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College of Arts and Humanities

3/22/16

Written by Tom Hall & Rob Sivak, WYPR

If it’s true that every person has a story, is it also true that every city has one too?  What is Baltimore’s Story?  What narratives have emerged since the traumatic events following the death of Freddie Gray, and what do those narratives tell us about Baltimore’s identity?  Such questions are at the core of a new series of public events beginning Wednesday called Baltimore Stories: Narratives and the Life of an American City.

Joining Tom in the studio with a preview of this innovative, community-driven series are two of its guiding lights:  Sheri Parks, Associate Dean at the University of Maryland's College of Arts and Humanities in College Park, and Dr. Phoebe Stein, Executive Director of the MD Humanities Council.

Read more and listen to podcast  here 

The Baltimore Stories project has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is a collaboration between the University of Maryland, Maryland Humanities Council, the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.

To learn more: go.umd.edu/BmoreStories

6137 McKeldin Library Special Events Room
Thursday, March 24, 2016 - 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM

The day after the Public Forum, the Arts and Humanities Center for Synergy invites campus researchers and artists to

Westminster Hall, 519 W Fayette St. Baltimore, MD 21201
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 - 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM

This project is designed to help examine the roles of narrative in the life and identity of the city.

ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt is asking an important question for the world of professional golf after Tiger Woods’ victory at the Masters Tournament nearly 20 years ago: “Why haven’t more African Americans joined the game?” 

In collaboration with the University of Maryland’s Arts and Humanities Center for Synergy, Van Pelt is moderating a daylong symposium, “Race, Social Class and Professional Golf,” on Friday, March 4, to ask and address questions of race and social class in professional golf.

Van Pelt believes it is important that we engage in a dialogue on issues of race and culture and how we use language in framing controversial topics. As this year’s Masters Tournament approaches in April, questions of diversity in sports resurface in our conversations and in the media.

The symposium is free and open to the public. To register, click here.

Van Pelt has been covering golf for years. He kickstarted his sportscasting career at the Golf Channel and then moved on to ESPN, where he currently serves as a presenter for SportsCenter and is one of the network’s top golf correspondents. He covers major golf tournaments including the Masters Tournament and the U.S. Open.

This is an arts and humanities themed race discussion to support the campus’s initiative–The Maryland Dialogues on Diversity and Community–a series of events that aims to help advance discussions of identity, difference and commonality. The Maryland Dialogues (include link) emphasize issues of race and racism, not in isolation but in relation to issues of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and language, each of which will be the focus of future lectures and symposiums on campus.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Maryland’s Golf Course and the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. 

Media space is limited; credentialed media only; advance media registration required.

WHEN:

Friday, March 4, 2016, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.

9 a.m. – Welcome, Bonnie Thornton Dill, professor and dean, College of Arts and Humanities

Introduction: Scott Van Pelt, alumnus, ESPN commentator and anchor, SportsCenter

9:15 a.m. – Session 1: Journalists and industry officials

  • Steve Burkowski, reporter and producer, Golf Central, Golf Channel
  • George Bradford, alumnus, PGA golfer

10:30 a.m. – Session 2: Academics and authors

  • Othello Harris, sports sociologist, professor, University of Miami of Ohio
  • Jane Stangl, dean, first-year class, Smith College; sports sociologist, consultant to LPGA
  • Rose Harper, founder, Grass Ceiling Inc.; originator, Golf Digest Minority Golf Summit and PGA Tour Wives Association

Noon – Lunch break

1:30 p.m. – Session 3: The life and work of an African American golfer

  • Harold Varner III, PGA golfer

3 p.m. – Session 4: Q/A and action recommendations

  • Jon Guhl, Middle Atlantic executive director, PGA 
  • Clint Sanchez, executive director, The First Tee of Greater Washington, D.C.

WHERE:

University of Maryland Golf Course, 3800 Golf Course Road, College Park, MD 20742

MEDIA:

Media coverage of the event is welcome; however, space is limited and restricted to credentialed media who have pre-registered. Media badges will be distributed on site.

To register, media representatives should send email requests and RSVP to:

Nicky Everette, director of marketing and communications for the College of Arts and Humanities, at meve@umd.edu or 301-405-6714.

Please indicate: name(s) and position(s), media affiliation, credentials possessed [these will be required at check-in] and full contact information so we can confirm your request. We will email you a confirmation of your registration, along with parking and check-in details.

University of Maryland Golf Course
Friday, March 04, 2016 - 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM

A daylong symposium investigating the issues of race and social class in professional golf.

