School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies

The University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) would like to congratulate the inaugural recipients of the Foxworth Creative Enterprise Initiative (Foxworth Initiative), including Psyche Williams-Forson, associate professor in the Department of American Studies; Ana Patricia Rodriguez, associate professor in the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures; and Leigh Wilson Smiley, associate professor of theatre and director of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.

“We are excited and proud to announce our first cohort of Foxworth Creative Enterprise Initiative recipients and courses,” said Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean for the College of Arts and Humanities. "Funding from the Foxworths will enable faculty to further engage students in the lived experiences of people from diverse heritages, traditions and histories, and facilitate their reflections upon the role of the humanities in promoting civic values within the contemporary United States.”

This year’s Foxworth Initiative funds the development of three arts and humanities courses to support advanced teaching and engaged research by scholars whose interests examine community defined issues and whose products and documentation appropriately assess student learning and community engagement.

Courses include a variety of topics like Food, Trauma, and Sustainability; Latina/o Transmigration and Transnationalism; and Community Partnership for the Performing Arts. The Foxworth Initiative also partners each course or “Creative Enterprise Team” with community partners like Prince George’s County Food Equity Council and Casa De Maryland to encourage the inclusion of the arts and humanities disciplines in the application of solutions to pressing issues like food insecurity, climate change, immigration, poverty and racism.

This initiative is made possible by the generosity of two college alumni, Domonique and Ashley Foxworth; Domonique ’04 is a graduate of American Studies, and Ashley ’06 is a proud English alumna. Ultimately the Foxworth Initiative is intended to enrich arts and humanities education and scholarship, and support projects that address enduring or emerging themes central to the arts and humanities or questions arising from other disciplines to which the arts and humanities might speak. For more information, visit www.arhu.umd.edu/foxworth.

INAGURAL FOXWORTH FACULTY COHORT:
 

Faculty Lead: Psyche Williams-Forson, Department of American Studies

Course: AMST 418G: Food, Trauma, and Sustainability

Social Issue: Food insecurity

Approach: Students will work with community partners like the Prince George’s County Food Equity Council to help reduce food vulnerabilities in the county.

Interdisciplinary in focus, students will draw from the fields of American Studies, anthropology, cultural studies and women’s studies to explore issues of food insecurity and urban food deserts. The project will engage these issues in the context of Prince George’s County (e.g. Sheridan Community Garden, Prince George’s County Food Equity Council), and in addition to their hands-on engagement students will learn about issues of food economies, acquisition and distribution circuits.

Community benefit: Communities made up of elderly and migrant populations, identified by partnering organizations like Casa De Maryland, will benefit from food delivery, work in community gardens and will be able to share their life stories with students.

Faculty Lead: Ana Patricia Rodriguez, Department of Spanish and Portuguese 

Course: SPAN 408i: Latina/o Transmigration and Transnationalism

Social Issue: Invisibility of Salvadorian migrant communities

Approach: The Salvadorian diaspora makes up the third largest Latino migrant community in the United States, many of whom reside in the Washington, D.C. metro area. SPAN 408i will bring students into conversation with this community to build and archive a digital storytelling project.  The course will explore the complex migration factors that lead to the Salvadorian diaspora.  Students will interact with non-English speakers to understand Latin American migration patterns with the members of the community, drawing on the powerful narrative tradition of testimonio, will have an opportunity to challenge their social and political invisibility through these documentation practices. At the end of the course, students and community members will present aspects of this digital storytelling project at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Community benefit: UMD students in SPAN 408i will work with alongside the Latino Resource and Justice Center (CARECEN) in their community outreach to members of the Salvadorian diaspora. Together they will build a digital archive of Salvadorian migration, experiences of civil war and unrest, to form part of a larger archive in San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and El Salvador.

Faculty Lead: Leigh Wilson Smiley, School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies

Course: TDPS358P Community Partnership for the Performing Arts

Social Issue: Racism, immigration and adolescent identity

Approach: Students from UMD and the Latin American Youth Center will work together to learn and apply performance skills of listening, voice and working in front of an audience. They will apply these techniques as they collaboratively build a performance piece, which they will use to explore and express a range of social issues that affect them as adolescents and young adults.  Inspired by the work of Jerzy Grotowski, Augusto Boal and James Gilligan, among others, they will develop storytelling skills as a means of expression, empowerment and imagination. 

