FACULTY RESEARCH

Warren Belasco (American Studies) studies the history, culture, politics, environmental implications and future of food. He is the author of  Meals To Come: A History Of The Future Of Food (California: 2006) and Appetite For Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry (Cornell: 1993, 2006).
           
Jessica Berman (English) focuses on modernism from a trans-national perspective. She has a special interest in questions of politics in relation to twentieth-century narrative and in the connections between canonical modernism and global literatures.

Beverly Bickel (Language, Literacy and Culture) is a Research Assistant Professor in the Language, Literacy and Culture program and Director of the English Langugage Center.  Her work includes globalized communication, new media and transnational public space, and transformational knowledge projects.

Rebecca Boehling (History) has written a book and articles on the U.S. occupation of Germany.     She is currently working on a history of a German-Jewish family before, during and after the Holocaust, a book which will be published by Cambridge University Press, as well as a comparative study of denazification in occupied western Germany.

Terry Bouton (History) studies early America and the American Revolution. His book is entitled Taming Democracy: "The People," the Founders, and the Troubled Ending of the American Revolution (Oxford University Press, 2007). His new research continues to focus on economic opportunity in the new United States.

Stephen Braude (Philosophy) works on the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science, concentrating in philosophical psychopathology (e.g., a book on dissociation and multiple personality) and conceptual issues surrounding parapsychological research.

Kate Brown (History) focuses her research on the Soviet states, ethnicity and nationalism. Her recent book, A Biography of No Place: From Ethnic Borderland to Soviet Heartland won one of the top prizes of the American Historical Association. She is working on a comparative cultural study of the aftermath of nuclear explosions.

Helen J Burgess (English) specializes in digital media studies, with a particular interest in electronic literature and digital humanities. She also works in science fiction and cyberpunk studies and is currently producing a DVD-ROM about American superhighways.

JoAnn (Jodi) Crandall (Language, Literacy and Culture) works on issues of immigrant and refugee education, especially those of adults in the community college. Recent research has analyzed program design for promoting language acquisition, fostering transitions and developing career ladders. 

Julie Donovan (English) is interested in the relationship between Britain and Ireland in the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on cultural studies and the relationship between gender and nation. She is currently involved in a project unearthing forgotten women writers who were important literary figures in their day. 

Susan Dwyer (Philosophy) focuses her research on the foundations of moral judgment. She is currently on sabbatical at Harvard University’s Mind, Brain and Behavior Group, working on a book entitled The Normative Mind.

William Edinger (English) focuses his research on the history of Western literary theory and criticism from the ancient Greeks and Romans into the Romantic period. His current project is a book on the literary criticism of Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Raphael Falco (English) conducts research on early modern culture and literary theory. He has published books and articles on Renaissance humanism, sixteenth-century courtliness, colonialism, Biblical themes, John Milton and modern poetry.

Robin Farabaugh (English) works on Early Modern Women, wiki technology (wikis) in literature classrooms, wikis in science writing classrooms and creative non-fiction.

Thomas Field (Modern Languages and Linguistics) focuses on Gascon, an endangered language of southwestern France and Pyrenean Spain. His current project is an XML corpus of the earliest Gascon texts.

Carol H. Fitzpatrick (English) works on composition and rhetoric, grammar, American literature and Southern literature. Her most recent book, The Complete Sentence Workout Book with Readings, fifth edition, integrates grammar within student composing.

Jay Freyman (Ancient Studies) concentrates on ancient Athenian drama and its connection to liberal education and its debt to antiquity. His work explores aphoristic teaching in fifth century BCE Athenian drama, problems faced by non-Classicists who must consult Classical texts.

Amy M. Froide (History) studies European women’s history, the history of single women and female entrepreneurship in early modern England. She is the co-editor with Judith M. Bennett of Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800 and author of the 2005 book, Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England.

Marilyn Y. Goldberg (Ancient Studies) studies women in ancient Athens, with an emphasis on the use of archaeological data to correct the biases of the ancient written sources. She also explores research and experimentation in active learning experiences at the college level that can be assessed for learning outcomes.