Gildenhorn Recital Hall, The Clarice
Tuesday, March 22, 2016 - 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM

Come celebrate NEA and NEH's 50th anniversaries by discussing the societal impacts of the arts and humanities.

Tawes, Room 0134
Friday, February 19, 2016 - 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM

As part of its search for a Director of Andrew W.

1102J Francis Scott Key Hall
Friday, April 29, 2016 - 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM

Campus visit by Bradford Hesse, Chief of the Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch (HCIRB) of the National Cancer Institute.

Written by Taylor Swaak, The Diamondback

Photo Courtesy of The Diamondback

Bergis Jules and Ed Summers developed a vision to efficiently amass millions of tweets and make them more accessible to the public after the social media explosion that followed Michael Brown's death in August 2014.

"The images and the videos were so powerful," said Jules, university and political papers archivist at the University of California, Riverside. "That got me thinking that there's something going on here, and we need to try and capture this as best as we can."

A year and a half later, The University of Maryland's Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities — in collaboration with UC Riverside and Washington University in St. Louis — announced Jan. 20 a $517,000 two-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the "Documenting the Now: Supporting Scholarly Use and Preservation of Social Media Content" project.

Read more here

 

COLLEGE PARK, MD -- A two-year, $517,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will fund a project called “Documenting the Now: Supporting Scholarly Use and Preservation of Social Media Content.” Washington University in St. Louis, the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland and the University of California, Riverside, are collaborators on the project.

The project responds to the public’s use of social media for chronicling historically significant events as well as demand from scholars and archivists seeking a user-friendly means of collecting and preserving digital content.

As part of the project, the three institutions are developing DocNow, a cloud-ready, open-source application that will be used for collecting tweets and their associated metadata and Web content.

Twitter emerged as one of the most important channels of communication during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., when it served as a primary conduit for disseminating information. DocNow will be developed using tweets and Web content related to the events in Ferguson, resulting in a data set that can be used in research.

“The DocNow application will provide scholars with new ways of gathering and analyzing data from Twitter, which is a tremendous source of documentation on contemporary events,” said Chris Freeland, project co-principal investigator and associate university librarian at Washington University in St. Louis.

DocNow is among a growing number of applications that make social media datasets available for noncommercial, scholarly research. The app will be specifically designed to help authenticated users tap into Twitter streams to identify Web content that is of value for current and future research.

“We at MITH are honored to be partnering with Mellon, Washington University and the University of California to ensure that the documentary record around events such as the protests in Ferguson can be studied in an ethical, timely and cost-effective manner,” said Ed Summers co-principal investigator and technical lead on the project “I am specifically interested in the challenges of not only collecting and analyzing the data, but also packaging and archiving it for future use.”

Scholars on the project also seek to produce a white paper on ethical, copyright and access issues related to the collection of social media content.

Bergis Jules, co-principal investigator and community lead at the University of California, Riverside, hopes the DocNow project will be a catalyst for community building around the scholarly use and preservation of social media archives.

“Community building will be vitally important as we continue to develop standards and effective practices around the collection and access to this rich content, said Jules. “I’m excited The Mellon Foundation is supporting this project as it will be an important contribution to scholarship on social media archiving.”

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About the University of Maryland College Park

The University of Maryland is the state's flagship university and one of the nation's preeminent public research universities. A global leader in research, entrepreneurship and innovation, the university is home to more than 37,000 students, 9,000 faculty and staff, and 250 academic programs. Its faculty includes three Nobel laureates, two Pulitzer Prize winners, 49 members of the national academies and scores of Fulbright scholars. The institution has a $1.8 billion operating budget, secures $500 million annually in external research funding and recently completed a $1 billion fundraising campaign. For more information, visit www.umd.edu

About Washington University in St. Louis

Washington University in St. Louis was founded in 1853 as a non-denominational community of scholars and now ranks among the nation’s leaders in higher education. The university’s undergraduate, graduate and professional programs are highly regarded. Its libraries’ hold distinguished collections of rare books, manuscripts and that draw scholars from around the world. For more information about the university and its libraries, visit wustl.edu and libraries.wustl.edu.

About the University of California, Riverside

The University of California, Riverside is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment has exceeded 21,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of more than $1 billion. A broadcast studio with fiber cable to the AT&T Hollywood hub is available for live or taped interviews. UCR also has ISDN for radio interviews. To learn more, call (951) UCR-NEWS.

Photos by Jamelle Bouie

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