Terry Tempest Williams recalls an officer patting her down and found a pencil and a pad of paper in Williams’ boot.

When the officer asked Williams what those two objects were, Williams replied “weapons.”

“I think that was the day I became a writer,” Williams said.

Author, activist and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams brought tranquility and tears Thursday to WORLDWISE: Arts and Humanities Dean’s Lecture Series at The Clarice.

The College of Arts & Humanities associate dean for Research, Interdisciplinary Scholarship, and Programming, Dr. Sheri Parks, brought up the role of women in conservationism through a flow of questions directed at Williams.

“As you speak, I feel this emotion welling up […] my grandmother always said that when a woman cries, you’re closest to her heart,” Williams responded to Park’s address. “One of the gifts of being here […] is to speak as women speak, but there’s no one there to correct us.”

Williams’ remarks about feminism and the ability to speak confidently around other women stuck with some students.

“I definitely didn’t think of it until she said it but I was like ‘that’s definitely true,’” said Taylor Yano, a sophomore math major. “We should all be able to speak confidently if it’s not just women.”

Williams explained women were told not to speak in patriarchal cultures resulting in women telling tales to each other of their life stories and truths.

“That’s when I feel that I found my voice,” Williams said.

That voice stemmed into a passion for the environment. She recalled first becoming passionate after her grandmother handed her Roger Tory Peterson’s A Field Guide to Western Birds.

This passion later transformed into advocacy and activism.

The Nevada Test Site, a U.S. Department of Energy reservation formerly used to test weapons and explosives like the atomic bomb, exposed Tempest’s family, and many other Utah natives, to radiation, causing several members of her family to develop cancer.

She cites this event as the start of activism, attending the protests held at the site.

With her hands in both writing and activism, Williams started questioning her role in both.

“I spent a lot of time thinking: am I an activist or am I an artist? As an activist, is my work discredited? Am I less of a writer?” Williams asked. “Now I just can’t even believe I spent time thinking about that because now to me, it’s not ‘am I an activist or an artist?’ It’s ‘I want to live a life engaged. And both are required at different times.’”

Similar to the balance between writer and activist, a different kind of balance can be found in human nature, she said, which is made up of many different opposing emotions, but are vital to spiritual tranquility.

Williams offered the conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis as example, also giving a glimpse to her time spent in Rwanda.

“It’s not what the Hutus did to the Tutsis […] but what we are capable of as human beings,” Williams said. “If a human being is capable of this kind of atrocity, so am I. If a human being is capable of this kind of forgiveness, so am I. It’s in our contradictory nature and we can make that peace from that.”

Sustainability associate for the Office of Sustainability Tacy Lambiase said Williams’ segment on the paradoxes of people’s lives resonated with her.

“[She said] there’s never necessarily a clear path in what you’re doing in terms of your career or personal life,” Lambiase said. “You just kind of have to try different things and see what works for you individually.”

For Williams this involved incorporating both of her passions into her work.

Williams said the arts and humanities can create a habitat of peace in our world and cope with the advancements of science.

“Science created the atomic bomb. The humanities help us understand how to live with it […] environmental humanities incorporates both.”

Editor’s Note: Co-managing editor Savannah Tanbusch contributed to this article.

Allene Abrahamian is a graduate student in broadcast journalism and can be reached at alleneabrahamian@gmail.com. 

Laughter bounced off the walls of the tiny study room on the second floor of McKeldin. Crammed together around a table that took up most of the room’s limited space, six members of In the Midterm recounted their time together.

On Oct. 23, 2014, the nine person cast and crew assembled for their first day of filming.

“I said, at the first shoot that we did, that because I had written the script up this point, this has been my project,” said In the Midterm creator Lowell Ensel, a sophomore film studies and government and politics double major. “And, now that [we’ve started] filming, this is our project.”

The group kept circling back to the tight-knit community they created during the six-month project.

In the Midterm is about a group of college freshmen that go looking for a party and absolutely everything goes wrong.

It explores themes of friendship, Ensel said, and how important friendship is in the digital age.

In a lot of ways, college is a midterm, Ensel said, because it is a midway point between two very big stages of life. There is a stage between adolescence and adulthood when a person doesn’t have the kind of support they are used to having.

“In college, you’re on your own for the first time and you don’t really have anybody but your friends to rely on for support,” Ensel said.

The themes and questions highlighted in the film are things Ensel said he asked himself and finds very important.

Ensel, who wrote, directed and edited the film, said the camaraderie amongst the actors really shines through their performances.

“They’re acting by putting on these personas, but in another sense they’re not really acting,” Ensel said. “I’m watching this movie, and I’m like damn, I really want a friend group like this.”

Senior psychology major Kevin Saunders said he hopes these relationships last long after the film’s end.

“I feel the irony about this whole thing is that it’s about friendship and finding yourself,” Saunders said. “But we all have found ourselves within making the film. We’ve all developed a friendship and connections between ourselves and the characters.”

Brittni Fine, a sophomore psychology major, said she personally struggles with a lot of the subject matter in her scenes. She said she was able to take her own experiences and relate them to her character, which helped her learn more about both her character and herself.

“In such a big university, it’s always nice to find your little niche,” Fine said. “I think we were able to form our own little family.”

At 6 p.m. on Thursdays, the cast and crew assembled for a few hours to film. They shoot at locations ranging from dorm rooms to the back of university buses.

On a particularly memorable evening, various cast and crew members rode the New Carrollton bus – the longest university bus route – for three loops to get in all of the shots.

“I’d never been to New Carrollton before,” said sophomore communications major Emily Schaefer. “But that night I went three times.”

However, the project presented its fair share of problems – like getting nine college students to be free at the same time to film.

“It’s a miracle that we made that happen,” Ensel said.

Ensel described the filming process as an endless streak of “here’s what I’d like to do and then a challenge would arise,” forcing him to find the next best thing. Ensel faced challenges from revising the script to accommodate changing film locations to editing music selections to avoid being sued.

While Ensel learned how to work around problems, the actors, who come from various acting backgrounds, also learned new things about film acting.

For Noah Israel, a junior theater and physiology and neurobiology double major, this project presented the opportunity to work on a film as opposed to on stage. Israel said the project appealed to him because it covered a topic he felt he could relate to very easily.

“Throughout the whole process, not only was I learning from the experiences, but I was learning from everyone else around me,” Israel said. “I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into, but looking back on it, I really do I appreciate the experiences that I had.”

On the other hand, sophomore journalism major Molly Podlesny did not have any prior acting experience.

“Although I didn’t know what I was getting into,” Podlesny said, “it was very worth it to me just to get this new appreciation of everything that goes into making a film.”

Fine said college is often about focusing on oneself to succeed as an individual but working on this film allowed the group to embrace each other and respect each other’s time.

