The Ancient Studies Department is delighted to announce the arrival of Dr. David Rosenbloom as an Associate Professor of Ancient Studies.

Rosenbloom is a specialist in Athenian tragedy and comedy. His research in Greek tragedy resulted in a new edition of the Persians and a co-edited volume, _Greek Drama IV: Texts, Contexts, Performance_, as well as many articles for _Blackwell’s Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy_. His next books will be the _Blackwell Companion to Euripides_ and __A City of Scoundrels: Culture and Hegemony in Classical Athens, among others.

Most recently, Rosenbloom has been a senior lecturer in the Classics Department at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, where his excellence in teaching was known. His outreach there to Classicists and non-Classicists alike demonstrate his own love of the disciplines that are taught in the Ancient Studies Department. He has also taught at Johns Hopkins and Princeton in the United States.

He and his family are particularly happy to be returning to the Baltimore area. He is excited to be coming to ANCS and UMBC at a time when the Humanities are receiving such great emphasis and to a department where Latin and Greek continue to be highly valued.

Recent UMBC Ph.D. alumnus Sanjit Karmakar ’12, physics, has been featured in a  Baltimore Sun story focusing on his work in “ghost imaging,” the process by which a picture can be taken without actually “seeing” the object which is being photographed.
The camera Karmakar designed, which Sun reporter Jonathan Pitts described as “look[ing] like a cross between an 1890s camera and a bulky steamer trunk,” utilizes the light of the sun as the source for images, which are generated on a computer using mathematics associated with quantum physics. This process can be used to generate images of objects on other continents and planets without the distortion of traditional photography, according to the piece.
Karmakar’s research has made a splash in physics research circles, the article said, and has implications in defense and other areas.
Speaking on the still-unknown aspects of the nature of light, Karmakar was quoted as saying that “[m]any people still don’t understand its true properties.”
Read the full story here.

Recent UMBC Ph.D. alumnus Sanjit Karmakar ’12, physics, has been featured in a  Baltimore Sun story focusing on his work in “ghost imaging,” the process by which a picture can be taken without actually “seeing” the object which is being photographed.

The camera Karmakar designed, which Sun reporter Jonathan Pitts described as “look[ing] like a cross between an 1890s camera and a bulky steamer trunk,” utilizes the light of the sun as the source for images, which are generated on a computer using mathematics associated with quantum physics. This process can be used to generate images of objects on other continents and planets without the distortion of traditional photography, according to the piece.

Karmakar’s research has made a splash in physics research circles, the article said, and has implications in defense and other areas.

Speaking on the still-unknown aspects of the nature of light, Karmakar was quoted as saying that “[m]any people still don’t understand its true properties.”

Read the full story here.

Recent Ph.D. Sanjit Karmakar ’12, physics, was featured in an article published by The Baltimore Sun July 13th.

The focus of the article was on Karmakar’s work in “ghost imaging,” where a picture can be taken without actually “seeing” the object which is being photographed. The camera the physicist designed utilizes the light of the sun as the source for images, which are generated on a computer using mathematics associated with quantum physics. This process can be used to generate images of objects on other continents and planets without the distortion of traditional photography, according to the piece.

Speaking on the still-unknown aspects of the nature of light, Karmakar was quoted as saying that “[m]any people still don’t understand its true properties,” something which the odd-looking camera described as “look[ing] like a cross between an 1890s camera and a bulky steamer trunk” by reporter Jonathan Pitts is hoped by the physicist to address more on for his students, as well as his own work.

Five alumni will perform a chamber music concert at UMBC this month to benefit a Baltimore program that provides music lessons to inner-city youth.

The show, to be held in the UMBC Fine Arts Recital Hall on July 28 at 3:30 p.m., will feature the following alumni musicians as they take on works by Haydn, Schoenfield and Dvořák: music majors Rachele Sills ’07, Erin Terwilliger ’09, Ryan Bridgland ’06, Stefanie Watson ’05, and Winnie Nham ’09, political science.

“Music has played an important role for us throughout our lives, and we believe that every student should be afforded the opportunity to learn an instrument, regardless of socio-economic background,” said Nham.

“To us, this is truly a cause to perform for.”

A portion of ticket proceeds will go to the Bridges Program, which provides high-quality string education to youth in Baltimore City Public School at no cost to students.

