By: Parker Vogel

Photo Credit: Lauren Moxley

Lauren Moxley is a junior in the Media and Communication Studies program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and pursuing a minor in Political Science

Lauren chose UMBC versus her other option, University of Maryland (UMD), primarily because of the campus size; she opted for the circular, tight-knit spacing that encompasses all of the UMBC buildings over the potential difficult commutes, 20-minute walks to classes, and bus rides around the campus’s college town at UMD. Following that choice, Lauren’s decision of a major and ultimately the MCS degree first began with English before a quick search online brought her to seeing public relations as a job on the rise. She saw herself in that role or some form of social media, marketing, or branding, and MCS was simply the best fit; after starting, she was surprised how enjoyable the varying aspects of the major were, and didn’t know how something like UMBC’s videography and podcasting classes would go (especially when considering how much different editing softwares would come into use), but found them to be a unique balance and outlet for creativity as opposed to core and GED courses. She remarks that UMBC provides so much under the umbrella of MCS, and that alone gives the learning opportunities about paths available to MCS students outside of marketing or public relations.

On campus, Lauren has been and is involved in many organizations, including the Tennis Club as their social media manager for the fall of 2022 and the spring of 2023, The Retriever as their current social media manager, UMBC’s sports broadcasting for the fall and winter of 2023, the Political Science Council of Majors constructing some Instagram posts, and a book club! Not only that, but Lauren’s intern experience has also brought her on campus into the Department of Professional Programs, acting as a communications intern where she writes posts for their blog consisting of graduate student tips, encouraging applications to UMBC’s graduate program, and providing information on current events at UMBC. Lauren also transcribes podcasts, creates Instagram content that highlights students and staff through the university’s graduate program, and provides focus on outstanding industries that align with the presently available programs.

Lauren’s other working opportunities include iHeart Radio, where she was able to help with promotional work for a few events per month. One of the events was a contest promotion at a boat show, but the largest event Lauren worked was the Jingle Bell Ball in the winter of 2023, working the meet and greet with the iHeart Radio hosts before being allowed to see NCT Dream and Flo Rida right at the side of the stage. She also briefly met Kendall of Big Time Rush in passing!

Lauren describes her experience as supportive; it might seem overwhelming as a freshman coming into the university, but not knowing where to start is natural and UMBC has so many networking and experience opportunities available - many times right on its doorstep. She encourages prospective and new students to meet with professors and discover their background and ask who they have connections with. MCS 144’s course really sets a tone and understanding of what to do to find professional opportunities and manage yourself in a professional way, and encourages the exploration of any internship because it will ultimately teach you your likes and dislikes while giving you practical experience. For example, Lauren cites thoroughly enjoying her current role with the Department of Professional Programs, and realized that the broadcasting work she did wasn’t fully the correct fit.

Looking into the future, Lauren has an internship lined up for the summer of 2024 at Underwriters Laboratories, a national safety organization located in Washington, D.C. that helps to manage fire safety. Her role will consist of heavy public relations work, gathering pertinent information from scientists in the lab and relaying it to the public. She truly loves to write, and sees her work continuing in that way. Her realistic goal for a career is internal communications and public relations work at a company, but she finds her dream to be running social media for a touring musician.

Dear American Studies Faculty, Staff, Students, Alumni, and Supporters:

Many thanks for your support as we close out the 2023-2024 Academic Year.

It has been an exciting and productive year for the department!

Please read on for some Department highlights from this past year.

Thank you all for your support of the department and a big congratulations to all of our American Studies, majors and minors, Public Humanities minors, and Asian American Studies minors who are graduating this year.

If you need us, during the summer, just drop me an email at tbhalla@umbc.edu or email our amazing program management specialist, Morgan Dowty at morgando@umbc.edu. 

I wish you all a restful and peaceful summer,

Dr. Tamara Bhalla

Student Highlights

We are very proud of the students presenting their hard work at Undergraduate Research and Achievement Day 2024!