James S. Grubb (History) focuses on social relations in Renaissance Venice. He is the author of Firstborn of Venice: Vicenza in the Early Renaissance State and Provincial Families in the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto, winner of the Marraro prize for the best book in Italian history.

Piotr Gwiazda (English) concentrates on twentieth-century poetry and poetics, with interests in intertextuality studies, poetic theory, poetry and pedagogy, and the relation between rhetorical forms and social identities. He also pursues creative writing and literary translation.

Linda Harris (English) is currently researching the atomic age with an emphasis on the presence of nuclear weapons in fiction and film.

Sandra Herbert (History) is a historian of science and has edited The Red Notebook of Charles Darwin and Charles Darwin's Notebooks, 1836-1844. Her most recent book is Charles Darwin: Geologist, which has won numerous awards. Professor Herbert is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Omar Ka (Modern Languages and Linguistics) pursues research in two areas of Linguistics: language planning and phonology. He explores language planning and language policy issues facing African countries, and analyzes the Wolof language in its phonology and morphology.

Marjoleine Kars (History)is the author of Breaking Loose Together: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina. Dr. Kars is currently at work on a book about a massive slave rebellion in the 1760s in the Dutch colony of Berbice.

Nicole King (American Studies) researches the social and political aspects of travel and tourism in the twentieth century. She is currently working on a study of tourism and identity in the American South.

Edward Larkey (Modern Languages and Linguistics) explores the interrelationship between popular music, culture and society. He is now using ethnographic and discourse analysis of television shows in Germany and the U.S. to compare and contrast the cultural specificities underlying the adaptation of internationally distributed programs.

Kriste Lindenmeyer (History) focuses on U.S. social history with an emphasis on public policy, the history of childhood, and women and gender during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Professor Lindenmeyer is currently president of H-Net (Humanities and Social Sciences Online).

Jason Loviglio (American Studies) researches in the area of media studies, cultural history and the cultural history of radio in the U.S. in particular. He is currently working on a cultural history of National Public Radio.

Carole McCann (Gender and Women’s Studies) works in the field of contemporary feminist theory and feminist science studies. Her current project is a critical re-reading of gender, race and empire in mid-twentieth century demography.

Christine Mallinson (Language, Literacy and Culture) explores the intersection of regional, ethnic and gender variation in American English, particularly the dialects of Appalachian English and African-American English, with a focus on Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Md.

Richard Mason (Ancient Studies) has research interests that range from ancient Egypt in the third millennium BCE to the rediscovery of Greek and Roman antiquity in the eighteenth century of the present era.

Lucille McCarthy (English) studies writing in academic, professional and medical settings. In particular, she is interested in Writing Across the Curriculum: the teaching and learning of writing in disciplines across the undergraduate spectrum.

Susan McDonough (History) studies medieval history and women’s history. Her research uses witness testimony from civil court records to explore the relationships between Christians and Jews, and nobles and the middling sort in late medieval Marseille. 

Denise Meringolo (History) theorizes the relationship between public history and identity formation. She is currently writing a book about the origins of the National Park Service history program during the 1930s

Gail Orgelfinger (English) studies late medieval English and French literature, with a focus on Joan of Arc and chivalric narrative. She is currently working on a monograph that reexamines the reception of Joan of Arc in English historiography.

Edward Orser (American Studies) centers on community in American culture in historical context, emphasizing the dynamics of urban neighborhoods in Baltimore and other American cities, including issues of race and class. He is also interested in the urban environment, both natural and built, including the design and role of parks in urban life.

Michele Osherow (English) investigates early modern readings and applications of the Bible in dramas, poetry, political tracts and life writing. She has recently completed a manuscript attending to early modern readings of biblical women.

Ana Oskoz (Modern Languages and Linguistics) is interested in the use of technology for second language acquisition. She focuses on the use of synchronous and asynchronous computer-mediated communication for second language learning and intercultural communication development. 

Jessica Pfeifer (Philosophy) focuses on the nature of natural laws and probabilities in science, as well as how these notions apply to specific issues in biology, such as the use of probabilities in evolutionary theory and in the application of information theory to biological systems.