Click here for more information about the concert.

On July 13, alumnus George Derek Musgrove ’97, history, and new addition to UMBC’s history faculty, was a guest on the NPR radio show “Tell Me More,” where he spoke with guest host Maria Hinojosa about the history of government investigations into African-American politicians.
Listen to the interview here.
Musgrove is the author of Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics, and spoke of his investigations into the increasing numbers of legal investigations of black elected officials from the 1960s and 1970s onward, or what he calls “harassment ideology.”
“When I sat down to a study of post-Civil Rights Era black politics when I first entered graduate school, I was interested in figuring out what happened when all the marching stopped, what happened when black folks shifted from protests to politics. And as I was going through a bunch of records, I just kept finding black elected officials claiming that the government and the news media was out to get them, that there was literally a conspiracy to undermine black leadership,” he said.
“And so I wanted to look into it. I wanted to understand if, in fact, this was going on. But more than figure out whether or not there was a conspiracy or there was a pattern, I just wanted to figure out what it meant that black folks believed this, even if it wasn’t true. And so the book is a product of trying to answer those two questions.”
This post originally appeared on UMBC Insights.

On July 13, alumnus George Derek Musgrove ’97, history, and new addition to UMBC’s history faculty, was a guest on the NPR radio show “Tell Me More,” where he spoke with guest host Maria Hinojosa about the history of government investigations into African-American politicians.

Listen to the interview here.

Musgrove is the author of Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics, and spoke of his investigations into the increasing numbers of legal investigations of black elected officials from the 1960s and 1970s onward, or what he calls “harassment ideology.”

“When I sat down to a study of post-Civil Rights Era black politics when I first entered graduate school, I was interested in figuring out what happened when all the marching stopped, what happened when black folks shifted from protests to politics. And as I was going through a bunch of records, I just kept finding black elected officials claiming that the government and the news media was out to get them, that there was literally a conspiracy to undermine black leadership,” he said.

“And so I wanted to look into it. I wanted to understand if, in fact, this was going on. But more than figure out whether or not there was a conspiracy or there was a pattern, I just wanted to figure out what it meant that black folks believed this, even if it wasn’t true. And so the book is a product of trying to answer those two questions.”

This post originally appeared on UMBC Insights.

On July 13, George Derek Musgrove ’97, history, and new addition to UMBC’s history faculty, was a guest on “Tell Me More,” where he spoke with guest host Maria Hinojosa about the history of government investigations into African-American politicians.

Musgrove is the author of Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics, and spoke of his investigations into the increasing numbers of legal investigations of black elected officials from the 1960s and 1970s onward, or what he calls “harassment ideology.”

“When I sat down to a study of post-Civil Rights Era black politics when I first entered graduate school, I was interested in figuring out what happened when all the marching stopped, what happened when black folks shifted from protests to politics. And as I was going through a bunch of records, I just kept finding black elected officials claiming that the government and the news media was out to get them, that there was literally a conspiracy to undermine black leadership,” he said.

“And so I wanted to look into it. I wanted to understand if, in fact, this was going on. But more than figure out whether or not there was a conspiracy or there was a pattern, I just wanted to figure out what it meant that black folks believed this, even if it wasn’t true. And so the book is a product of trying to answer those two questions.”

The Washington Post Magazine announced a humor-writing contest in the July 15th issue. The research of Robert Provine, professor of psychology and author of the forthcoming book Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond, was cited the print edition invitation.

Provine is also the author of Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.

Prizes include $1000 for a written piece, $140 for a Twitter joke, or $300 for a funny photo. Learn more about the contest – including submission guidelines – here.

Donald Norris, professor and chair of public policy, recently spoke with The Gazette for on efforts to create a Maryland House of Delegates single-member subdistrict in Montgomery County, which would ostensibly aid in the election of a Latino lawmaker to represent a largely-Latino area.

Those in favor feel that such a subdistrict would be beneficial in strengthening populations with common backgrounds and interests, while skeptics argue that these efforts could do long-term harm by creating uncompetitive seats and limiting chances to unseat incumbents. Norris listed a number of complexities to the single-member issue, speaking of issues involving parochialism, partisanship, the benefits and drawback of at-large districts and the history of redistricting, among others.

The story, “Single-member districts offer mixed-bag for minorities,” ran on July 13.