encourage bystander intervention techniques within UMBC community network and individuals
• make appropriate referrals
• provide helpful resource information to UMBC community network and individuals
• support speak and poster series and other campus initiatives to prevent violence

For more information please contact Jacki Stone at 410-455-2393

The application can be found here. The last day to apply for Fall 2015 is August 5, 2015. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.