“While in the end this may be Lowell’s ‘Keystone’ project, it’s a piece of art that we all worked on together,” Fine said. “It’s something that we all truly wanted to come out well.”

In the Midterm premieres Saturday, April 18 at 12:45 in Tawes Hall. The film serves as Ensel’s “Keystone” project and will be shown at the Keystone Symposium.

It will be available via Ensel’s YouTube channel after the premiere.

Maya Pottiger is a sophomore journalism major and can be reached at mayabee777@aim.com.

Kyle Travers, last year’s annual drag queen prom fashion show winner, took center stage at the Cambridge Community Center as this year’s host. However, he did not go by his given name.

Instead, on Thursday night he was “Ms. Anya Kneez.”

Three contestants entered the competition to be heralded as the new prom queen. The event was reminiscent of the Ms. America pageant. It opened with a rehearsed Q&A session, followed by a talent portion, then an evening-wear catwalk, and concluded with a lip-sync battle.

The three contestants were Matthew Dohm, who went by Lady A. Deeyate, Anders Norberg, who went by Anita Man, and Connor Laughland, who went by Patti LuBones. Dohm was eliminated after the first round of voting. Laughland went on to claim the crown after a heated lip-sync rendition of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston.

Ryan Eskalis is a senior broadcast journalism major and can be reached at ryan.eskalis@gmail.com.

On a 10-hour road trip to Chicago this past summer with longtime friend Will Yeager, senior Russian and studio art double major, Eric Gabriel and Yeager passed the time with spur-of-the-moment rap battles.

“We would put on these MF Doom beats and rap back and forth for an hour at a time,” said Yeager, a senior trumpet performance major. “Eric would always put me to shame with his lyrical rhyme-smithery.”

Half-inspired by comic books and video games such as Final Fantasy X, Gabriel’s art exhibits both the intricacy of M.C. Escher and the improvisation of graffiti.

“Sometimes, [drawing] is a very therapeutic thing,” Gabriel said. “It’s just kind of unconscious and very pleasing to make something very detailed.”

However, Gabriel attributes the other half of his inspiration to a sense of boredom with life.

“I think it’s just very easy to get bored with life in general,” he said. “And with art, you can just make something completely fantastical. That’s why video games are interesting – because you’re dealing with fantasy worlds or science fiction or things that are completely removed from reality.”

Along with Gabriel’s occasional use of Russian within his drawings, these components give his art a head-turning ambiance.

“There is something improvisatory about [Gabriel’s art]. He’ll just start with a line or a shape and keep adding to it over the course of days or weeks,” Yeager said. “Because he’s just drawing whatever comes to him, I think his art genuinely reflects whatever he’s feeling at the time and his personality. That’s why he has such a distinct style.”

Gabriel’s mother Lisa agrees, and said her son was an abstract thinker from an early age. She remembers his middle school geometry teacher saying his work “always amazing.”

“When [Gabriel] was two he started filling marble notebooks with drawings in pen and ink and he really hasn’t stopped,” she said.

Years later, Gabriel is still working on tessellations – one of his latest involves airplanes transforming into Jihadi John (a British alleged participant in select ISIS beheadings) with two Japanese hostages.

“If there’s actually an intention that I have … I’ll just sit and think ‘What is a way to have a message in this art in a way that’s not really contrived and obvious and political in a heavy-handed way and still make it aesthetically interesting?’” Eric asked.

He’s also been experimenting with screen printing, photographic positives, stencils and digital printers. His multimedia piece “Ouroboros 2.1” won second place in the campus-wide Sadat Art for Peace Competition.

“Eric’s more recent work incorporating ideas on social justice can be riveting,” Lisa said.

Gabriel’s art can be accessed on themedia.tumblr.com. For all buying inquiries, please contact him at eric.alexander.gabriel@gmail.com.

Alana Pedalino is a sophomore journalism major and can be reached at Alana.pedalino@gmail.com. 

Dresses sparkled under fluorescent lights as this university’s LGBTQ Student Involvement executive board members ran in and out of the double doors of Stamp’s Atrium carrying balloons and cupcakes.

Pride Prom, the group’s annual performance, was underway.

Select attendees arrived around 8 p.m., dressed to the nines in both drag and typical prom attire. About 50 attended.

In spite of the buzz in the room, this year’s Pride Month has not garnered as much attention as in past years said Nat Singal, a sophomore criminology and criminal justice double major.

The first of the three performers featured drag king Goldie Peacock from Brooklyn, N.Y. Described as “the most flamboyant, regal bird in the menagerie,” Goldie Peacock sauntered out of the dressing room and into the middle of the makeshift stage on the Atrium floor, striking a pose.

The crowd whooped and whistled as he showed off his peacock print dress, gold high heels and orange neckerchief. He danced and stripped until he was wearing nothing but heels and a fishnet bodysuit, eventually prancing back to the dressing room at the end of the song to make way for the next performer.

While Peacock’s performance was typical of a drag or burlesque show, some audience members still have difficulty watching the more revealing performances.

“I’ve had a few experiences where people get a little uncomfortable with me being dressed as a man, so I get in their face a little until they get over it,” said Diego El Sabroso, a drag king and musician based out of Washington, D.C.

El Sabroso spent the night as a backup guitarist for one of his fellow D.C. Kings performers.

Glam Gamz, a burlesque dancer based out of D.C., saw her first burlesque show about eight years ago at the Palace of Wonders. She said it was what she wanted to perform ever since.

“It took me a long time to get the courage to do it,” Gamz said. “I started with a queer burlesque troupe and now I co-produce a queer burlesque show at The Black Cat in D.C.”

Gamz is best known for her teasing stocking peels, in which she makes sure to “take off [her stockings] in really obnoxious, dragged down ways.”

Both Gamz and El Sabroso agree they enjoy all aspects of performing, but said the actual show and the audience reaction is the best part.

“I prepare and prepare and then it just goes by so fast,” El Sabroso said. “It’s like being on a roller coaster – you’re at the peak just waiting for the drop and then, whoosh, it’s over.”

Samantha Pitkin is a sophomore journalism major and can be reached at spitkin@terpmail.umd.edu.

Ulrich Recital Hall buzzed with anticipation.

College students chatted animatedly with their high school buddies as attendees milled into the room and took their seats.

Northwestern High School students gathered in the recital hall Wednesday to present their semester-long projects in front of their peers, their families and the university students in attendance. The projects ranged from a sketch about stereotypes in music genres to original songs about rape.

A recurring theme throughout “Seeing is Believing” is that those involved in the university community are not aware of the surrounding area.

Carly Finkelstein, an English teacher at Northwestern, said the high school students gain from this experience in two main ways.

