Features

By Gabriela Martínez

Angélique Kidjo, Grammy award-winning singer-songwriter and activist from Benin, visited the University of Maryland for the WORLDWISE: Arts and Humanities Dean’s Lecture Series to talk about her life story and the role of music in activism. 

As soon as she walked onstage and sat down for her live discussion with Sheri Parks, associate dean of University of Maryland’s College of Arts and Humanities, Angélique Kidjo looked at the audience and said “You are all so quiet. We’re talking about art, man.”

Using her own lively stories about her childhood in a village in Benin, Kidjo captured the audience and lightened the mood.  An inquisitive child—known affectionately in her village as “Where, what and how?”—Kidjo was privileged for having parents who greatly valued her intellectual development.

Kidjo’s mother, a skilled costume designer, created a theater in her community.  As a child, Kidjo would spend time climbing in and out of the animal costumes her mother made. One night, when her mother did not have enough actors between scenes, she made Kidjo go onstage.  Not knowing what to do, Kidjo decided to belt out a song.

It was after that moment that Kidjo decided that she wanted to spend her life onstage.

When asked what it feels like to be the queen of African music, Kidjo responded  “I don’t believe in kings or queens.”

She said her nature is to defy structures of power, which she did after deciding to leave Benin, having realized that the country’s communist regime was not going to foster her creativity and desire to grow intellectually. 

Escaping Benin was not easy, she said. At the time, citizens who wanted to leave the country needed to get authorization from the government. Kidjo, however, was lucky. Her brother’s friend, who was working as airport security at the time, let her board the plane while his supervisor was in the bathroom.

“I’ve never ran so fast in my life,” Kidjo said.

When Kidjo arrived in France, she experienced racism and cultural estrangement in French society, and at the educational institution she graduated from—the CIM Jazz School of Paris.

On her way to register at the school, Kidjo asked for directions from two students.

“Jazz is not for African people,” one of the students told her.

The head of the school, having overheard what the girls had said to Kidjo, told Kidjo that she could prove those students wrong. At the end of the school year, he introduced her to the person who produced her debut album “Parakou.”

Since then, Kidjo’s fame has skyrocketed. She won her first Grammy in 2008 for her album “Djin Djin” and was named one of the 40 most powerful celebrities in Africa by Forbes.

Kidjo also discussed her work with the Batonga Foundation for Girls in Africa, which aims to empower girls and young women in Africa through educational opportunities. Kidjo is currently working on a cellphone-based program that collects information about girls in different African villages and maps it out according to different locations.

The purpose of the program is to find out how girls are living, if they are in school, forcefully married, or going through other types of difficult living situations. Kidjo’s foundation will develop an educational approach for girls based on the needs of the community reflected through the data.

For Kidjo, the first step in creating humanitarian programs for Africa, is giving voices to people and finding out what are their genuine needs.

“I don’t believe anyone can make any change in Africa if the African people are not in the center of the change,” Kidjo said.  “If you don’t ask them what they need, how can you bring a program that makes any sense to people?”

After the discussion, Moses Namara ‘16, a computer science major originally from Uganda, asked Kidjo for advice on how to improve the education system in different African countries.

In response to Namara’s question, Kidjo advocated for the role of youth in a country’s social and educational development, at the same time warning against starting revolutions and “breaking a system” without a plan.

“The platform is there—use it wisely,” said Kidjo, who is optimistic about the power of the Internet, but also wary about its potential to isolate people.

 After graduating from the University of Maryland, Namara will return to Uganda to teach basic programming classes at different local universities, including the Kampala International University.

Toward the end of the program, students gathered around Kidjo to discuss issues of colonialism and social injustice in Africa.

“She is very engaging,” said Peace Gwam ‘17, an economics and history major. “I like that she really called us to action as young students.”

Soulyana Lakew ’17, an economics major originally from Ethiopia, is interested in the role of the western world in the development of Africa.

“It is so refreshing to meet people with integrity,” Lakew said. “A lot of the role models we are given in society are so corrupt. To find someone who is able to use their voice for good and who is true to their word is so inspiring.”

A total $34,000 awarded by the university to Jorge Bravo, assistant professor of classics in the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU), will help fund efforts to continue archeological exploration of the ancient Greek port of Kenchreai.

Bravo will travel to Greece in the summer to conduct preliminary investigations in new areas of Kenchreai, the eastern port of ancient Corinth. The work is the first part of Bravo’s larger plan to seek permits from the Greek government for further excavation and to secure future grants.

Funding, which is being provided by the Division of Research, ARHU and the Department of Classics, will help to pay for soil coring and GIS modeling of the harbor. The university’s support will also help sustain a field school for undergraduate and graduate students to continue to explore ancient Greek culture, a program he helped develop with an earlier $5,000 seed grant from ARHU.

