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Creativity

"Sound Expertise" Podcast
9/17/21

William Robin (musicology) was awarded the Society for American Music’s Sight and Sound Subvention to help fund seasons two and three of his podcast, “Sound Expertise.” The critically-acclaimed podcast, which features interviews with important scholars in music studies about their research, has received more than 29,000 downloads to date. The first two seasons are available for free online, and the third will air in 2022.

2021-2022 Arts and Humanities Dean's Lecture Series, Featuring Vijay Gupta
Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Gildenhorn Recital Hall
Thursday, October 21, 2021 - 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM

Esteemed violinist and social justice advocate, Vijay Gupta will present "Creating Justice through the Arts".

Announcing Independent Scholarship Research & Creativity Awards FY2022
7/28/21

 

 

 

 

 

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

The Senior Vice President & Provost and the Vice President for Research invite applications for the Independent Scholarship, Research, and Creativity Awards (ISRCA) from full-time, tenured/tenure-track faculty members at the University of Maryland, College Park, at the assistant professor rank or higher. This program provides several funding options to support faculty pursuing scholarly or creative projects. Funding will be available beginning January 2022 and must be expended within two years of the award date.

TYPES OF INQUIRY SUPPORTED

The ISRCA program defines scholarly and creative pursuits to include both the scholarship of discovery (i.e., the pursuit of knowledge and/or creative expression for its own sake) and the scholarship of integration (i.e., the interpretation and critical analysis of original research or creative expressions). Types of inquiry and methods supported by ISRCA include, but are not limited to: historical, humanistic, interpretive, or ethnographic approaches; explorations of aesthetic, ethical, and/or cultural values and their roles in society; critical and rhetorical analyses; archival and/or field research; development and/or production of creative works. If you are unsure whether your work would qualify, please contact Hana Kabashi (hkabashi@umd.edu) to discuss your proposal.

ELIGIBILITY

All full-time (1.0 FTE), tenured/tenure-track faculty at the assistant professor rank or higher at the University of Maryland, College Park, are eligible to apply.

  • Faculty on 9/9.5 month appointments may request summer salary. Faculty on 12-month appointments may apply; however, funds are not to be used as a salary enhancement or supplement.
  • Individuals are limited to submitting one application per funding cycle.

FUNDING AVAILABLE

  • Up to $10,000 per award
  • Estimated 10-12 awards will be made
  • Three funding options:
    • Semester teaching release awards: Faculty will be released from teaching duties during the semester for which the award is granted, and the faculty member’s department will receive the funding. As with all release/leave requests, granting of a semester teaching release depends on the ability of the department or program to maintain necessary teaching obligations and operations, and therefore approval of the department chair is required (see Letter of Support Instructions below).
    • Summer salary awards*: Faculty will receive awards as summer salary during the summer for which the award is granted.
    • Research-related expenses awards*: Faculty will receive awards during the semester for which the award is granted. *Note: applicants may combine summer salary and research-related expense requests up to a total request of $10,000.

CLICK HERE FOR APPLICATION GUIDELINES & INSTRUCTIONS

ISRCA FY22 Application Deadline
Friday, October 01, 2021 - 5:00 PM

Funding opportunity to support faculty pursuing independent scholarly and/or creative projects. Funds up to $10,000 per award to support teaching release, summer salary, and/or research related expenses.

$790K Mellon Grant to Fund Sculpture Commemorating Late Professor and Artist David Driskell, Expand Center’s Archive
7/12/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

A $790,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will fund the creation of a new sculpture at the University of Maryland’s David C. Driskell Center and the identification, cataloging, preservation and digitization of prominent archives in the field of African American art.
 
The sculpture commemorating Driskell, a legendary artist, art historian and UMD distinguished university professor emeritus who died in 2020 at age 88, will be created by well-known African American artist Melvin “Mel” Edwards, a longtime friend. The stainless steel abstract artwork—tentatively measuring 12 feet long, 12 feet wide and 20 feet high—will be erected outside Cole Field House, home of the Driskell Center, by the end of the three-year grant.
 
