Fulton School of Liberal Arts Public Humanities Program

2022

Spring 2022

• [+/-] February 10, 5 p.m. Muhammad and the Believers

  Location: Zoom
  Event Details: Dr. Fred Donner will discuss his book Muhammad and the Believers and take questions. Will allow those interested to have greater knowledge of the establishment of the Islamic Community.

• [+/-] February 17, 6:30 p.m. The Black Vote Mural Project

  Location: Guerrieri Commons, Assembly Hall
  Event Details: In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and the 150th Anniversary of the 15th Amendment in 2020, local artists transformed the Banneker-Douglass Museum into an exhibition called The Black Vote Mural Project featuring murals centering the theme “African Americans and the Vote.” The exhibit explored the intersection of public art, Black voices, and civil rights. The Nabb Research Center is honored to be 1 of 15 organizations in Maryland to be gifted a mural in recognition for prioritizing Black art and history as agents of change.

• [+/-] February 25, 5 p.m. Roleplaying History in the Age of Misinformation

  Location: Conway Hall, Room 179
  Event Details: Today, more than ever, political ideologies are shifting perspectives and interpretations about history, and historians have a responsibility to engage in these difficult, but necessary, conversations.
  
  Scholarship-based roleplaying allows students to understand the nuances of historical research with hands-on experience. Historian Kyle Lincoln, Oakland (MI) University, offers an introduction to the Reacting to the Past model by focusing on how game-based learning simulations in the Humanities and Social Sciences can bolster student learning in a manner that is interactive, engaging, and creative.
  
  This event is open to students, faculty, and local educators, and is organized by the SU chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the national History honor society, in collaboration with the History Department and the Fulton School of Liberal Arts
  
  Please note that the in-person workshop that had been originally scheduled for Saturday, February 26, has been canceled due to the surge in Covid-19 infections. For more information please contact Dr. Belen Vicens at BXVICENSSAIZ@salisbury.edu.

• [+/-] March 1, 7 p.m. The Modern Body is a Changing Landscape

  Location: Conway Hall, Room 153
  Event Details: This discussion, featuring Dr. Nitin Ahuja (University of Pennsylvania Medicine), will link medicine with environmental thought. He will discuss ecological models of, and metaphors for, illness, and he will consider the relationship between the medical profession and environmental activism, including medicine’s use of energy and contributions to the global waste stream.

• [+/-] March 3, 5:30 p.m. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

  Location: Guerrieri Student Union, Wicomico Room
  Event Details: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot tells the story of Henrietta Lacks, a Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her enslaved ancestors. Her cells—taken without her consent—became an important medical research tool: the first “immortal” human cells grown in culture. While the HeLa cells are still alive today, bought and sold and used for vaccine development, cancer research, and gene mapping, Henrietta died poor and was buried in an unmarked grave. The story of Henrietta Lacks is connected to the dark history of medical experimentation of African Americans and the continued healthcare disparities of and medical discrimination against the Black community in the United States.
  
  Free copies of the book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, will be distributed in February to those interested in participating in an engaging discussion on March 3rd.

• [+/-] March 14, 6:30 p.m. Learning From South Asia

  Location: Guerrieri Commons, Assembly Hall
  Event Details: South Asia is home to some of the world’s oldest civilizations. It also boasts many vibrant and diverse cultural places and it is increasingly recognized as a region of global economic significance. Many people are familiar with Yoga, South Asian (spicy) food and Bollywood movies. Dr. Parimal Patil, Professor of Religion and Indian Philosophy at Harvard University, will discuss what we can learn from South Asia beyond these stereotypes and highlight why studying South Asian culture is useful, beneficial and inherently interesting.

• [+/-] March 16, 5 p.m. Picture a Scientist Documentary and Screening Panel

  Location: Fulton Hall, Room 156
  Event Details: Dr. Kara French, SU History Department, and Dr. Karen Olmstead, SU Provost, present Picture a Scientist, a feature-length documentary film chronicling the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists. A biologist, a chemist and a geologist lead viewers on a journey deep into their own experiences in the sciences, overcoming brutal harassment, institutional discrimination, and years of subtle slights to revolutionize the culture of science. From cramped laboratories to spectacular field sites, we also encounter scientific luminaries who provide new perspectives on how to make science itself more diverse, equitable, and open to all.