“First, they have the chance to explore issues about which they care deeply with their peers in a safe environment,” she said. “Second, they create meaningful relationships with college mentors. This helps to solidify their desire to go to college by making college seem more accessible. If all types of students with a variety of backgrounds and interests can go to college, then they can, too.”

Justin Lohr, professor of Writing for Change, said the relationships between universities and local communities are often centered around the school.

“Our approach is the idea of the university helping the community,” Lohr said. “We want to use the expertise of people in the university to help groups in the community acknowledge and understand their own expertise [so they can] develop into the capacity to effect change.”

Olivia Wallick, a sophomore education major, said it’s important for university students to realize what kind of community they live in.

“[Northwestern] is literally five minutes away and people don’t know it’s there,” Wallick said. “UMD is a microcosm – you don’t really get the experience of the community even though you’re living in it.”

For Jonathan Palmer, a Northwestern student who participated in the sketch about stereotypes in music, the experience opened his eyes to a lot of problems he would not have otherwise noticed.

“It made me look at things from [the perspective of] people who are being bullied because of their stereotype or who they are,” Palmer said. “The hardest part was looking at things from other people’s point of view.”

Other students benefited from the experience in different ways.

Chloe Steck, whose group sang an original song, said she enjoyed getting to know her college friend and learning more about cultural conflict.

“The most beneficial part for me was really getting to research and learn all the facts about what my group talked about, which was rape in America,” Steck said. “I think just finding out more about that was really good.”

Marlene Esparza said “Seeing is Believing” helped her and her peers show that their generation is knowledgeable about current events.

“The most beneficial part of this was getting to express our political views and to show that we actually care,” she said. “Our generation actually knows what’s going on. We’re not unaware; we actually do care.”

Community member Janice McAllister of Bowie said she thought the performances were excellent and she’d buy the DVD to share the students’ powerful messages with her friends.

“I think that this type of experience for all involved is extremely beneficial in that everyone’s voice is heard,” McAllister said.

“Quite often in our communities we’re unaware of what the person next door is experiencing or what their culture is like,” she said. “This type of opportunity where the university comes alongside the students in a high school setting, it really taps into the awesome experience of just knowing who’s next door.”

Maya Pottiger is a sophomore journalism major and can be reached at mayabee777@aim.com.

Six members of the university and surrounding community gathered in Stamp Gallery Thursday night to tour the five art galleries on campus.

ArtWalk UMD draws attention to the different art galleries on campus, many of which are unknown to students.

Yvette Yu, a sophomore finance and information systems double major and organizer of ArtWalk UMD, said she did not know about the different galleries until she started working at Stamp Gallery.

ArtWalk UMD is the “brain child” of a former student who thought the university’s art galleries were unknown to students and the public, said sophomore studio art and animal science double major Grace DeWitt, who also works at Stamp Gallery.

Stamp Gallery

Stamp Gallery currently features three exhibits from Master of Fine Arts students, two of which are from the same artist. The exhibition is called Midpoint 2015.

Once a year, grad students in the MFA program are featured in Stamp Gallery.

Dane Winkler has two pieces, one of which includes a video of Winkler receiving a tattoo. Over spring break, Winkler brought boards to the gallery and built a sort of treehouse with a ladder leading up to it.

During the exhibition’s opening, Winkler and his brother ran into the gallery, climbed up the ladder and disappeared in the treehouse. After about ten minutes of silence, a projector turned on and displayed a live video of Winkler getting a tattoo. The video now plays in the exhibit.

Alexandra Pushkar, a graduate student getting her degree in applied math, said she usually doesn’t have time to do anything other than schoolwork. She said she used to paint and figured this was the perfect way to spend her leisure time.

“It’s very interesting to see what we have here and where [it is],” Pushkar said. “I’ve also been here for two years and never had a tour of the campus, so this is serving as my tour.”

David C. Driskell Center

The Driskell Center, located in Cole Field House, was founded in 2001. It is named after a retired art professor who was one of the most highly regarded artists and scholars on the subject of African-American art.

Currently on display is an exhibit called Emancipating the Past: Kara Walker’s Tale of Slavery and Power.

Kara Walker is a very important and controversial artist because of the topics she covers, like violence and slavery, Dorit Yaron, the center’s deputy director, said.

Walker is also known for her conflicting portrayal of women.

“She degrades women, but she also gives them power,” Yaron said.

All sixty of the limited edition prints in the room were silhouettes: everything was black and white.

“It makes the pieces more ambiguous,” Yaron said. “It invites people to guess.”

Members of the tour took turns guessing at what different silhouettes depicted, their ideas ranging from a veiled woman to a buffalo.

Kibel and Linear Galleries

The Architecture Building houses two galleries: the Kibel Gallery and the Linear Gallery.

The Kibel Gallery offers a series of shows each semester and invites the artists in to give lectures.

Graduate Assistant Ashley Grzywa, a student in the masters of architecture program, works with Associate Professor Ronit Eisenbach to decide which exhibitions to bring in each semester.

“We look at lecture series for each semester and the shows that will fit the theme,” Gryzwa said. “We have to see how they will fit together.”

The show currently on display is Hands on Urbanism: The Right to Green by Elke Krasny.

The Linear Gallery, located right around the corner, displays student work. At the moment, napkin sketches ranging from SpongeBob to the Capitol Building are organized on a wall.

Herman Maril Gallery and The Art Gallery

The final galleries on the tour were located in the Art-Sociology Building.

In the Herman Maril Gallery, honors students display their year-long portfolios.

“For [the students], the hardest part isn’t making the art, it’s figuring out where it goes,” said Professor Justin Strom, gesturing around the room to the strategically placed artwork.

The opening for the MFA Thesis Exhibition was upstairs in The Art Gallery. About 100 attendees milled around noshing on refreshments and looking at the artwork.

Steve Williams, one of the artists on display, walks to his studio at the university from Takoma everyday and picks up things that interest him along the way. The walk is about 4.5 miles and takes Williams a little over one hour.

Williams pairs some of the items together, leaving some as individuals, and then takes close-up photographs of them, which is what he puts on display.

“[Pairing items] is an exploratory process,” Williams said. “Initially it might come from the colors, the line, the form, something that I’m attracted to. It’s following that thread that emerges out of that exploratory process.”

At the end of the tour, participants said they gained useful knowledge of the galleries and were introduced to places on campus they otherwise would not have known about.

Maya Pottiger is a sophomore journalism major and can be reached at mayabee777@aim.com.

Editor’s Note: This article contains profanity.

Art Attack XXXII, the first concert ever held at the Xfinity Center, brought in performers Jessie J, The Chainsmokers, Logic and student performer The Orthobox Friday.

Junior criminal justice major Derek Abrokwa said he could not imagine a concert in the Xfinity Center.