The Dr. Tritobia Hayes-Benjamin Archive, a gift to the Driskell Center from the late art historian’s estate, will be the first collection made accessible by the grant. It includes thousands of primary source materials related to African American art, including photographic prints and contact sheets of works by major African American female artists, artist biographies written on index cards and a collection of 35 mm slides of artworks previously unknown to researchers. A longtime faculty member at Howard University, Hayes-Benjamin Ph.D. ’91 was Driskell’s first doctoral student in art history at UMD.
 
Professor Curlee R. Holton, director of the Driskell Center, said the grant exemplifies the center’s commitment both to advancing appreciation of African American art and creating a home for artists and scholars.
 
“Driskell impacted and transformed the American art canon by bringing African American art to the forefront,” Holton said. “Our mission is to continue that goal and to enhance and expand on it. We’re overjoyed at the opportunity to do so and honored to receive this major grant.”
 
Driskell, best known for his groundbreaking exhibition “Two Centuries of Black American Art: 1750-1950,” joined the faculty of the Department of Art at Maryland in 1977 and served as its chair from 1978-83. The Driskell Center was established in 2001 to exhibit the work of African American artists at all stages of their careers and to house Driskell’s extensive archive: a public collection of his letters, photos, handwritten notes and catalogs.
 
The grant dedicates $500,000 to supporting the center’s work to expand on its collection by cataloguing and preserving additional archives.
 
Hayes-Benjamin (1944-2014), who concentrated her Ph.D. studies at UMD on African American art, went on to serve at Howard as professor of art history, associate dean of the College of Fine Arts and director of the Howard University Gallery of Art.
 
“The university is committed to maintaining and building upon David’s dedication to develop future generations of Black artists and students of African American and African diasporic art,” said Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities. “This grant helps us continue the important work of extending the research capacity and impact of the center by digitizing materials and making them accessible and available worldwide to scholars, researchers and all those interested in African American art.”
 
The award from the Mellon Foundation will support a full-time archivist position and a graduate student and other expenses to inventory, catalog and digitize the 75 linear feet of materials from the Hayes-Benjamin Archive, estimated to contain some 20,000-25,000 items. The center’s staff will also identify and acquire additional archives for the center’s archive.
 
At the Driskell Center, Holton said, the archives will be “cared for and respected.”
 
“An archive is full of assets, full of jewels, and we are the caretaker of that,” he said. “This validates our history and our commitment.”

Music Education Ph.D. Wins Outstanding Dissertation Award
6/9/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Adam Grisé, who completed his Ph.D. in music education in 2019, has won the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Council for Research in Music Education for his dissertation that focused on issues of access, representation and equity in secondary and postsecondary music educational settings. 

The Council, which is based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has awarded outstanding doctoral dissertations in music education for nearly four decades. 

Grisé’s dissertation, titled "Making It Through: Persistence and Attrition Along Music, Education, and Music Education Pathways," used a nationally-representative dataset to examine uptake, persistence and attrition along pathways to becoming a music teacher, a professional musician or a teacher of a non-music subject.

“I feel incredibly honored to be recognized,” said Grisé, who now works as a systems and data analyst at the School of Music. 

Grisé used data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, an ongoing government study of 21,000 students across the country who have been tracked since their ninth-grade year, and identified those who had said they might like to be a musician, a teacher or a music teacher. He then tracked their development through four key decision points to see where the path narrowed.  

The resulting analysis shows the impact of factors like race, gender and socioeconomic status on students’ paths—and thus on equity in music education as a whole. For instance, Grisé found that music education majors tend to come from high schools with fewer racial or ethnic minority students and lower concentrations of poverty. Schools with high concentrations of poverty produce fewer aspiring music teachers. And women leave the path of being aspiring professional musicians or music educators at twice the rate of men. 

Associate Professor of Music Education Kenneth Elpus, who served as Grisé’s faculty advisor, said Grisé used “ingenuity and innovation … to help the profession understand key characteristics about the students who become music teachers and the pathways they take to get there.”  

“It's a monumental piece of scholarship that brings strong evidence and strong interpretation to bear on questions of importance, and I'm so proud to have seen it through from germ of idea to completion,” Elpus said. 