• [+/-] March 25, 4 p.m. A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures

  Location: Conway Hall, Room 156
  Event Details: Dr. Shahzad Bashir of Brown University, demonstrating a forthcoming born-digital monograph, presents an invitation to imagine Islam anew through a focus on multiple temporalities. In this telling, Islam is both phenomenon and discourse, available to us via a vast net of interconnected traces whose appearances can vary depending on the vantage from which we see them. Engaging problems of method and historical content in combined fashion, the talk hopes to forge interpretive pathways that are a total break from the orientalist paradigm for understanding Islamic societies.

• [+/-] April 7, 5:30 p.m. JERONIMO Documentary Screening & Discussion

  Location: Blackwell Hall, Center for Equity, Justice and Inclusion
  Event Details: Director Joseph Juhn is a Korean- American lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker. JERONIMO is Joseph’s first feature film, which has been accepted to 18 film festivals around the globe and opened in theaters in Korea in November, 2019, receiving one of the highest audience ratings that year.

• [+/-] April 14, 6 p.m. Translation in Theory and Practice

  Location: Blackwell Hall, Center for Equity, Justice and Inclusion
  Event Details: This event will feature a small presentation of research on the topic of translation, examples of bilingual poetry, and an opportunity to create your own cartonero (cardboard cover books) with Ivan Vergara (Director and CEO of the independent publisher, Ultramarina). This event is perfect for those interested in Hispanic cultures and the Spanish language, those interested in translation as a field, and those with a creative side.

2021

Fall 2021

• Fall 2021 (ongoing) Blessing Boxes

  Location: Multiple (TBD) locations around Salisbury
  Event Details: This event calls attention to the problems of poverty and hunger in the Salisbury area. Boxes built by SU student, Laura Amrhein, will solicit public donations of food, toiletries, school supplies, and other necessities that will be given to those needing them. A video project documents the process of creating the boxes and making them available to the public.

• Fall 2021 (ongoing) SU Cures COVID

  Location: Multiple locations around Salisbury
  Event Details: This ongoing project makes COVID vaccine information more accessible to speakers of English, Spanish, Korean, and Haitian-Creole in the Salisbury area. Partnering with the Wicomico Health Department, volunteers will distribute leaflets designed by students and go door-to-door to reach communities with lower vaccine rates.

• Fall 2021 Semester Civic Reflection Student Fellows

  Location: TBD
  Event Details: A new student-run series based on civic reflections to improve communication around issues of diversity and inclusion on and off campus. Twice each month, civic reflection dialogues will help members of the campus community explore, share, listen, and learn from one another about topics such as intersecting social identities, privilege, oppression, and social justice and the ways these topics affect each of our lives.
  Cosponsored by PACE

• 11/16/2021, 7 p.m. Afghanistan in Transition

  Location: Guerrieri Academic Commons, Assembly Hall
  Event Details: Discuss the historical, cultural and sociopolitical context of the past and current situation in Afghanistan, including the U.S. involvement in the region, the lead-up to the collapse of the Afghan government and the future under Taliban rule.

• 11/4/2021, 6:30-8 p.m. Frères ennemis: The French in American Literature, Americans in French Literature

  Location: Conway 152
  Event Details: In this talk, Dr. William Cloonan of Florida State University examines French and American fiction to understand a curious, but persistent Franco-American conundrum: while the French and the Americans are always allies in the face of major international crises, they nevertheless seem to often question each other’s core values and lifestyles.
  Cosponsored by the Department of Modern Languages

• 11/4/2021, 7:00-8:30 p.m. Rethinking Indigenous History through Archaeology, or Colonization from a Piscataway Point-of-View

  Location: Academic Commons Assembly Hall
  Event Details: In this Native American History Month lecture, anthropologist Dr. Julia A. King from St. Mary’s College of Maryland will use artifacts and other landscape features unearthed through archaeological investigation of the Piscataway chiefdom on the lower western shore of Maryland to describe an Indigenous history of colonial Maryland in the face of both territorial and bodily displacement. Dr. King recently received a substantial Archaeology Grant from the National Park Services to fund a complete archeological overview and assessment of Piscataway Park in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
  Cosponsored by the Department of History.

