Research

By Carly S. Woods, assistant professor of communication

Spanning a historical period that begins with women’s exclusion from university debates and continues through their participation in coeducational intercollegiate competitions, "Debating Women" highlights the crucial role that debating organizations played as women sought to access the fruits of higher education in the United States and United Kingdom. Despite various obstacles, women transformed forests, parlors, dining rooms, ocean liners, classrooms, auditoriums, and prisons into vibrant spaces for ritual argument. There, they not only learned to speak eloquently and argue persuasively but also used debate to establish a legacy, explore difference, engage in intercultural encounter, and articulate themselves as citizens. These debaters engaged with the issues of the day, often performing, questioning, and occasionally refining norms of gender, race, class, and nation. In tracing their involvement in an activity at the heart of civic culture, Woods demonstrates that debating women have much to teach us about the ongoing potential for debate to move arguments, ideas, and people to new spaces.

After a two month residence at the Arkad à Auvillar Art Center in Auvillar, France, Professor of Art Foon Sham created works on paper and site-specific sculptures for this exhibition using wood from south west of France.

Laura Demaría, professor of Spanish, has published her first novel. 

“A diferencia de Utopía, la isla prodigiosa que se desea y es un sueño, St. Louis y todos los lugares de este blues siempre han estado presentes sencilla y abrumadoramente. Aquí no se inventa nada, ni se desea lo inencontrable. "St. Louis Blues" afirma la inmanencia de la vida, describiendo, con palabras discretas y casi dolorosas, esos secretos con que esta va construyendo su evidencia: nuestros encuentros, nuestras pasiones, nuestras soledades, todo aparente, pero inasible; todo resonante pero incomprensible. Esta inmanencia nos rodea y también nos invade; pero ¿qué sentido tiene? Laura Demaría nos ofrece una narración de permanente suspenso: no duda que lo existente tenga sentido; pero ¿dónde está?, ¿qué cara tiene?, ¿es el lugar donde estoy y el ostro que veo en el espejo?, ¿o son también los lugares de los otros y sus pasiones? ¿Hay una respuesta? Con una sabiduría gozosa, esta narración recorre estas supremas preguntas.” - Jorge Aguilar Mora, professor emeritus of Spanish.

By Ruth Enid Zambrana, professor and interim chair of women’s studies, director of the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

"Toxic Ivory Towers," seeks to document the professional work experiences of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in U.S. higher education, and simultaneously address the social and economic inequalities in their life course trajectory. Ruth Enid Zambrana finds that despite the changing demographics of the nation, the percentages of Black and Hispanic faculty have increased only slightly, while the percentages obtaining tenure and earning promotion to full professor have remained relatively stagnant. Toxic Ivory Towers is the first book to take a look at the institutional factors impacting the ability of URM faculty to be successful at their jobs, and to flourish in academia. The book captures not only how various dimensions of identity inequality are expressed in the academy and how these social statuses influence the health and well-being of URM faculty, but also how institutional policies and practices can be used to transform the culture of an institution to increase rates of retention and promotion so URM faculty can thrive.  

Principal Investigator: Kenneth Elpus, associate professor of music education

Co-Principal Investigator: Stephanie Prichard, assistant professor of music education

Purpose: The purpose of this project is to explore the relation between rigorous, high quality arts education in high school and academic outcomes at the high school and postsecondary levels. Prior research on the association between arts education and academic outcomes has yielded mixed results, possibly due to wide variation in the definitions of arts education and the academic measures used by researchers. In this study, the research team will analyze a novel administrative dataset that overcomes those weaknesses to establish the relationship between arts education and academic achievement.

Project Activities: The research team will examine the academic achievement outcomes for students who chose to enroll in arts courses compared to those who did not for ten cohorts of American students who pursued courses from the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program, using data provided by the International Baccalaureate Organization. Additionally, they will link IB data to data from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) to compare postsecondary outcomes for arts and non-arts IB students. Finally, they will see if their findings from the IB dataset replicate using data from the Maryland Longitudinal Data System (MLDS) Center for students in the public high schools of Maryland.

Products: The research team will produce preliminary evidence of the potential for arts education to improve high school and postsecondary academic outcomes. In addition, they will produce peer-reviewed publications in arts education and general education research journals, host in-service workshops for arts educators; participate in annual meetings for arts educators and policymakers; publish articles in education practitioner journals and magazines; publish blog posts and op-ed articles on platforms intended to reach the general public; and communicate about these products through various social media platforms.

Of this book, Gina Myers writes, “K. Lorraine Graham’s The Rest Is Censored also takes a look at the day and what one does to get through it. And it captures concern of not wanting what is expected: ‘Wake up in a panic / about real estate / about not wanting it.’ It also captures a life lived variously, which includes panic as well as connection to others and beauty.”

Read the rest of the review at the Poetry Foundation.

Humanitarian Violence considers U.S. militarism—humanitarian militarism—during the Vietnam War, the Soviet-Afghan War, and the 1990s wars of secession in the former Yugoslavia. Neda Atanasoski reveals a system of postsocialist imperialism based on humanitarian ethics, identifying a discourse of race that focuses on ideological and cultural differences and makes postsocialist and Islamic nations the targets of U.S. disciplining violence.

This book is the first modern study of James Barry, the finest of all painters working in Britain in the "grand manner." Born in Cork, Ireland, Barry settles in London in 1771 after five years of study in France and Italy financed by Edmund Burke. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1773 and appointed professor of painting nine years later. In 1799, however, after fiercely denouncing its policies, he became the first and only artist to be expelled from the Academy. His paintings include several that rank with the nest contemporary work, and his murals at the Royal Society of Arts form perhaps the most important cycle of history paintings in Great Britain.