“I’ve only seen basketball games and stuff there, so I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe it will be like going to the Verizon Center for a concert, or something like that.”

However, sophomore biology major Kaitlin Beilec said she thinks Xfinity will bring a new aspect to Art Attack.

“I think it was a great idea to move it because the sound will be better and there will be lights,” she said. “It’ll feel more like a concert than just being on the football field.”

A stage was set up in front of the student section, but the other sections of Xfinity were open for seating, along with the option of floor seats.

Doors opened at 5:30 for ticket holders to start filing in.

The Orthobox

Though Xfinity was still mostly empty, the crowd seemed lively for The Orthobox’s performance.

The Orthobox earned the opportunity to perform at Art Attack when he won Battle of the Bands earlier this semester. He is a beatboxer, meaning all of the sounds in his performance are created solely from his mouth.

“Orthobox” is a combination of the words “orthodox” and “beatbox.” The Orthobox follows Orthodox Judaism, so he could not perform after sundown, which marks the beginning of the Sabbath.

Because most campus events – like sports games and concerts – take place during the Sabbath, The Orthobox doesn’t get to participate in many.

“Being here, I’m embracing whatever SEE’s initial intention was to bring other aspects of student life,” he said. “Having a venue where I can participate, it’s like I’m contributing something to what’s going on here, and that is incredible.”

Students engaged in the more popular songs The Orthobox covered, like “Sail” and “Royals.”

“I think everyone was really blown away at the beginning because he was basically taking EDM tracks and doing it with his mouth and that was really cool,” said sophomore journalism major Marisa Haber. “But toward the end he had to start singing and I think that it kind of fell flat. The energy kind of died.”

Logic

The crowd at Xfinity slowly started growing. Glow sticks lit up in the foggy lighting around the stadium.

Logic took the stage wearing a University of Maryland sweatshirt.

Logic, who grew up in Montgomery County, said the university is a very special place to him. He has filmed music videos and recorded songs on campus.

“I’m so happy to be here,” he said. “Real talk.”

At this point, the room was halfway full. Those in the floor seating threw a beach ball around as Testudo jumped off the stage and crowd surfed.

When he performed covers of songs like “Memories” and “Pursuit of Happiness,” the crowd perked up and became more engaged.

“I saw [Logic] freshman year here; he had a free concert,” said senior government and politics major Francesco Zuluaga. “Just seeing him grow over these four years is great, so I think it’s gonna be really cool for him.”

However, senior communications major David Roumani was unimpressed with Logic’s performance.

“Logic was kind of the same thing the whole time for half an hour,” he said. “It was too much hip-hop, too much rap, very repetitive; it didn’t really get us into any kind of zone.”

After performing “Gang Related,” a “tale about what it was like growing up,” Logic left the audience with an important message.

“Do you know why I’m up here? It’s because I’m special,” Logic said. “You can do anything you want to do because you’re all special.”

The Chainsmokers

Dressed in black outfits with hoods, the  group took the stage relatively unnoticed. The stage lights were still off and audience members danced to the transition music. Then the stage lights flared on and the hooded band members threw more glowsticks into the crowd. One of them took a selfie on stage.

“But first … shut the fuck up,” The Chainsmokers, famous for their song “#SELFIE,” said, remixing their own lyrics.

The Xfinity Center started to fill up and the attendees in the stands finally stood to their feet for the performance.

The Chainsmokers seemed to energize the crowd the most out of all of the performers so far.

The audience jumped and fist-pumped to the loud beat.

A crowd favorite was “Kanye,” which, contrary to popular belief, is not about Kanye West.

“‘Kanye’ is about being yourself,” The Chainsmokers said.

Nisha Pawar graduated from this university in December, but came back to see her friends.

“I just wanna have fun with them,” Pawar said. “I’m actually a fan of Jessie J and Logic and The Chainsmokers. I’ve heard all of their music and I’m pretty excited for the concert.”

Jessie J

The lights dimmed and “Uptown Funk” played over the loudspeakers. The lyrics echoed around Xfinity as everyone sang along, an excited buzz in the air.

The stage lights illuminated the evening’s first live band, complete with back-up singers. The band started playing and then Jessie J ran onto the stage wearing a see-through Maryland tank-top as a dress.

Jessie J’s set was a mix of upbeat tunes like “Burnin Up” and more mellow songs like “Nobody’s Perfect.” She asked the audience to put their phones away and enjoy the moment.

“She doesn’t know her audience well,” a girl said during one of the slower songs.

Jessie J said performing at Art Attack was special to her because it was the first time she sang more than two songs at a show.

“I read somewhere that she’s the first female artist to come in a really long time,” Subhashree Nayak, who graduated from this university in December, said. “I think that’s really cool so her performance will be a lot more different than last year’s and in the past.”

Sarah Sinnott, a freshman early childhood education major, lost her voice during Jessie J’s performance.

“I’m a singer and personally I think that Jessie J is just amazing because, not only is she beautiful, but she has such a positive message,” Sinnott said. “She’s so talented and she can do things with her voice that a lot of famous people can’t do.”

Jessie J talked about how awkward and clumsy she is, describing herself as a “dog in disguise.” She said she’s had a lot of embarrassing moments, but she said they are important life lessons.

“The bad moments you’ve had in your life, you need them,” Jessie J said. “You learn from them.”

Maya Pottiger is a sophomore journalism major and can be reached at mayabee777@aim.com.

It’s not just an art exhibition.

It’s a call to arms — or “a call to art,” as gallery administrator Taras Matla put it. It’s meant to send a message.

“Perhaps a better way of looking at it is a call to arts using the arts as a vehicle to advocate for peaceful dialogue in the world coexistence,” Matla said. “That’s something that UMD prides itself on. That’s something that students are passionate about.”

The exhibition, titled “Questioning the Bomb: History and Non-Proliferation,” is a collection of graphic artwork designed by artists to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Eighty artists participated in the show, including students of this university, alumni and even some international artists.

All of the participants were residents of P5+1 countries, with the exception of four Iranian designers.

James Thorpe, an associate professor of this university’s art department, took a sabbatical to begin working on the project with some of his top students last fall, and worked through the spring term into the summer.

“It’s to commemorate the bombings but also to make people aware of the problems of nuclear proliferation, especially right now with the [Iran Nuclear] treaty that’s going down,” Thorpe said.

“What we’re trying to do with this is get students aware of how dangerous these weapons are,” he said.

For some students, the exhibit was a tangible manifestation of the magnitude of the United States’ attack on Japan 70 years ago. Besides posters, there were also some three-dimensional pieces, including an atomic bomb made of wire, which was built to scale. This was the piece that stood out the most to Ty Cuonharris, a freshman aerospace engineering major.

