(Above, Bill Shewbridge and Lynn Casabon receive a proclamation from Sam Moxley, representing the county executive. Photo by Vin Grabill.)

In celebration of the new Arbutus Branch of the Baltimore County Public Library, UMBC faculty and students worked with members of the surrounding community to display historic railroad photographs and create a series of digital stories about the area through residents’ eyes.

Lynn Cazabon, associate chair and associate professor of art, worked with students to create a series of mural-sized prints from historical photographs of the railroad in the Arbutus area, which are on permanent display in the new Arbutus Branch.

Intercultural Video Communication students, led by Bill Shewbridge, director of the New Media Studio, collaborated with community residents to combine photos, images and oral history for a series of short films. In “Arbutus Stories,” residents reflect on the community, share experiences and describe their hometown.

The digital stories are available on the Baltimore County Public Library and UMBC New Media Studio websites.

Below is an overview of the project:

Below is the digital story, “38 and a Half Years”:

Professor of the Practice of English Christopher Corbett will speak at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum on Saturday, October 8, at 1 p.m.

Corbett’s talk will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the end of the Pony Express. Corbett is the author of “Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth & Lasting Legend of the Pony Express.” A book signing and opportunity to tour the “Pony Express: Romance vs. Reality” exhibit will follow.

This program is free. For more information, contact the National Postal Museum at 202-633-5533 or NPMprograms@si.edu.

Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, was mentioned in a September 18 New York Times Sunday Book Review essay entitled “The Children’s Authors Who Broke the Rules.”

Among the authors mentioned in the essay is Shel Silverstein, who wrote “The Giving Tree.” “[‘The Giving Tree’] was embraced by Christians as a parable of selflessness and has been denounced by feminists as a patriarchal fantasy in morality-tale clothing,” writes essayist Pamela Paul. “Ellen Handler Spitz, the author of the classic study ‘Inside Picture Books,’ wrote that the story ‘perpetuates the myth of the selfless, all-giving mother who exists only to be used and the image of a male child who can offer no reciprocity, express no gratitude, feel no empathy—an insatiable creature who encounters no limits for his demands.'”

Sports fans were urged to think carefully about the language they use to describe their teams’ victory in a story that appeared on the Savage-Guilford Patch.com site.

Christine Mallinson, assistant professor of language, literacy, and culture, commented on a number of tweets following the Ravens-Steelers matchup that used the term “rape” to describe the Ravens’ victory. The Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault brought attention to these tweets through their own Twitter page.

“The use of the word ‘rape’ in a sports metaphor may be seen as particularly disturbing because it draws a parallel between a rape, a horrifying event, and a positive athletic outcome—the successful domination of one team or athlete over another,” Mallison said.

“Tweets About Rape a Cause for Concern” appeared on the site on September 16.

If you missed the Humanities Forum lecture with history professor Rebecca Boehling, you can read about it on Catonsville’s Patch.com site.

“UMBC Professor Brings Holocaust Story to Life,” which appeared on the site on September 15, recaps the event and the coincidence that brought Boehling and Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg, professor of biology, together.

Ostrand-Rosenberg had recently discovered boxes of holocaust-era letters in her aging mother’s closet. “One day I went into the department office, and I was in the Xerox room chatting with a colleague, and she said, ‘You should talk with Rebecca Boehling,” Ostrand-Rosenberg said.

Boehling and her co-author, Uta Larkey of Goucher College, eventually began sorting out a unique and complex correspondence that crossed continents and generations. The result is Boehling and Larkey’s new book, “Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust.”

Catonsville personalities remembered what they were doing on and after September 11, 2001, in a Patch.com story entitled “Recalling the Days After September 11, 2001.”

Among those that remembered their reaction to the day was Rebecca Adelman, assistant professor of media and communication studies. She remembers how she was struck by how everyone was processing what they were seeing, and that interest eventually led her to study the imagery of the War on Terror.

As part of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Humanities Forum presents a lecture by Ilan Stavans, the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture (Spanish) at Amherst College, who will speak on “Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language,” Wednesday, October 5, 4 p.m., on the seventh floor of the Albin O. Kuhn Library.

Stavans will explore the cultural and linguistic significance of this distinctly American language, comparing it to other languages of minority groups in America such as Yiddish and Black English. He will explain who speaks Spanglish, why it has so many varieties and what its existence says about the United States. He will also speculate on whether it will ever become a standard language.

Stavans has taught courses on a wide array of topics such as Spanglish, Jorge Luis Borges, modern American poetry, Latin music, Don Quixote, Gabriel García Márquez, Modernismo, popular culture in Hispanic America, world Jewish writers, the cultural history of the Spanish language, Pablo Neruda, the history of the Spanish language, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Yiddish literature, Jewish-Hispanic relations, cinema, Latin American art, and U.S.-Latino culture. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University.

This event is sponsored in part by the Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication and the Language, Literacy & Culture Ph.D. Program.

Rebecca Boehling, professor of history and director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities, appeared on Philadelphia’s WIP-AM on Sunday, September 11. She discussed her new book, “Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust” on the program “Conversations with Peter Solomon.”

In a story entitled “Scientists Hint at Why Laughter Feels So Good,” the New York Times reports on a study that attempts to pin down exactly why laughing until it hurts feels so good.

The study suggests that the pleasure lies in the physical act of laughing. The simple muscular exertions involved in producing the familiar “ha, ha, ha,” he said, trigger an increase in endorphins, the brain chemicals known for their feel-good effect.

Robert Provine, professor of psychology and a noted expert on laughter, said he thought the study was “a significant contribution” to a field of study that dates back 2,000 years or so.

Tyson King-Meadows, associate professor of political science, was elected president of the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS), effective March 17, 2011.

King-Meadows joined UMBC in 2003 as an assistant professor of political science and recently earned promotion to the rank of associate professor with tenure. He is a Faculty Fellow of UMBC’s Honors College and is an affiliate of the UMBC’s Department of Public Policy and the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (MIPAR). His service to UMBC includes membership on the Shriver Center Faculty Advisory Board, on the Honors College Advisory Board, on the committee for the Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD), and on the President’s Commission for Women. He recently became co-chair of the CAHSS Black Faculty Committee as well as chair of the Honors College Advisory Board.

His research addresses legislative politics, racial representation, political parties,
elections and public opinion. He is co-author with Thomas F. Schaller, a colleague in UMBC’s Department of Political Science, of “Devolution and Black State Legislators: Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-first Century” (2006), and he is sole author of “When the Letter Betrays the Spirit: Voting Rights Enforcement and African American Participation from
Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama” (2011). He was recently nominated to appear in the “People” section of PS: Political Science and Politics, an academic journal published by the American Political Science Association (APSA).

King-Meadows has received prestigious research awards and recognition for teaching and community service. His current projects examine public attitudes about redistricting and the success of black candidates in contests for the U.S. Senate.