“Changing Demography, Eroding Democracy: Challenges to Latinos in the 21st Century”
Rogelio Sáenz, Dean of the College of Public Policy and Peter Flawn Professor of Demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio and Policy Fellow at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire
Professor Sáenz will provide an overview of the growth of the Latino population in the 21st century and the backlash that has occurred in efforts to minimize the political representation of Latinos. He will also discuss the opportunities and challenges that are ahead for Latinos.
Sponsored by the Latino/Hispanic Faculty Association; Department of Sociology and Anthropology
“The Golden Age of Higher Education is Over”
Ronald Ehrenberg, Irving M. Ives Professor and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Director, Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI), Cornell University
Professor Ehrenberg will explain why the financial models under which both private and public higher education institutions are operating are breaking down and the actions they will have to take in the future to remain financially solvent and deliver high quality education to their students.
Mullen Lecture, sponsored by the Department of Economics
“Curious Behavior: A Celebration of Undergraduate Research at UMBC”
Robert R. Provine, Research Professor and Professor Emeritus of Psychology, UMBC
Professor Provine will review his 39-year career at UMBC and discuss how undergraduate research can change the way we look at human behavior and solve ancient problems
Distinguished Lecture in Psychology, sponsored by the Department of Psychology
“Dreaming of Dixie: How the South was Created in American Popular Culture”
Karen Cox, Professor of History, University of North Carolina – Charlotte
From the late nineteenth century through World War II, popular culture represented the American South by such southern icons as the mammy, the belle, the chivalrous planter, and white-columned mansions. In Dreaming of Dixie (2011), Professor Cox shows that the chief purveyors of nostalgia for the Old South played to consumers’ anxiety about modernity by marketing the South as a region still dedicated to America’s pastoral traditions. Professor Cox will also examine more recent representations of the South on television from The Andy Griffith Show to reality TV.
Low Lecture, sponsored by the Department of History
“Black Gods and Red Devils: Race, Religion, and the Reimaging of Africana Subjectivity”
John L. Jackson, Jr., Richard Perry University Professor of Communication, Africana Studies and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania
Professor Jackson will discuss the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem, a group of African Americans that emigrated from the United States to Israel in the 1960s. His talk will explain how this group understands their links to the ancient Hebrews and how they have spent the last 45 years in Israel creating a transnational spiritual community, with members in Africa, Europe and the Americas, that attempts to radically re-imagine what “race” and “religion” mean in the 21st century.
Sponsored by the Africana Studies Research Colloquium, Department of Africana Studies