“It shows an artistic side to a historical event. I think it’s like the best way that you can portray some things,” Cuonharris said. “Before now, I just saw Hiroshima as like an idea but now…there’s an image [to it].”

Thorpe wanted to draw attention to a sort of international acceptance of nuclear bombs.  

“We’ve gotten kind of numb and we sort of accept the existence of these weapons which is a dangerous proposition,” he said.

The overlapping of the opening of “Questioning the Bomb” with the advancement of the Iran Nuclear Deal was a total coincidence, but made the exhibit even more relevant.

“You couldn’t have asked for better timing,” Matla said.

IJ Wittenberg, a freshman food science major, was particularly drawn to a piece called “The Last Day of Innocence,” which depicts a small Japanese girl staring up at an airplane.

“I think part of the zeitgeist of when [the bombing] happened was that it was so far away that we didn’t have to worry about it in the States, but we caused it,” Wittenberg said. The States caused the atomic bomb and we shouldn’t just forget what we’ve done,” he said.

Kelsey Marotta, a 2014 graduate of this university, and one of the artists, doesn’t believe that people in 1945 truly understood the results of U.S.’s actions.  Her design features the word “BOOM” in capital letters, on a largely plain orange background.

“I think of this word ‘boom’ as a word that little kids use, something that they just sort of throw around,” Marotta said.

“It doesn’t have a lot of meaning, and yet when you apply it to something like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it’s very powerful and so … in their decision to [bomb those cities], it was sort of child’s play, yet it had all these rippling effects,” she said.

Marotta was one of Thorpe’s students and he asked her to design a piece for this exhibition. She said she had done several projects like this while she was in school. She also said her submission to “Questioning the Bomb” was a nice change of pace from the professional world.

The exhibit is meant to be educational. Thorpe hopes students learn about the history and evolution of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan as well as why the events happened the way they did.

“I can appreciate the value now, but some of these [posters] I look at and I realize if I were much younger, I would be scarred. These are so powerful,” Wittenberg said.

“I just hope that people spread the word about the show and what we’re trying to do as far as thinking about stopping the proliferation of these weapons,” Thorpe said.

Featured Photo Credit: Dane Winkler, is a third-year grad student in the art department. (Ryan Eskalis/Bloc Reporter) 

Naomi Grant is a freshman journalism major and can be reached at ngrant@terpmail.umd.edu.

Interspersed with jokes predominately about police brutality in America, Trevor Noah quieted the audience with thought-provoking anecdotes.

Noah, the South African comedian who will host The Daily Show this fall, said Saturday evening his greatest struggle since moving to New York City has been learning how not to die in America.

Noah cited the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, saying he used their stories to create a checklist of things to avoid doing as a black man living in America.

“You know that when a police officer is approaching your vehicle, you don’t make any sudden movements,” Noah said. “You turn into the friendly black man, not the angry black man.”

Something he learned about racism in America is if you’re a black man driving a nice car, the police will pull you over because they assume it was stolen, Noah said. 

“I wasn’t offended,” Noah said, referencing a time when a police officer pulled him over while driving in Los Angeles. “I was a little flattered. Turns out I was speeding.”

Throughout his show, which was hosted by this university’s Student Entertainment Events department, or SEE, Noah changed his tone from loud and animated to quiet and reflective.  

The switch caused audience members to lean forward in their seats, hanging on to Noah’s every word. In these moments, Noah would be serious with the audience about today’s issues instead of joking about them.

“In society, we don’t give people a chance to acknowledge their prejudices,” Noah said.

SEE organized Noah’s visit to signify the last significant venue before construction begins on this university’s historic Cole Field House. Renovations are set to begin in the next month or so, a roughly $155 million project that will expand the building’s operations and overall departments.

Jackie Budko, a freshman journalism major, said she enjoyed the different mannerisms Noah incorporated into his show. 

“Trevor Noah was fantastic. It was great how he incorporated his surroundings into his act, especially when poking fun at the signer. I think it was smart how he avoided the local issues regarding racism and focused more on the national issues,” Budko said. 

Hugo Santos, a freshman economics major, agreed, noting his successful presentation of uncomfortable material. 

“I liked how he incorporated a lot of serious political topics with his humor,” Santos said. “Issues that people are frequently uncomfortable talking about, he brought up with ease because of his approach.”

Noah described one of his own prejudices: he prefers to fly on Middle Eastern airlines because he said it’s less likely that those planes will be taken over by terrorists. Noah said he finds comfort in knowing that, if someone were to stand up and start speaking Arabic, there’s a higher chance on a Middle Eastern flight of another passenger being able to translate what’s happening.
“Half of the terror is not knowing,” Noah said.

Featured Photo Credit: Screenshot courtesy of Trevor Noah: African American. 

Reporter Julia Lerner contributed to this article. 

Maya Pottiger is a junior journalism major and can be reached at mayabee777@aim.com.

Dim lights, comfy, worn chairs and a makeshift stage in the basement of Stamp created a relaxed and open vibe for the performers of the University of Maryland Food Collective’s first open mic night of the semester.  

Natalie Filipov began the event with her sultry and raspy rendition of “You Turn Clear In the Sun” by Telekinesis, her passion for the music evident in the way she moved.  

Filipov set the mood and high expectations, leaving the stage with applause.

The co-op began hosting their bi-weekly open mic nights last night, Sept. 18.  Beginning at 8 p.m., the co-op transformed into a hip arts venue, staging singers, musicians, and poets.

This small, intimate venue encouraged the attendees to get to know everyone, easing the nerves of performers and allowing for an engaged audience.

“It seems very authentic and like it’s going to be personal,” said Elsa Moeller, a freshman psychology major, before the event began.

Katya Slepoy, co-op partner and host of the open mic nights, welcomed the crowd and encouraged audience members to perform.

“Every time I hear there’s an open mic night, I want to perform and I wouldn’t if there wasn’t an opportunity, said Slepoy, a sophomore computer science major.

“People just want that space because the entertainment industry is so commercialized it can be hard for people to express themselves and feel like they have a place to perform.”

Slepoy later performed an original stand up routine, met with laughter and jokes from later performers.

“The co-op’s atmosphere is second to none and there’s just really good energy around,” said Letters and Sciences freshman Dyani Frye.

“I wanted to see some new faces and I feel like this reached a lot of people,” said Allison Lynch, a senior political science major.

Lynch later performed two short poems describing her struggle with addiction and keeping positive men in her life.

“It runs through his veins, up his arm, through his nose. I know nothing. Just a bump I used to hear him say, I knew nothing,” Lynch began, captivating the crowd. Hanging on to every word, Lynch was met with support for her honesty and strength.

Nelson Remitz and Slepoy soon took the stage, performing a duet covering George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone.” Later, Remitz performance of The Rolling Stone’s “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” was met with an uproar of clapping and dancing from the audience.