Bravo said that the coring work will help researchers define what the environment was like for the area’s settlers and how they interacted with it as it changed over time. A geophysical survey using ground-penetrating radar and other methods will also help give researchers an idea of what lies beneath the earth’s surface. Corinth was a thriving commercial area from as early as about 700 B.C. through the Roman Empire to around 500 A.D., but as Bravo explained, the port was forced to move during that time as the environment changed.

“The general suspicion is that it was a process of silting up of the harbor over time,” Bravo said.

Bravo co-directs the Kenchreai Excavations along with Joseph L. Rife, associate professor of classics and anthropology at Vanderbilt University.  The Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. also supports the project.

Kenchreai was first explored by American archeologists in the 1960s.  Bravo said that he became interested in the site after collaborating with others who had also worked in the area. Funding will help build collaborations between the university’s departments of geography, anthropology, history, classics and others.

“It’s really building collaborations between the humanities and the other schools,” Bravo said.

In addition to the new seaside excavation work, he said, students attending the four-week field school will also have the opportunity to explore remains believed to have served as an ancient residence and warehouse, nearby Roman tombs and other sites and museums in the region.

For more information about the field school in Greece and how to apply, visit:  http://globalmaryland.umd.edu/offices/education-abroad/program/11005. 

The College of Arts and Humanities
Office of Marketing and Communications
September 23, 2014

REMARKS BY DEAN THORNTON DILL TO ARHU FACULTY, STAFF AND STUDENTS
Gildenhorn Recital Hall, Clarice Smith Center

State of the College Address

Introduction| Advancing our Common Purpose| Building Community| Finances | Diversity & Inclusion| Conclusion

3:40 p.m.

Introduction

THE DEAN: Each fall, it is my privilege to provide an update on our accomplishments, announce new initiatives and share my perspective on the overall well-being of the college. Let me begin by saying, the state of the college is strong. Your vitality, creativity and sheer brilliance continue to chart new paths and gain national and international recognition. Your resourcefulness helps us find innovative ways to address our challenges. The college is strong because of you.

Today, I assess our progress in relationship to the goals I outlined when I took this position three years ago. They are: advancing our common purpose, building community and promoting diversity and inclusion. I will also highlight a few of the many accomplishments featured in the forthcoming 2013-14 Year in Review.

Advancing our Common Purpose

In some ways, advancing our common purpose is a grand challenge for the arts and humanities in a period when society conceptualizes grand challenges as broad issues in search of scientific and technological solutions. We know that scientific discoveries and technologies that change the world are ones that capture the imagination and interests of human cultures and societies. We also know that knowledge from the arts and humanities is key to understanding the meaning, implementation, utilization, and consequences of those scientific and technological discoveries. Our responsibility is to demonstrate that knowledge to others.

I thought about this when I saw a recent television commercial for a national for-profit university. A man in a business suit walks out of the rain and enters an office building through a set of large, double doors. A second man rushes up behind him and tries to open the door, but it’s locked. The eyes and nose of a head appear through a narrow rectangular viewer near the top of the door. The man who is trying to get in says, “Hi, I came to drop off my resume.”  “PASSWORD,” replies the voice of the eyes and nose. “WHAT’S THE PASSWORD?” The man shouts, “Synergy?”

In our college, “synergy” is the password. It’s the word that we use to symbolize the unique ability of the arts and humanities at Maryland to link humanistic ideas and creative traditions to modern innovation. In doing so, we provide an example for the campus and the community about the importance of the arts and humanities in addressing vexing problems confronting society and the world today. 

Arts & Humanities Center for Synergy

In January 2014, we launched the website for the Arts and Humanities Center for Synergy, the physical and virtual manifestation of a long desired and much discussed Humanities Center. The purpose of ARHU Synergy is to provide a location for scholars, students, and the public to participate in multidisciplinary investigation and expression of the human condition. We do this by infusing the research and practice of the arts and humanities into new locations and areas of endeavor both inside and outside of the academy. The term “synergy” was chosen because it already resonates in disciplines across the university, referring to an interaction between two or more forces in which their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.

Under the leadership of Associate Dean Sheri Parks, ARHU Synergy has introduced programs that promote and support the collaborative and interdisciplinary initiatives within the college, across the university, and with external professional and community partners; and research and scholarship in the arts and humanities. 

