On Thursday, November 10, Michael Fallon, senior lecturer of English, will read from his two new books of poetry:

“Since You have No Body,” winner of the 2011 Plan B Press Poetry Chapbook Competition

“Overall, Since You Have No Body is about making peace with the organic, as well as the ontological world, with death, with the shadow, and hence with the void…” -Contest Judge, poet Corey Mesler

and

“The Great Before and After”

In The Great Before and After, George C. Tumulty, a comic everyman, contemplates the origins and fate of himself, humanity, and the universe, raising the big questions.

Books will be available for purchase, and light refreshments will be served. The even twill take place at 4:00 p.m. in UC 310.  For more information, visit here.

Timothy Nohe, associate professor of Visual Arts, will exhibit his work Candles for Faust at the in/flux gallery, 307 West Baltimore Street, from November 5 through 19.

Nohe remarks, “Candles for Faust portrays candles, burning at both ends, that eventually extinguish themselves and fall from sight. Stereo recordings were produced of the drumming sound of dripping wax falling on printmaking paper. I imagined the candles as ‘musical instruments’ producing unique and chaotic drum patterns. As the candles attempted to reach equilibrium, teetering back and forth, they tattooed a pattern of wax scatter on the paper below. The resulting wax splashed detritus exists on the surface of the prints as a record of time and residue of the beating wax drummer, long extinguished.” A condensed video is available for viewing on Professor Nohe’s tumblr site.

A video piece created in 2010 by Vin Grabill (associate professor and chair, Visual Arts) and his son, Elliott, was accepted as one of nineteen finalists for the Rosebud Film & Video Festival. The 8-minute video “Kings Highway/Stillwell Ave., Brooklyn” will be screened along with the other eighteen works on Saturday, November 12, and an awards ceremony will take place Sunday, November 13, in Arlington, Virginia.

“Kings Highway/Stillwell Ave., Brooklyn” started as a piece of music for piano written by Elliott Grabill. Vin Grabill made a video recording of his son playing “Kings Highway” at a performance in Washington, D.C. in October 2010. Subsequently Elliott provided several hundred digital photos he had taken during his time in New York, and together Elliott and Vin decided how to edit these images in and around the performance video footage. The video can seen on the small screen at: http://vimeo.com/17421636

2011 Rosebud Nominee Showcase
Saturday, November 12, 2011, beginning at 12:30 PM
Dome Theater at Artisphere
1101 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22209
(2 blocks from Rosslyn Metro Station)

2011 Rosebud Awards Ceremony
Sunday, November 13, 2011, beginning at 7:00 PM
Clarendon Ballroom
3185 Wilson Blvd.
Arlington, VA 22201
(1 block from Clarendon Metro Station)

Kelley Bell, assistant professor of Visual Arts (and Visual Arts MFA ’05) has created one of the most visible artworks in Baltimore: she is illuminating the clock faces on the downtown Bromo Seltzer Tower. The Baltimore Sun‘s Mary Carole McCauley wrote a major feature that appeared on the paper’s front page on November 4, and the City Paper‘s Baynard Woods contributed a feature in the paper’s November 2 issue. Both features include videos. Professor Bell’s projections on the clock faces begin at sunset on Saturday, November 5 and will continue for approximately five weeks.

“It would have been easy in recent days to mistake Courtroom 5D as the site of a Maryland political convention rather than the forum for a public corruption trial,” wrote the Washington Post‘s John Wagner, on the defense of Sen. Ulysses Currie. Prominent character witnesses were brought to the stand over several days to vouch for Currie’s integrity in light of corruption allegations — a potentially risky move for some, considering their own career ambitions.

“I don’t know whether a jury will look at politicians saying nice things about other politicians in a cynical way or a laudatory way,” said Donald F. Norris, professor and chair of public policy at UMBC. “I don’t think we have a way to know that.” For additional reflections on the case, see the Baltimore Sun, where Norris offered insight into how elected officials in different states react to ethics concerns.

On Tuesday, November 1, Rebecca Boehling spoke at the Leo Baeck Institute about her new book, “Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust: A Jewish Family’s untold Story.”  Boehling was joined by her co-author, Uta Larkey.

The institute, which is located in New York, is a research library and archive that contains the most significant collection of source material relating to the history of German-speaking Jewry, from its origins to its tragic destruction by the Nazis and continuing to the present day.

Katie Smallwood ’09, American studies, is one of the organizers of a new project entitled “Baltimore: Place to Place.”  Smallwood and her co-organizer,  Katie Shinsato, randomly distributed Baltimore sites among about 25 participants, who shot, framed, and reflected upon their assignments. The results of the project will be on display at the Windup Space through November.

“We wanted to celebrate place and how the space around you can be important to different individuals for various reasons. We wanted people to have to go to places they either knew really well or had never been to before and to have an experience there,” Smallwood said.

The project was covered in an Urbanite story entitled “The Purpose of Place,” which appeared online on November 1.

There is a free opening reception at the Windup Space (12 W. North Avenue) on Friday, November 4, at 7 p.m.

A partnership between BAE Systems and UMBC will support teaching, research and technology development in the cybersecurity field. The $150,000 investment will not only include a partnership with UMBC’s Career Services Employer Partnership Program, but enable UMBC’s Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering to develop an active learning computer science classroom that meets the unique goals and challenges of the department’s introductory courses.

Paul Falkler, BAE Systems’ Vice President and General Manager of Information Technology & Cybersecurity Solutions (ITCS) said, “While working with UMBC over the last eight years, I have continuously been impressed by the high level of professionalism of its employees, its strong academic programs and the caliber of its students. This past summer, we needed interns to support our cybersecurity business on short notice, and UMBC delivered talented ones that helped shaped the solutions we offer our customers. That’s very impressive.”

Read the full story on the UMBC News site.

Sonya Caesar, cohort 13, Language, Literacy and Culture, appeared on a PBS Nightly Business Report segment on student debt. Caesar is on staff at the Community College of Baltimore County, where she is spearheading a campus-wide financial literacy campaign. She discusses what students know and don’t know when it comes to taking on student debt – the challenges of managing their money and paying back student loans which are never erased from their records.

The espisode aired on Tuesday, October 25, and can be watched here. The segment on financial literacty begins at about 17:00.

Caesar previously wrote and co-produced a mini documentary, “Beyond the Classroom Walls” for CCBC. The short film is one component of the campus’s financial literacy awareness campaign.

Amanda Gunther is a writer for the Maryland Theatre Guide. According to Gunther, “writing for the Maryland Theatre Guide will give her a chance to pursue her passion of the theatre and will broaden her horizons in the writer’s field.” Here’s an excerpt from one of her most recent artciles:

“Watch out Washington! The fireworks aren’t in the sky but on the stage at the Prince George’s Little Theatre’s production of Born Yesterday written by Garson Kanin. A charismatic politically charged dramadey directed by Norma Ozur – the cast of Born Yesterdayreally drives their act home as they explode their politics and emotions all over the stage.”

Read the full article in the Maryland Theatre Guide.

Read more about UMBC alumni at Retriever Net, UMBC’s alumni online community.