“It was a lot of different kinds of performances, which was really cool. Everybody was encouraging and friendly. We all know each other in some way or another, which is really awesome,” said sophomore mechanical engineering major Micah Arnson-Serotta.

The crowd’s facilitation of friendship seemingly prompted a more unique venue inspiring a desire to come back to the co-op’s future open mic nights.

“Tonight was unlike any other on-campus experience. All the clubs are usually sponsored by the University of Maryland. It felt more like a local, homegrown event, very welcoming. It was a lot of cool people having a really cool time. A fun time,” said Jeremy Klein, a junior computer science major.

The co-op appears to perpetuate an open minded, inviting space for College Park artists to express themselves.

The free event stimulated the creative side of every person in the audience, prompting performers to get back on the makeshift stage.

The co-op will be hosting open mic nights, art shows and movie screenings every other Friday for the rest of the semester. Any and all artists are welcome to participate and all students are encouraged to come out and support the College Park art scene.   

Katie Ebel is a freshman journalism major and can be reached at katieebel@gmail.com.

The words “at capacity” were repeated at Kreativity’s open mic Friday as attendees tried to squeeze into a small theater at The Clarice.

The large turnout was a testament to the amount of enthusiasm that was expressed for the performers, those who are part of the troupe and others who wanted a chance to be on stage.

The Kreativity Diversity Troupe was established in 1995. The members, who are called “Kreators,” write, direct, produce, perform and stage their own work.

Whitney Geohagan, a sophomore communication and theater double major and member of the group, said the organization allows for individuals from all walks of life to express themselves.

“[Kreativity is] a free space for people to come up and show us their talent,” Geohagan said.

“This group was started a long time ago for a lot of the African American students here on campus because they didn’t feel as though their voices were [being]  heard. But now, it’s [a] Kreativity Diversity Troupe. It’s open for anybody and everybody.”

Geohagan hosted the open mic along with fellow member Philip Kershaw, a senior history and theater double major. She performed two spoken-word poems and is a member of The Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House.

Kershaw discussed other events Kreativity presents, like the culminating end-of-semester performance.

“[It’s] comprised of scenes that all come from a theme that we decide as a group,” Kershaw said. “This year’s theme is connection, so all of the pieces that you’ll see in December are inspired by [that].”

There were a few spoken-word pieces at the open-mic but performances were certainly not limited to poetry.  

Acts ranged from two members of the troupe performing an acoustic mashup of Fetty Wap, to a singer belting “Valerie” by Amy Winehouse. Each act was well-received with vigorous applause.

Kershaw said he enjoyed watching a lot of the performances, but especially liked the poems read aloud by his co-host, Geohagan.

Geohagan wrote the second poem she presented titled, “Color Cards,” a piece regarding her little brother growing up in a world of police violence.

“I was told to involve a social issue and someone you’re related to,” she said.

The opening of the piece highlighted positive wishes Geohagan desired for her brother’s upbringing:

I want my baby brother to graduate kindergarten. I want him to be able to spell big words like ‘civil rights,’ or ‘arrested.’

The crowd sat silently, mesmerized by the powerful and reassuring voice that carried throughout the theater, in wake of recent instances of police brutality against black men.

Carolyn Worden, a sophomore English major and member of the Kreativity troupe said Geohagan’s act specifically spoke to her.

“You just don’t realize what other groups of people are going through,” she said. “That was really eye-opening to me.”

Featured Photo Credit: Courtesy of Creative Commons. 

Alex Carolan is a sophomore journalism major and can be reached at aaalex.carolan@gmail.com.

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, it was reported that Yi attended Thailand University of the Arts for 11 years. This information was inaccurate. Yi attended Taipei National University of the Arts – not Thailand University of the Arts.

We sincerely apologize for the reporting error.

***

We live in an age where technology is constantly evolving.

Tech gurus and entrepreneurs are creating and programming new devices that have previously been unimaginable.

Huang Yi, a native of Taiwan, presents a tangible piece of technology, a fresh invention the public has yet to experience.

Yi programs a robot named Kuka and performs dance routines with it at different venues.

Sheri Parks, the College of Arts and Humanities associate dean for research moderated a talk with Huang Yi Thursday in Gildenhorn Recital Hall at The Clarice about his experiences in dance, programming and life.

Students and staff were also involved in the conversation, and were encouraged to ask questions.

Bowen Gong, a freshman mathematics major asked Yi if he had a nickname for the robot, because “Kuka” is the name of the model – not the individual device.

“It’s really easy for me to relate my emotions to many items,” Yi said. “So I try not to name them.”

The crowd of around 60 spectators were once again captivated by Yi’s summations of his own life and technology.

Yi said he is limited to certain movements in dancing, as a human, but his robot Kuka is not.

“[It’s like] I’m beginning to learn how to be a human,” he said.

Yi attended Taipei National University of the Arts, he said. He was isolated to that one area because of financial concerns and lackluster travel options.

He said he did not go to the beach until he was 25 years old because of this, and started to learn what it was like to experience life for the first time.

At one point during the event, Parks asked Yi what happens as he ages while Kuka grows “younger,” as he updates it to new models.

“I think Kuka still ages,” he said. “The one that I [have] is already past the guarantee, so if he’s sick then I have to pay more.”

Bethany Scheerer, a freshman accounting major, said she was confused at first because she thought the event would involve Yi actually dancing with Kuka. Yi performed with Kuka at The Clarice Friday.

“I thought it was really interesting how he viewed technology,” she said. “And [I] like how he said he […] is emotionally attached to objects, [like Kuka,] but then tries not to become too attached to them.”

Scheerer said Yi takes away the limitations some artists experience, such as how he deals with robotics, even though individuals generally think art has no limitations.

Yi also highlighted his process of programming Kuka and how he visited this university’s engineering classrooms with their very own “Kuka” robots. Parks said his movements tend to be more fluid when he’s interacting with the robots than the engineering students, perhaps because of his experiences in dance.

Bryce Peterson, a sophomore mechanical engineer he was naturally drawn to Yi and Kuka because of his interest in artificial intelligence.

“I have been thinking about how robots can express human characteristics,” Peterson said. “The fact that [Yi programs] what the movement of the robot will be in order to make it look vaguely human [and] to give the robot [human] inefficiencies was really interesting,” he said.

The self-proclaimed “duet of human and robot” performs internationally and continues to receive high praise.

Featured Photo Credit: Huang Yi, left, an internationally acclaimed Taiwanese dancer, discusses “Huang Yi & KUKA,” a dance choreography he designed with a robotic arm named KUKA. Sheri Parks, right, moderated the conversation. (Ryan Eskalis/Bloc Reporter)

Alex Carolan is a sophomore journalism major and can be reached at aaalex.carolan@gmail.com.