Denis Provencher (Modern Languages and Linguistics) is interested in contemporary French civilization and cultural studies with an emphasis on gender and sexuality studies. He is the author of a new book titled Queer French (Ashgate 2007) that examines issues of globalization, language and sexual citizenship in France.

Daniel Ritschel (History) is a specialist on the economic and political history of modern Britain. He is author of The Politics of Planning: The Debate on Economic Planning in Britain in the 1930s and is at work on a study of business politics in Britain, 1900-1951.

Anne Sarah Rubin (History) studies the Civil War and the South. Her book, A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868, focuses on Confederate nationalism and identity. She co-authored a CD-ROM, “The Valley of the Shadow: The Eve of War,” winner of the eLincoln Prize for the best Civil War digital project.

Elaine Rusinko (Modern Languages and Linguistics) studies the Carpatho-Rusyn people, an eastern European ethnic group that reemerged in 1989 after forced assimilation during the Soviet era. Her focus is Rusyn literature, language, culture and nationality building.

Judith Morganroth Schneider (Modern Languages and Linguistics) research focuses on intercultural writing in France, Latin America and the U.S. She examines such issues as the construction of hybrid cultural identities, rooted cosmopolitanism, diasporic consciousness, transnational narratives and cross-cultural feminisms.  

Michelle Scott (History) studies African-American history, black musical culture and women's studies. She is currently completing a study entitled "The Realm of a Blues Empress: Blues Culture and Bessie Smith in Black Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1880-1923."

Walter Sherwin (Ancient Studies) focuses his research on Latin plays of the English Renaissance, primarily editing and translating and providing note to the plays.

Sarah J. Shin (Language, Literacy and Culture) specializes in bilingualism, heritage language education and second language writing. She has authored Developing in Two Languages: Korean Children in America and is currently investigating secondary English learners academic language development.

Jody Shipka (English) concentrates her research on composing process studies, histories of rhetoric and composition, multimodal discourse and play theory.

Brad Simpson (History) specializes in U.S.-Asian relations since 1945. His book, Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and U.S. – Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 will appear with Stanford University Press. At the National Security Archive, he directs a project to declassify U.S. documents concerning Indonesia and East Timor during the reign of General Suharto.

Orianne Smith (English) explores the connections between revolution and prophecy in the work of British Romantic women writers, placing their visionary claims within the context of the rich tradition of female prophecy in England.

Carole Lynn Stewart (English) specializes in American and African-American literatures, interdisciplinary studies in religious history and political theory, and is particularly interested in transcultural forms of civil society, revolution and reform in the nineteenth century.

John Stolle-McAllister (Modern Languages and Linguistics) focuses his research concerns on popular culture and social movements in Latin America. He spent 2006-2007 in Otavalo, Ecuador, researching the cultural roots and implications of that country’s indigenous rights movement over the past 30 years.

Joseph N. Tatarewicz  (History) has worked extensively in public history and the history of science and technology. He is the author of Space Technology and Planetary Astronomy and the forthcoming Exploring the Solar System: The Planetary Sciences Since Galileo.

Christel Temple (Africana Studies) pursues transnational Black studies with specialties in Black cultural mythology, Pan-Africanism, comparative Black literature, Africana womanism and Afrocentricity. She is currently working on a manuscript for The Theory of Black Cultural Mythology.

Constantine N. Vaporis (History) is a specialist in East Asian history. He is the author of Breaking Barriers: Travel and the State in Early Modern Japan and Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo and the Culture of Early Modern Japan (in press).

Ka-che Yip (History), a UMBC Presidential Teaching Professor, is the author of Religion, Nationalism and Chinese Students and Health and National Reconstruction in Nationalist China. His current projects focus on the civilian and military medical systems during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), and public health in Hong Kong.

Steven Young  (Modern Languages and Linguistics) is concerned with language change and the reconstruction of earlier stages of languages, with an emphasis on the historical relationship between the Slavic and Baltic language families and their respective developments from Indo-European roots.