• Spencer Hanks|  United Or Divided: Examining Desegregation In Anne Arundel County Schools

• Larissa Kuonen | Autistic People In The Workplace, Housing, And Transportation

• Juelle Lee | Checked Out: Public Libraries As Sites Of Assimilation

• Luke O’Neill | Fueling Diversity: Understanding Student-athletes’ Dietary Habits

• Taylor Phelps | Politics Of Education: How A Political Movement Fueled Controversy At Queen Anne’s County Public Schools

• Karla Press-Porter | Maryland Perspectives On The Use Of The Phrase “Defund The Police”

(Pictured above: Larissa Kuonen)

(Pictured above: Karla Press-Porter)

(Pictured above: Prof. Fouts and Spencer Hanks)

Faculty Highlights

Prof. Mike Casiano is the recipient of the annually-awarded CAHSS Early-Career Faculty Excellence Award. His book, Let us Alone: The Origins of Baltimore’s Police State, is under contract with the University of Illinois Press. 

Prof Andy DeVos successfully piloted a new course titled “The American Horror Film” which became an instant hit with students. He also helped reestablish the department’s partnership with the Shady Grove campus by teaching a hybrid course for SG, and he recently agreed to serve as Faculty Advisor to the student club Comics and other Media.

Prof. Conor Donnan is finishing his first monograph, Kindred Spirits: Native Americans, Irish immigrants, and Imperialism in the American West, which is under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press. He published an article on No Irish Need Apply in Baltimore City. He also worked on a committee to reimagine the flag display in the Commons, and he is currently submitting plans to paint murals in different buildings at UMBC.

Prof. Sarah Fouts, director of the public humanities program, will be working on copy edits over the summer for her forthcoming manuscript, Right to Remain: Street Food Vendors and Day Laborers in Post-Katrina New Orleans. The ethnographic manuscript is slated for publication by UNC Press in July 2025. Fouts’s short film,El Camino del Pan al Baltimore, which was co-produced with Andy Dahl and Fernando Lopez, screened at the Maryland Film Festival on May 4, 2024. The film series, which is part of the Library Congress and American Folklife Center’s Homegrown Foodways Series, will also screen at Current Space in Baltimore on June 13, 2024. On May 9, 2024, Fouts’s AMST403/682 students launched the Sabor de Highlandtown mapping, archival, and storytelling project. Sabor de Highlandtown asks the question, “What can the stories behind immigrant foodways tell us about how neighborhoods change?” This project is supported by Maryland Traditions and was done in collaboration with Southeast CDC in Highlandtown. On May 28, 2024, Fouts will attend the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI) annual conference at Berkeley to receive an Honorable Mention Award for the collaborative Baltimore Field School Public Humanities project.

Prof Nicole King has been working on her second monograph, The Ungentrifiable City: Resisting the Slow Violence of Urban Renewal in Baltimore and co-organized an event for the Humanities Forum When Your City Becomes a Campus: What Good is Higher Education for Our Cities, a talk by Davarian Baldwin, author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities, which took place on Wednesday, May 1 at 5:30pm at the University of Baltimore in coordination with the Dresher Center and the University of Baltimore. She was a keynote speaker at the Provost’s DELTA Teaching Forum at Johns Hopkins University May 2, 2024. She co-authored “Rethinking the Field in Crisis: The Baltimore Field School and Building Ethical Community and University Partnerships” with Sarah Fouts and Tahira Mahdi, which was published in the April 2024 issue of the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement. King published a chapter, “Baltimore Traces: Public Humanities, Zines, and the Connecting the Classroom,” in The Routledge Companion to Publicly Engaged Humanities Scholarship forthcoming on May 31, 2024. 

Prof. Tamara Bhalla has been working in her role as co-PI on the Global Asias Initiative Mellon grant that resulted in two new exciting hires this year. We welcome Priya Bhayana as project manager on the grant and Mika Thornburg as post-doctoral fellow in Global Asias. Prof. Bhalla is also working on her second monograph, Decentering Whiteness: Race and Readership in Contemporary US Literature and is excited to be presenting research at an invited talk this summer at “Free People Read Freely: Literacy, Inclusion, and Democracy” on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and at a conference for the Society for History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing in Reading, England.

Morgan Dowty, AMST’s Program Management Specialist, is finishing up her second academic year at UMBC (Go Big Dogs!) and her first year in graduate school in History and Library Science Master of Arts (HiLS) dual-degree program at UMD College Park. This year Morgan was nominated and served as one of five UMBC representatives in the 2023-24 intercollegiate cohort Building Bridges Across Maryland. She also completed the professional development course “Documenting the Impact of the Humanities in Higher Education” offered by the National Humanities Alliance.