From a distance, she looked like any other 71-year-old woman, albeit better-dressed than most. She smiled wide for pictures and laughed loudly at jokes. When she spoke, she often stretched the last syllable of her words.

However, Angela Davis is like no other 71-year-old woman. The controversial civil rights activist and feminist scholar has seen parts of the world others only dream of.

On Sept. 24, she brought those experiences to this university.

For more than an hour, Davis spoke to a sold-out audience of about 1,000 in the Stamp Grand Ballroom about her experiences as a radical advocate and revolutionary.  

The majority of her talk focused on her fight for social justice and how it has changed from her generation to ours.

“We used to talk about freedom and justice…and then somebody came up with diversity,” Davis said.

The crowd was so engrossed that she often could not finish her sentence before the applause drowned out her words.

Though she focused heavily on the topic of institutionalized racism, Davis discussed a wide variety of issues, even touching on animal rights and how we need to be “more aware of the other beings with whom we share this planet.”

After the main lecture was a question-and-answer session. It was during this segment that Davis showed more of her scholarly side, flipping one student’s question about the role black athletes in the sports community back on him and challenging him to rethink his stance on the issue.   

“We still need to figure out how to reinvent entire worlds,” Davis said in response to a question about ending the prison cycle.

For Alison Jerabek, a senior English major, the talk was a chance to see a legend in the flesh. During Davis’s talk, Jerabek found herself “visibly shaking.”

“I’m still shaking right now,” Jerabek said. “I think it’s one of those things I’m not going to really fully understand how I feel about this until later when the shock has kind of worn off.”

Mere minutes before the talk, a senior approached Davis in the bathroom and told her how her grandmother had exactly three photos on her wall: JFK, Jesus and Davis herself. Davis later mentioned this encounter in her opening statements.

For other students, Davis’ talk expanded what they already knew.

“I think that we’re so whitewashed and, like, carved in our ways that we don’t even realize what’s happening around us,” Al’Asia Watson, a junior sociology major, said. “Figures like her, she opens our eyes, she lets us know the truth.”

Davis is most famous for her work with the Black Panther Party during the civil rights movement in the 1970s. For a period of time, the FBI listed Davis on its Top Ten Most Wanted List. She spent several months in jail on charges including murder and conspiracy,  for which she was later acquitted.

Since then, Davis has published numerous works on social change, taught at various universities and advocated for the abolition of the prison-industrial complex, immigrant rights, black feminism and many more progressive ideals.

Davis came to the campus as part of the Voices of Social Change series, a program run by the Leadership & Community Service-Learning Office that brings active leaders of various communities to the campus to share their stories. She first came to speak at this university in 2012.

Dr. Marsha Guenzler-Stevens, the director of the Adele H. Stamp Student Union, emphasized the importance of the Voices of Social Change series.

“Storytelling [is] powerful because what happens is, you see yourself in other people’s stories or some element of people’s story,” Guenzler-Stevens said. “I think one of the things to be clearly mindful of is Angela Davis has this amazing story that will provoke and inspire and maybe you will see yourself [in it].”

Upcoming speakers in the Voices of Social Change series include Tanya Tagaq, an Inuit throat singer and advocate for indigenous rights, and Emmy-nominated transgender activist Laverne Cox.

Featured Photo Credit: Flickr user Jonathan Ah Kit.

Rosie Brown is a sophomore prospective journalism major and can be reached at rosie.a.brown@gmail.com.

A single black stage stood resolute in a red-brick and brown hardwood lined room. The sound of salsa, and other genres of music, blared. Eyes around the room grew wide as ears recognized songs like “La Negra Tiene Tumbao” and “Rebelión.”

When the first performer took the stage with a charango in one hand and a rondador in the other, the energy buzzing through the room was so thick you could feel it. When he left the stage, the applause could be heard down the hall.

This was only the beginning of the Third Annual Latinx Monologues.

The Political Latinxs United for Movement and Action in Society (PLUMAS) hosted the Third Annual Latinx Monologues on Thursday at 6 p.m. in the Prince George’s Room of Stamp. The event was an opportunity for speakers and activists to engage in discussion of issues directly affecting the Latinx community through the use of artistic expression.

Student performers populated the first half of the night. Their mediums varied just as widely as their stories. Poetry was a popular format, but there were raps, songs and monologues as well.

“We have endless dreams. I am a Latina,” Jocelyn Nolasco, who performed at her first UMD Latinx Monologue when she was just in high school, said in a spoken word poem about what being Latina means to her.

From the limitations afforded to them by society, to unfair double standards of gender roles, to a shout-out to an aunt’s cafe in El Salvador, virtually no topic was off limits.

Dennis Mendizabal rapped about the way the Latinx community has been “overlooked for way too long,” as well as hip-hop’s importance to the younger generation.

“What’s the use if you can’t teach the youth?” Mendizabal said in his rap.

A solid number of the performances were in Spanish, but rather than feeling exclusionary, the meanings and feelings seemed to transcend language barriers.

The second half of the night belonged to Maya Chinchilla. An outspoken Guatemalan poet and activist with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing, Chinchilla’s list of accolades was so long, it nearly took up a page of the program itself.

She dedicated her first poem to all her Central American unicorns and “anyone who’s ever felt like one of a kind.”

“It’s 2015 and you’re still not seeing yourself represented. That’s out of control,” Chinchilla said.

Chinchilla went out of her way to engage the crowd, encouraging the crowd to sing “Angel Baby” during a poem at one point and telling them if they snapped hard enough, it would sound like a rainforest.

A constant thread that ran throughout her work was the inherent power of femininity and how it often gets overlooked or misrepresented by society. In one of her more intense poems, she details the struggles of a trans woman she once taught.

For William Chavez, a senior criminology and criminal justice major minoring in
Latino studies, the Latinx Monologues were a chance to give a voice to an important part of his identity.

“Being Latino means embracing a heritage and a culture that has been oppressed historically and marginalized through the United States,” Chavez said. “Being Latino means being proud of where you come from, where your parents come from [and] where your heritage originated from.”

Chavez is also the historian for PLUMAS (Political Latinxs United for Movement and Action in Society). It is his job to make sure that as the Latinx population on campus steadily increases, the work the organization has done is never forgotten.

“We’re here to sing. We’re here to invite anyone to come in and join us,” Chavez said.

For Erica Fuentes, a junior government and politics major and treasurer for PLUMAS, her experience in the Latinx community is directly tied to her life as a woman. Several performers highlighted the various intersections that existed within the Latinx community.

PLUMAS was founded three years ago with the belief that Latinxs on the campus needed to “do more,” Chavez said.

Since then, the organization has grown tremendously, accomplishing several feats of social activism, such as teaming up with United We Dream, the nation’s largest immigrant youth-led organization, and protesting against Donald Trump.