• Throughout October Coming Out: Stories of Support on the Shore

  Location: Online
  Event Details: Coinciding with LGBTQ+ History Month and National Coming Out Day (October 11), this virtual video project collects the “coming out” stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) people living in the Salisbury, Maryland area and the allies who support them. Videos and accompanying descriptions will be available on the Salisbury PFLAG website (www.salisburypflag.com) and its social media accounts.

• 10/24/2021, 12-4 p.m. (ongoing) The First Salisbury Environmental Justice Leadership Summit: A 30-Year Reflection

  Location: Academic Commons, Room 462
  Event Details: This event celebrates the 30th anniversary of the First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit which changed the course of the modern environmental and social justice movements. Keynote speakers as well as SU student speakers will increase awareness of environmental justice issues and discuss solutions for inequity present in and around our community. Cosponsored by the Environmental Studies Department, Environmental Student Association, Political Science Department

• 10/15/2021, 5-8 p.m. “Ask a Philosopher” Philosopher Booth

  Location: The Plaza, Downtown Salisbury
  Event Details: Ian Olasov, author of Ask a Philosopher: Answers to Your Most Important and Most Unexpected Questions, will appear in person along with SU Philosophy students at the Third Friday event in Downtown Salisbury where they will host an “Ask a Philosopher” booth. Members of the public are encouraged to stop by and pose questions for discussion.

• 10/14/2021, 5-6:15 p.m. "Ask a Philosopher" Author Talk

  Location: TE 153
  Event Details: On Thursday, October 14th, Ian Olasov, author of Ask a Philosopher: Answers to Your Most Important and Most Unexpected Questions, will be on campus to discuss his book involving the questions we all wrestle with, as well as a few questions you many never have thought to consider.

Spring 2021

• 5/3/2021, 5 p.m. The Persecution of Jews in the Age of the Black Death

  Societies in crisis find surprisingly sophisticated ways to blame the marginalized in their midst. The Black Death was one of the greatest disasters in human history, in a century marked by famine, war, and political turmoil. Further waves of plague continued to strike Europe in the decades that followed. In response, city governments cracked down on their marginalized populations, seeking to further exclude Jews, sex workers, and the homeless from the social body. Abigail Agresta's talk will discuss how these governments used contemporary understandings of epidemic disease to justify such measures, using medical theory to paint a picture of a society under threat.

  Abigail Agresta is Assistant Professor of History at George Washington University. Her research examines the environmental and public health history of multi faith societies in late medieval Iberia. Her most recent article, "From Purification to Protection: Plague Response in Late Medieval Valencia," examines the city government of Valencia's efforts to confront successive waves of plague.

• 4/30/2021, 3 p.m. Race & Religion from Senegal to Spain

  Race and religion, sometimes both together, have often been reduced to a single lens. In scholarly and artistic representations, as in everyday discussion, a narrow conception of group identity and moral conviction often predominates, shaped in the main by awareness of Middle Eastern scriptures, North American politics, European experiences. This symposium brings together historians of the western Islamic world—Senegal-to-Spain—with a keynote presentation on intellectual exchanges in Andalucía around the year 1400, and another keynote on intellectual exchanges in the Sahara around the year 1800. This broad region may seem disconnected, marginal to the core of today’s moral, geopolitical, and group contests. Nothing could be further from the truth. Historically, Senegal-to-Spain is the cradle of European global exploration, of the trans-Saharan and Atlantic slave trade, and of Arabic as the language of commerce and culture for large populations in the West. These overlooked origins of modernity lie at the heart of the crises of migration, belief, and resource extraction defining the 21st century.

• 4/22/2021, 2-3 p.m. Virtual Tour of the Susan B. Anthony Museum & House

  Celebrate women’s history with a live virtual tour of Susan B. Anthony’s historic home in Rochester, New York. This hour-long program features Susan B. Anthony's life and work, focusing on her formative years, relationships, conflicts and tactics. We also take a virtual tour of the House as we consider the question "Does her history matter, and if so why?"