Community benefit: Students explore and develop community partnership skills to become trained cultural field workers who will do transformative community based work. Latin American Youth Center.

by James Chute, The San Diego Union-Tribune

We’re always moving. But most of the time, we’re not even aware of it.

On a recent Saturday in the Old Globe Theatre’s rehearsal hall in Balboa Park, dancer Karen Bradley asked a group of innovators to pay special attention.

She took them through a series of exercises, from being still and feeling the subtle movement in their bodies, to using overt movements to express an idea.

“The point I was trying to make is that movement — when we behave — it’s actually data; it’s information for us,” said Bradley, director of graduate studies at the University of Maryland School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies and one of the faculty members for Balboa Park’s Art of Science Learning project.

“When we move creatively, we generate choices, which perhaps we wouldn’t think of in our (brain’s) frontal lobe right away, but stuff bubbles up from the back as we notice what we’re doing.”

So what does this have to do with addressing a significant, real-life challenge, which is the goal of this group created by the Art of Science Learning?

“If you are trying to solve a problem, and you want to see many different possible outcomes, sometimes moving it offers you an array of possibilities,” Bradley said. “Some of them are silly, and goofy, and you go, ‘OK, that’s not working.’ And some of them are like, ‘Wow, I wouldn’t have thought of that otherwise.’ ”

The San Diego Incubator for Innovation — where the arts are integrated with science, technology, engineering and math (also known as STEM) — is now in session.

To read more, please click here.

"Arial","sans-serif"">For Immediate Release, November 19, 2013

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A crowd of over 600 people filled the Dekelboum Concert Hall last night to hear actor and children’s author John Lithgow, who appeared as part of the University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities Worldwise Arts & Humanities Dean’s Lecture Series.

Known to millions as everything from a “Dirty Rotten Scoundrel” to a visiting alien, Lithgow charmed the audience with his erudite humor and his wisdom, drawing on his distinguished stage and screen career as well as his longtime commitment to American education.

In a conversation with Sheri Parks, UMD associate professor of American studies and former NPR host, Lithgow entertained the audience with a lighthearted and spirited defense of the arts and humanities.

“The humanities and arts are an indispensable part of a child’s education and development,” said Lithgow. “In an era where STEM subjects and test prep dominate the educational diet, it is essential students be provided their minimum daily allowance of this key source of nourishment and enrichment.”

Lithgow, the author of numerous children’s books, is also a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. As such, he encouraged the audience to join him in “seconding the motion” whenever the value of the arts and humanities is discussed.

The reason he said is “simple and inarguable: a society, or a nation, or a world that embraces the arts and humanities is a much better one.”

The commission’s report, “The Heart of the Matter,” released in June, has since sparked conversations across the country about the myriad reasons the humanities are vital to the future of our nation. Lithgow’s appearance at UMD added even more voices to the discussion.

Another component of the Dean's Lecture Series involves speakers interacting with students and faculty in smaller settings. Earlier in the day, Lithgow conducted a master class with UMD theatre students—a unique opportunity for them to learn from an Emmy and Tony Award winner.

“It was huge to have a seasoned professional come in and say they are doing the same work as you,” said Shane O’Loughlin, senior theatre major in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. “As artists we’re always creating, questioning and doubting if our work is right or good enough.”

Photos courtesy of John Consoli.
Class is in session with John Lithgow and students from UMD’s Theatre 425: The Actor’s Process II.

 About the University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities

The College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland is home to over 4,500 undergraduate and graduate students, 14 academic departments, five independent research centers, and over 322 tenured and tenure-track faculty. The arts and humanities at the university cover the cultures of the world, past and present, in all their rich variety. Through teaching and research that investigates human experience, thought, expression and creativity, the college aims to educate global citizens who assess received opinion, make independent judgments, and value the transforming power of the imagination. The college is leading the way in interdisciplinary approaches to the arts and humanities by developing emerging fields like digital humanities, and offering area study programs that draw on multiple fields to open exciting, multifaceted views of such regions of the world as Latin America, the Middle East and East Asia.