UMBC scholars and artists are laying the foundation for a more sustainable world right here at home.

• Finding a Green Future by Richard Byrne and Joel N. Shurkin
• Earth Tones by Jenny O’Grady
• Beyond Definition by Dinah Winnick
• The Long View by Nicole Ruediger
• Plotting a New Course by David Glenn
• Seeds and Synergies by David Glenn

• Postcard from Pyongyang – Brian Souders ’09, Ph.D. language, literacy and culture
• In Good Company – Isaac Kinde ’05, biological sciences
• Ninja Star – Adam Grossman ’06, environmental science, M.S. ’98, civil engineering
• Gathering Threads – Amy Segreti ’05, English

Check out some great web extras to accompany stories in our Fall 2013 issue, including interviews, videos and more…

Sustainability at UMBC
Read more about UMBC’s efforts to create a sustainable campus at UMBC’s sustainability site. View it here.

How To Sew (A Flag) and Tell (A Great American Story)
Learn more about the Stitching History Project here.

UMBC Language, Literacy & Culture doctoral student Kevin Wisniewski is publishing the lead chapter in the new anthology Kidding Around: The Child in Film and Media(Bloomsbury, January 2014). The chapter, “Betwixt and Between: Reading the Child in M. Night Shyamalan’s Films,” appears at the start of the first section of the book, “Rites of Passage and Impasse.”

Wisniewski will also present a paper at the upcoming conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA) & Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), Nov. 8-10. Wisniewski will present his paper, “Improving the Art of Paper War: Francis Hopkinson and the Performance of the Press in the Early Republic,” alongside colleagues from Duke and the University of Wisconsin, Madison in the session “Making Meaning in American Print Culture.”

In an interview with George Mason University’s History News Network, professor Kate Brown shares her inspiration for her new book, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters, which traces the parallel history of two cities in the Soviet Union and United States through the eyes and experiences of its plant workers and citizens.

To uphold secrecy during the nuclear arms race, both governments developed limited access “atomic cities,” and in exchange provided its citizens generous salaries, first-rate education and health care, and many other amenities of modern life. Brown calls these cities “Plutopias.” Unfortunately, as Brown describes, many workers and families found the hazards of working in and near nuclear production far outweighed any of the benefits.

“Trying to figure out how it was that so much radioactive waste was intentionally spilled with thousands of workers witnessing it, and no one in four decades blew a whistle about it—no one in the dictatorial USSR or democratic USA,” said Brown. “Why was that? I came to the idea that the answer existed in plutopia.”

Brown’s book was also referenced in a Dutch article on the history of the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons during the Cold War.