Grisé said this research will also have an impact at the University of Maryland, where he’s working to help transform the ways the School of Music uses data to inform processes and decisions.
 
“I am able to apply many of the insights from my dissertation as we strive to increase equity and diversity in our music programs,” he said.

Art Professor Launches ‘Multi-Sensory’ Oil Field Experience
4/13/21

By Jessica Weiss ’05

From aboard a fixed-wing Cessna airplane, Associate Professor of Art Shannon Collis got a bird’s-eye view of some of Canada’s largest mining projects last year. 

That aerial footage—which includes open-pit mines, waste ponds and refineries—is among the elements of her new installation, “Strata,” a multi-sensory experience that allows visitors to travel “above and through” the areas surrounding Fort Hills Suncor Oil Sands and Syncrude Oil Plant, the third-largest known crude bitumen reservoir on the planet. That’s where millions of barrels of oil are dredged up each day from beneath thousands of miles of boreal forest. 

Presented as a multi-screen projection with surround sound, “Strata” is currently at the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College in suburban Philadelphia. “Strata” is a reference to layers in the ground, or what happens when earth is being excavated.

The project “reveals the human imprint on the region and the range of its social, economic and environmental implications,” Collis said. “And it invites visitors to contemplate and process these issues at a time of unprecedented environmental urgency.” 

Collis, who is from Canada and now lives in Baltimore, was awarded a $10,000 Rubys Artist Grant through the Baltimore-based Robert W. Deutsch Foundation to travel to the oil sands in western Canada in early 2020 to capture digital video, drone cinematography and sound recordings of the area. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Collis was forced to return to the United States in the midst of her field research. So, she began to explore possible ways to collect footage from afar. She found a number of collaborators in Fort McMurray Aviation and the local YMM Angel Flight Club, who helped her gather additional video footage. 

“I initially felt defeated and disappointed, but I realized that some of the work could be done remotely with the willingness and support from others in the industry and beyond,” she said. “I was really excited about this possibility, which opened my eyes to new research methods.”

Collis is a faculty member in the new Immersive Media Design (IMD) major at UMD, a unique collaboration between the College of Arts and Humanities (ARHU) and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS), which allows students to learn to create their own immersive media. 

Being forced to shift course in light of the pandemic was a challenge, Collis said. But ultimately, it expands future possibilities both for her and her students. 

“The whole experience has truly redefined the way I think about my research—and the immersive nature of my work,” she added. “I think this could make future research richer.”

“Strata” is currently only available to a small number of Ursinus students and faculty, but plans are in the works to implement ongoing virtual programming and virtual visits of the gallery space.   

Learn more here. 

An Old Scandal-Turned-Play Gets New Tech Treatment
2/19/21

By Sala Levin ’10

A young woman and her lover murder her husband, leading to a media monsoon as reporters and photographers follow the case. Eventually, the woman finds herself seated in the electric chair. 

The sensational real-life events behind Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 play “Machinal” take on a new glow nearly a century later as the UMD’s School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies premieres a high-tech digital version tomorrow night incorporating at-home green screens, virtual projections onto a central set, and actor-operated lighting rigs. 

“This is research,” said Director Brian MacDevitt, lecturer in dance/theatre design and production, and a five-time Tony winner for lighting design. “This is exactly what we should be doing at the school.”

Tech behind "Machinal" performance

“Machinal” will be TDPS’ fourth virtual main-season show since the COVID-pandemic stopped most live in-person performances nationwide nearly a year ago; the school has focused on creating innovative ways to present productions with casts, crews and audiences at home. 

Treadwell was working as a journalist in 1927 when Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray were convicted of killing Snyder’s husband, Albert. Her observations about the trial and the publicity surrounding it inspired her to write “Machinal,” in which the main character, a stenographer, is “trapped in the machine of her life without ever having the experience of her own thoughts or ideas,” said Ebie Prideaux ’21, who plays the main character, known simply as “A Young Woman.”