• 4/9/2021, 2 p.m. Zakiyyah Iman Jackson talk on her book Becoming Human; Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World

  Zakiyyah Iman Jackson talk on her book Becoming Human; Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World

  Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s book Becoming Human argues that African-American, African, and Caribbean texts generate conceptions of being and materiality that disrupt a human-animal distinction that reproduces the racial logics and orders of Western thought. The event will be held over Zoom, is free, and will be open to the public.

  Close

• 2/25/2021, 5:30 p.m. Chivalry and Antemurale Rhetoric as a Response to Ottoman Expansion in Europe
• 2/25/2021, 6 p.m. The Hate U Give Book and Film Discussion
• 3/08/2021, 4 p.m. Introduction to Arabic Calligraphy by Nuria Garcia Masip
• 3/22, 7 p.m. Typical Behavior of Little England: Barbados during the Black Lives Matter Movement
• 3/25, 4 p.m. Lady Doctor: A Visit with Elizabeth Blackwell
• 3/29, 6 p.m. Virtual Presentation on “Dare to Disappoint” by Ozge Samanci

2020

• Dances with Wolves at 30: Virtual Roundtable Discussion 
• The Hate U Give—Movie Screening and Book Discussion
• What we look for When We Look for Our Roots
• Erik DeLuca Artist Talk on Timesteps Invitation to Listen in a Van
• African Americans and the Vote
• Delmarva and the Vietnam War
• Energy and Urban Design in the Middle East
• What Remains: Coming to Terms with Civil War in 19th Century China
• Avoiding Fake News
• Sankofa Series
• Latinx
• ECI Writing Program

2019

• Children, Numbers, and Philosophy
• “On Water” Film Screening
• University Fictions
• How Land is the Universe
• Projecting Identity
• Past, Present, and Future of the Nanticoke Indian Tribe

The Fulton Public Humanities Program (FPHP) exists to support, organize, and develop academic programs and events that promote public awareness and understanding of marginalized groups, moments, and events in history (up to the present). It provides opportunities for programs that possess curricular and academic value in the recovery, commemoration, and study of human experience in all its complex diversity using the unique methods and core perspectives of the Humanities.*

 

The Fulton Public Humanities Program’s core responsibilities are to:

• Organize, sponsor, and promote academic events (such as but not limited to keynote speakers, lectures, exhibitions) related to chronological areas that are typically underserved, and marginalized regional, ethnic, cultural, sexual, gender, and racial identities.
• Organize, sponsor, and promote academic events related to the celebration of “heritage” and “history” months such as African-American History Month, Native American Heritage Month, and Women's History Month, and supplement existing curricular and extracurricular programming on the Salisbury University campus.
• Provide assistantship opportunities for Graduate students and undergraduate internships in the Humanities, public history, and event organization.
• Provide resources for Faculty in the Fulton School to develop initiatives and research/teaching projects related to the study and public appreciation of marginalized areas/peoples
• Apply for grants to provide sustainable funds for the initiative

 

"The term 'humanities' includes, but is not limited to, the study and interpretation of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life." --National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act, 1965, as amended on the National Endowment for Humanities Website. 

Co-Chairs

Faculty

Administrative Support

Submissions for Spring 2024 Programs
Application Deadline: Friday, September 29, 2023

The Fulton Public Humanities Committee is pleased to open submissions for competitive grants for programs occurring in the Spring 2024 semester. SU faculty, staff and students and members of the surrounding community are encouraged to apply. The grant is open for work toward a project or event that:

• Brings scholarly or creative work in the humanities to an audience that includes the University community and the general public.
• Fits and promotes a better understanding of marginalized groups, areas and topics.
• Fits and promotes a better understanding of under represented world regions.
• Is completed and its receipts received by June 1st, 2024.

Eligible projects include, but are not limited to, community outreach initiatives, exhibits and public lectures. Applicants are not required to do so, but the committee encourages proposals relevant to recent world events. Eligible submissions will incorporate the values and methods of the humanities in the proposed project.

Please use this form for submissions.

Event Proposal Form

Completed applications can be submitted by email to Jenna Habermeyer at jlhabermeyer@salisbury.edu . Please call 410-677-5070 or email Jenna with any questions.

We look forward to receiving your applications!