Collaborative initiatives of ARHU Synergy include:

• WORLDWISE: Arts and Humanities Dean’s Lecture Series, which this year features speakers on the environment, trauma and healing and innovation. Walter Isaacson, biographer of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, and President and CEO of the Aspen Institute will launch the series in November.
• On October 11, ARHU Synergy will lead a Think-A-Thon in College Park that will bring university administrators, city officials and residents together to envision the impact arts and culture can have on plans to reinvigorate Baltimore Avenue and revitalize the City of College Park.
• Last year we began a partnership with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to promote a dialogue on the importance of the humanities to the future of our nation as discussed in their report and video “The Heart of the Matter.” We brought to campus commission members John Lithgow, Annette Gordon-Reed and later Stephen Kidd, director of the National Humanities Alliance. ARHU has been credited by the Academy as being one of three national leaders in advancing the conversation about this important report.
• Community engagement in scholarship and teaching has been a key mechanism for linking humanities and arts to social issues and underserved populations. Last year we launched the first year of a three-year pilot program called the Foxworth Creative Enterprise Initiative. Today, I share a short clip of the Foxworth promotional video highlighting Professor Leigh Wilson Smiley's students’ work with the Latin American Youth Center in Hyattsville. Later this week I will release the full video and you will receive an announcement for the next round of faculty applications to teach Foxworth courses.

The other major focus of ARHU Synergy—facilitating research in the college—is already having an impact. ARHU Synergy has provided workshops and training for 110 faculty on the fundamentals of grant writing, budgeting and fellowships. In fiscal year ‘14, our faculty submitted 30% more research proposals than in the previous year and more than doubled the amount of money requested. It’s too early yet to know the results of these requests, but we’re optimistic that this increased activity will yield greater reward.  

One of our most celebrated accomplishments with research support was with the Department of Classics, which successfully competed to become the sole recipient of a half-million dollar grant from the National Italian American Foundation. That grant is for new research on the legacy of ancient Rome as reflected in the architecture and art of the United States’ capital and in the nation’s system of governance. 

Please visit the website  www.arhusynergy.umd.edu to get informed and involved. Also, be on the lookout for a forthcoming collaborative virtual workspace that will facilitate the formation of research groups around multidisciplinary topics of interest. 

Arts at Maryland

Advocacy for the arts and humanities takes many forms. In late summer, the possibility of a campus partnership with the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design was laid to rest. I am convinced that the discussions generated on campus and in the local art community have been beneficial. First, they led to new ideas and conversations about academic programs and artistic engagements that could benefit the entire campus. Second, they have enhanced campus commitment to foundational principles about the role of the arts in our university. Among these principles are that the arts and humanities are a core component of a quality education, a gateway to cultural understanding and conflict resolution, and can enhance and refine the entrepreneurial abilities and creative talents that today’s students bring to college. In an effort to capitalize on the energy and insights generated through this process, I have been working with others to propose and develop ideas that will help President Loh achieve his vision for the arts at Maryland. Our ideas include a campus based institute for art and design innovation; a program in digital media studies; and the integration of arts and culture into the revitalization of College Park. 

Undergraduate Education

We are launching two new undergraduate initiatives this year:

• First, we are collaborating with the University Career Center to house Kate Juhl, Program Director, in the college’s Office of Student Affairs four days a week. This will help us bring career advising and engagement to our students in a much more direct manner.
• Second, we are launching a first-year seminar for ARHU majors designed to empower and acclimate them as they transition into the university. It introduces them to different methods of humanistic study and explores how multiple disciplinary perspectives can be used richly and critically to understand human beings, cultures and societies. The call for proposals went out this week.

Faculty and Staff Accomplishments

Whether working in interdisciplinary partnerships, as independent scholars or supporting the work of the campus in other ways, our faculty and staff continue to garner prestigious national awards as well as important campus recognitions. While you can learn about these in greater detail on the ARHU website or in the forthcoming Year in Review, I would like to acknowledge a few of them today. National awards announced in the past year include a Guggenheim to Holly Brewer, Harvard University’s W.E.B. Dubois Medal to Ira Berlin and a Korean Government Precious Crown Medal of the Order of Cultural Merit to Robert Ramsey. Faculty members have received numerous book awards and students in or affiliated with ARHU have won a Fulbright, 12 Borens and nine Critical Language Scholarships for the current academic year.

Campus level awards that deserve special recognition are: Jeffrey Herf, Distinguished University Professor, Jonathan Auerbach Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and Linda Mabbs, the Kirwan Faculty Research and Scholarship Prize. These three colleagues will be honored at the university convocation on October 7th.

Marilee Lindemann, recently appointed executive director of College Park Scholars, received the Freedom and Liberation Medal from the President’s Commission on LGBT Issues; and Jessica Enoch, Jason Rudy and Lynn Bolles received Graduate Faculty Mentor of the Year Awards. Jessica White in the college’s Office of Student Affairs won the 2013-14 Provost Professional Academic Advisor of the Year Award, and Philosophy advisor Christopher Vogel won the 2013-14 Provost Graduate Advisor of the Year award. There are numerous other outstanding accomplishments and I invite you to join me in celebrating all of our colleagues and students who have earned special recognition. 

