SUMMER 2023 PROJECTS & FINAL PRODUCTS
View the final student presentations for CoLab 2023: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19hBiWURki6y71dRSS72xBgfjGhXnEm2v/view?usp=sharing
Jazz and Justice: An American Art Form as Civic Deliberation
Project Leader: Dr. Earl Brooks – English
Student Interns:
- Zachary Bradley – Major: Music Technology, Minors: Korean & Spanish
- Bethan Cruise – Majors: Music Performance and MLLI (Chinese Language & Culture)
- Adi Mwangi – Majors: Animation and Mathematics
Project description
Celebrated trumpeter Wynton Marsalis calls jazz a model of participatory democracy and integration. Its performance as well as its complex history bridge the divides between art, rhetorical invention, and civic deliberation. At a time when democracies around the world are grappling with the immense challenges of polarization, wealth inequality, mistrust of institutions, and a media landscape that is as disorienting as it is informative, the history and vitality of jazz takes on a new importance. What does jazz teach us about navigating the issues that paralyze and fracture public consensus? This CoLab project team wrestled with such questions by exploring the local history of jazz in Baltimore. Students worked with the Baltimore Jazz Alliance to create content to educate the public about the history and importance of jazz for the Alliance’s newsletter and website. Students are also worked with archival materials in UMBC’s Special Collections.
CLICK HERE to visit the website created by the CoLab interns and to learn about the Left Bank Jazz Society of Baltimore and the UMBC Collection
CLICK HERE to listen to the podcast created by the CoLab interns
CERA: Conservation Marketing & Engagement
Project Leader: Dr. Jennifer Maher – English
Student Interns:
- Safiatou Coulibaly – Major: Information Systems
- Demetrius McGuffin – Major: Geography & Environmental Studies, GIScience Certificate
- Hanna Tran – Major: Animation, Minor: Cinematic Arts, MBA Prep Certificate
Project description
Students on this CoLab project team created materials to increase physical and virtual engagement with UMBC’s Conservation and Environmental Research Areas (CERA). Established in 1997, CERA was created to support environmental education and conservation. At present, CERA covers about 50 acres of the UMBC landscape and is located in two different areas. The larger tract, covering approximately 45 acres of the south end of the main campus, is comprised of a wide variety of ecological conditions: mature upland forest, early- and mid- successional forest, and riparian and wetland environments. The second, and much smaller CERA area (about 3 acres), surrounds Pigpen Pond. Management of CERA is guided by the need to maintain these landscapes as natural areas to be preserved and protected for approved uses in education, research, and wildlife observation. To facilitate the use of CERA for varied purposes, this CoLab project team redesigned the CERA website to include archival and educational materials, created a brochure to publicize CERA, and developed new signage at the pond and trail.
Watch the CERA promotional video created by the CoLab interns
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hRnRjNqd9LtzhibE_DwrlDUdJDeICgsk/view
See the CERA guided brochure created by the CoLab interns
Documenting Places of Resistance: Black Tourism and Leisure during the Jim Crow Era
Project Leader: Dr. Liz Patton – Media & Communication Studies
Student Interns:
- Nicole King – Major: Africana Studies
- Ava Mason – Major: Political Science, Minor: Africana Studies, Honors College
- Sam Scheck – Major: Computer Science, Minor: Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies
Project description
This CoLab project team developed a pilot website designed like a travel guidebook featuring archival sources primarily from Duke University’s Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library and the New York Public Library Special Collections. The website is based on Dr. Liz Patton’s (MCS) archival research for her book project, “Representation as a Form of Resistance: Documenting African American Spaces of Leisure during the Jim Crow Era,” which examines the history of Black leisure and tourism in the US through the perspective of media. The website features mapped locations and archival sources such as photographs, home videos, and historic travel guides. Student interns explored archival material, watched documentaries, and read published articles on the initial places that they featured on the website. The project team worked collaboratively to produce an introductory essay for the website based on archival materials and published books and articles on the topic and to create descriptive narratives for the leisure spaces featured on the website. They used WordPress for online publishing, Google Maps API, and ArcGIS to create an interactive publicly available website.
Visit their website at: https://leisureasresistance.org
UMBC Special Collections LGBTQ+ Oral History Project
Project Leader: Dr. Kate Drabinski – Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies
Student Interns:
- Simone Koning – Major: MLLI (Spanish), Minor: Latin American Studies and Intercultural Communication
- Talya Raitzyk – Major: English Literature, Minor: Computer Science
- Riya Suthar – Majors: Psychology and Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies, Minor: Biology
Project description
This interdisciplinary team of student researchers built a website for Special Collections that highlights the UMBC LGBTQ+ Oral History Project collection. They are also wrote a guide for future students about how to add to and revise the website as new oral histories are added.
This CoLab project team developed research projects with the collection that both share information gleaned from the oral histories and provide teaching materials for instructional librarians to help other researchers discover what we can do with oral histories. These research projects include a podcast based on the oral histories in the collection, digital stories, a zine, and written essays that demonstrate how oral histories can be engaged in storytelling and research practices. The project makes UMBC’s LGBTQ+ oral history collection and associated materials accessible to researchers, including UMBC students.
CLICK HERE to visit the website created by the CoLab interns, see the collection, and read their essays about it
CLICK HERE to visit the zine created by the CoLab interns about the Charm City Kitty Club
CLICK HERE to listen to the podcast on queer lineage created by the CoLab interns
A Narrative-Based Curriculum for Writing and Civic Engagement of Latinx Youth
Project Leader: Dr. Felipe Filomeno – Political Science and Global Studies
Student Interns:
- Violeta Brito – Major: Global Studies
- Mary Rose Khamfong – Major: Psychology, Minor: Social Welfare
- Brandon Price – Major: Computer Science
Project description
Because of an opportunity gap, Latinx youth lag behind their White American peers in civic engagement and college attainment. To help close this gap, this CoLab project team created the content of a writing and civic engagement workshop for Latinx youth in Baltimore. They worked with/for the Latino Racial Justice Circle (LRJC), a local nonprofit organization that promotes the social inclusion of immigrants. The content of the workshop is entirely digital and consists of oral histories by local Latinx community leaders, news stories about the local Latinx community, writing prompts, and discussion questions. The LRJC will deliver their workshop regularly for Latinx students of local public high schools.