“It’s really interesting, as much as it was written in 1928, how much it connects to today, especially in conversation with mental health and specifically anxiety,” said Prideaux. 

The play may have fresh relevance in the wake of the documentary released last week, “Framing Britney Spears,” which has prompted a national conversation on how the media and public treat young women. Prideaux pointed to another piece of popular culture that influenced her understanding of the work: “I binge-watched ‘The Crown’ with my mom over winter break, and every single day in rehearsal I’d say, ‘This is Diana’s story,’” she said. 

The costumes, designed by Madison Booth MFA ’21, reflect the idea of finding one’s place as a woman in a world run by men: Many of the women’s outfits incorporate menswear, often oversized to suggest that the person wearing it doesn’t quite fit in.

The virtual production tasked all 19 actors with becoming their own crew and hair and makeup team. Each member of the cast, performing from home, received a green screen to set up, as well as a lighting package of six channels operated via individual switches; when the lighting needs to change for a new scene, it’s up to each actor to make that happen. Film of a model set will be projected onto the screens during the performances. During one scene that takes place in a speakeasy, for example, each actor will perform in front of the speakeasy’s set, zoomed into their homes.

“As an actor, you (typically) have the privilege of not having to worry if anything technically goes wrong,” said Prideaux. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, if anything goes wrong, it’s completely my fault,’ but that mindset quickly went away right when we started working with all of the grad students and professionals we brought in.”

The School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies will present “Machinal” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. Reserve free tickets on the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's website. Electronic tickets include a link to the event.

Dress rehearsal photo by David Andrews; behind-the-screens photo courtesy of Rochele Mac MFA ’21.

New Major Immerses Students in Coding and Creativity
9/11/20

The University of Maryland has a new four-year undergraduate program that combines art with computer science to prepare students to design and develop immersive media content and tools.

The immersive media design (IMD) major is co-taught by art and computer science faculty with expertise in virtual and augmented reality, digital art, projected imagery, computer graphics, 3D modeling, and user interfaces spanning audio, visual and tactile platforms.

“The goal is to graduate students who can collaborate effectively across creative and technical boundaries, and will excel in their field, whether that’s in computing, health care, education, advertising, gaming or the visual and performing arts,” said Roger Eastman, a professor of the practice in computer science and inaugural director of the program.

The program kicked off this fall with one introductory course, with two more being offered in Spring 2021. 

IMD features two tracks. Innovative Coders, for students focused on computer science, offers a Bachelor of Science degree. Emerging Creatives, with coursework focused on digital art, offers a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Dani Feng, a sophomore in computer science intending to major in immersive media design, has her career sights set on the animation industry. Feng said that she dreams of designing digital tools for artists to better tell stories in broad styles. 

“I want to have the knowledge from both worlds, and be able to look at my work with both a technical eye and creative eye,” she said. 

The program is designed to be collaborative, with core digital art courses featuring small classes and extensive group project work, said Brandon Morse, an associate professor of art who helped develop the curriculum with Eastman.

Morse, a digital artist whose work has been showcased internationally, said that IMD students won’t need to look far for creative opportunities outside the classroom. The region has seen an explosion of immersive design opportunities in the past few years at venues like ARTECHOUSE and the REACH at the Kennedy Center.

IMD has a dedicated space in the A.V. Williams Building that is undergoing renovation. In addition, IMD faculty and students will use digital art labs and fabrication resources in the Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building, as well as a high-bay research lab in the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering.

“Our computing program is strong, interest in digital media is expanding dramatically, and our location next to government agencies and companies excited about new immersive technologies offer unprecedented internship and employment opportunities,” said Amitabh Varshney, professor and dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences.

Varshney played a key role in establishing the new major, co-chairing a task force in 2016 and teaching the university’s first undergraduate course in virtual reality that same year.

The IMD program also bolsters the university’s standing as an arts-tech integrative campus, said Bonnie Thornton Dill, professor and dean of the College of Arts and Humanities.

“This new program, at the intersection of art and technology, is a tremendous opportunity for students to develop their abilities in innovative ways and to expand their creativity and career opportunities,” she said.

By Maria Herd

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