Building Community

Faculty

Our faculty are pivotal in our efforts to advance our common purpose and you have just been introduced to our 15 newest faculty members. As you can see from their bios in the program, we continue to attract to our campus people with stellar accomplishments and exceptional promise. So, I will repeat what I said last year: “The responsibility of those of us who are seasoned members of this community is to provide the resources, intellectual climate and mentoring that will permit the talents of our new faculty to bloom and encourage them to remain rooted in University of Maryland soil.” This is one of the most important aspects in the second goal of building community.

Staff

We also seek to build community by supporting staff through the formation of a staff council. That council is now in its second year of operation and it has been officially incorporated into the College Plan of Organization. Its chair, Claire Goebler from SLLC, sits on the Collegiate Council. This year the staff council is planning a variety of events including helping staff with the annual review (PRD) process, professional development, healthy workplace activities and community service.

Finances

Community and shared governance are particularly important in times of fiscal volatility and it is perhaps stating the obvious to say that public colleges and universities today are operating in a fiscally challenging environment. “At the campus level,” to quote from an American Association of State Colleges and Universities Policy Brief, “tough decisions involving institutional spending, resource reallocation and mission-sustaining investments are the new norm.”

Salary compression has been an important concern that has had a corrosive effect on faculty and staff morale. Over the last two years, we have found ways to begin to address this issue through strategic use of the merit pool. This has been a collaboration between individual units and the Office of the Dean and it is one that we will strive to continue.

Nevertheless, resource issues deriving from a structural deficit at the campus level continue to result in budget cuts. It is also now clear that some proposed faculty and staff hires must be reconsidered. The move to the Big 10 heightens awareness of our funding limitations as compared with our peers, yet it also provides a springboard for rethinking resource allocation to promote strategic growth in the future. Both President Loh and Provost Rankin have expressed their full commitment to this rethinking as a means to support excellence at College Park.

Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity Plan

College priorities and actions for diversity and inclusion are described in the Diversity Task Force Report and College Implementation Plan, distributed in fall 2013. When you review it—which I hope you will do regularly—please note that we affirm that work on diversity and inclusion takes place in our classrooms, hiring and promotions, scholarship, and community engagement. As we commit ourselves to fairness and equity, we embrace the unique position of arts and humanities disciplines in advancing scholarship, creativity, and teaching about identity and difference. 

New Faculty Hires

This fall, I take special note of seven hires across the fields of LGBT, African American, and US Latino/a studies. These hires diversify the faculty and bring diversity and inclusive scholarship to the core curriculum across the college, with notable gains in American Studies, English, History, the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, and Women’s Studies. Moreover, our 100% success in promotion and tenure cases this past year moves the college faculty closer to gender parity in the tenured ranks, simultaneously advancing expertise in fields led by women scholars.

Advance

Finally, the participation of ARHU faculty in the National Science Foundation (NSF)—funded ADVANCE program has helped women and faculty of color build support networks among peers and mentors, receive seed grants for collaborative research, and has extended the sensibilities of work-life balance and the rights of family and medical leave to all faculty, including those in the professional tracks. I commend Laura Rosenthal, who will serve as ADVANCE professor for a second year. She will continue the important work she has begun in engaging full professors as mentors for associate and assistant professors. 

Conclusion

This afternoon I’ve presented only a snippet of the dynamic activities of the college. I hope it helps you understand why I conclude that the state of the college is strong, even in the face of societal and financial challenges; why I am optimistic about our future; and why I consider it a privilege, honor, and a joy to serve as chief advocate and executive officer for University of Maryland’s College of Arts and Humanities.

Thank you for your attention. 

Thanks to the staff who have worked so hard to plan this event and insure that it runs smoothly—the entire staff of the dean’s office makes everything I discuss possible every day. I particularly want to acknowledge Brian for the video, Nicky for all of her work in telling our story, Chanel for being a rock even when it gets crazy and Veronica for being a Rockette.

Now I have one final slide and remark.

Let’s party! (Lionel Richie “All Night Long” plays in background. Applause.)

END

5:35 p.m.

By John Kelly, The Washington Post.

About 30 years ago, an Italian friend of ours visited. After a few days doing the tourist thing, he exclaimed: “I love Washington! It’s like a Rome where everything works.”

I don’t know what Adriano would think of D.C. today, when Metro breaks down routinely and Congress seems proud of its dysfunction. But I understood his point: With its classically inspired public architecture, Washington is reminiscent of the Eternal City.

Many Americans might not make the connection. The classics department at the University of Maryland hopes to rectify that. Last month, it beat out two dozen U.S. and Italian universities and landed a $500,000 grant from the National Italian American Foundation to study the Roman influence on American identity.

“If we can call people’s attention to the way in which, particularly during the founding era, the nation, particularly Washington, looked to Rome as a model, I think that would be valuable,” said Greg Staley, professor of classics and director of honors humanities at Maryland.

To read more, click here.