“Although we’ve made so much progress as a community, there’s still so much progress to be made,” Fuentes said.

PLUMAS has several more events planned for this semester, including a talk on the State of Latinx Affairs in the United States, as well as a coalition event for Black and Latinx students to discuss the historical tensions between the two groups.

Juan-Felipe Pataquiva, a Colombian-born student who delivered the only monologue at the event, summed it up nicely in his performance.

“You can’t really explain what a Latino is, you just feel it,” Pataquiva, said. “You are Latino.”

Featured Photo: Walter Suarez, who opened the performances, played pan flute and guitar simultaneously at Latinx Monologues. PLUMAS, the organization that coordinated the monologues, says the event is meant to reflect Latin identities through artistic expression. (Ryan Eskalis/Bloc Reporter)

Rosie Brown is a junior journalism major and can be reached at rosie.a.brown@gmail.com.

“We don’t want to have any closed doors.”

That was how Alexis Lothian, co-founder of #transformDH, described the collective at this weekend’s Transformative Digital Humanities Conference and THATCamp.

“It’s been so great to bring people here and see these conversations take place that I’ve been a part of for years,” she said.

The conference, which was born out of the collective that Lothian and several others formed in 2011, was an amalgamation of presentations, interactive workshops, and a keynote speech from scholar Lisa Nakamura on “The Unwanted Digital Labor of Social Justice: Race, Gender, and the Origins of Call Out Culture.”

#transformdh pic.twitter.com/U1jrVkbaa8

— Katie King (@katkingumd) October 2, 2015

At the 2011 American Studies Association  — when they formed the panel that would later become #transformDH — Lothian and her partners (Moya Bailey, Amanda Phillips and Anne Cong-Huyen) wanted the focus to revolve around queer and ethnic studies in digital humanities.

Since then, #transformDH has focused on that which is queer, or hard to define. In a similar vein, this weekend’s event was amorphous, and purposefully so.

On Friday, two videographers from Gallaudet University shared a project on American Sign Language (ASL) Shakespeare productions and discussed the intersectionality of his works and what their accessibility could mean to the deaf community.

A group of graduate students also hosted a panel to discuss the relationship between disability studies and digital humanities.

So honored to moderate “Emergent intersections of disability & the digital” #transformdh pic.twitter.com/mR1vqXuznp

— BA Haller (@Mediadisdat) October 2, 2015

Saturday, attendees had the opportunity to propose on-the-spot sessions during an unconference. The subject matter included how affect and emotion impacts professional and scholarly settings and ways to “hack” the academic institution as scholars in less conventional fields of study.

The two-day long event was highly accessible, whether you were physically present or not. The presentations and Nakamura’s keynote speech were all livestreamed throughout the day on Friday. The video presentations were posted on the #transformDH website, Twitter streams ran throughout the weekend, and interactive Google Docs were posted for attendees during each session of the conference.

At yesterday’s #transformDH panel at #asa2012 with @moyazb @alothian + @wewatchwatchers pic.twitter.com/b66ay06J

— HASTAC Scholars (@HASTACscholars) November 18, 2012

The conference was, essentially, what #transformDH is all about.

“It’s about making knowledge through digital means, through technology,” Lothian said. “The ways in which we use digital technology to connect, to push forward ideas, critiques, social justice.”

Lothian said that examples of digital humanities include hashtags, blogging communities, or the experience of discovering Audre Lorde and black feminism through Tumblr.

“These images and sounds that come to us — that become part of our thought — we have the ability … to take those images and change them, reorder them, shuffle them, comment on them, shift them,” Lothian said. “And that’s knowledge production. And that’s the kind of work #transformDH is interested in promoting and focusing on.”

Featured Photo Credit: Courtesy of iconshut.com.

Daphne Pellegrino is a junior journalism major and can be reached at dpellegr@terpmail.umd.edu.

Milagros Reyes, a 13-year-old from Buck Lodge Middle School in Hyattsville, was fascinated when she learned about a “mini version” of Pompeii in El Salvador.

She had been creating a story using Mayan glyphs, which she learned from Frida Larios, an award-winning typographic artist from El Salvador.

Larios works as an artist and ambassador for the International Indigenous Design Network. She collaborates with cultural institutions in El Salvador, as well as at the Salvadoran embassy in Washington, where she facilitates workshops that encourage young Salvadorans in the U.S. to embrace their native culture through art.

She brought this knowledge to campus Tuesday as a part of “Imaging Homeland and Belonging.” The event took place in Stamp Student Union’s Art and Learning Center.

The workshop attracted a large and diverse group of students.

For those of Latino/a heritage, and it provided an opportunity for them to reflect on part of their cultural roots and their idea of home.  

For Frankie Jovel, a senior and a member of Lambda Theta Phi, a Latino fraternity on campus, this event helped him get closer to his Salvadoran heritage.

“This motivates me to look into my culture,” Jovel said. He was using the glyphs to write a sentence about corn tamales, which he said he loves to eat.

As an introduction to the event, Larios presented on Mayan culture and history, in which she discussed the meaning of the ancient glyphs and distributed a colorful guide that showed the various designs along with their English meanings.

“The Mayas were such thinkers. They are the ones who invented the number zero. They had a whole cosmology with constellations and stars. They domesticated corn and they invented chocolate. We owe a lot of things to the Maya. So we need to learn about them like we learn about the Greeks,” Ana Patricia Rodríguez, associate professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese, said.

Larios said she wants to show that Mayan glyphs are deeply rooted within people of Central American origin.

“We are genetically drawn to these forms due to the fact that the [Mesoamerican indigenous peoples] lived 2,000 years—maybe less—but the time we were colonized was even shorter. We belong to the region. We are natives. By exposing young people to the language, there is greater capacity for learning, because there’s empathy,” Larios said.

With the help of archaeological experts, Larios is working to preserve Mayan script. She is illustrating in bright, contemporary style that is immediately attractive.

One of her projects is a children’s book titled, The Village that was Buried by an Erupting Volcano, which she wrote and illustrated using Mayan glyphs. The book tells the story of an indigenous Mayan village in El Salvador preserved under volcanic ash for nearly 1,500 years.

Known as the Joya de Cerén Archaeological Park, this village is now an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

“That’s my mission—to transmit cultural heritage in a ludic, interpretative manner, using design as a tool,” Larios said.

She also designed the uniforms that the Salvadoran team wore to the 2015 pan-American games in Toronto. The uniforms, which were inspired by traditional Salvadoran costumes, were white and blue and adorned with ancient Mayan symbols.

However, Larios says it isn’t easy to encourage people in El Salvador to wear traditional costumes.

“It was a challenge because of the lack of attachment to traditional costumes. It’s a stigma. It’s persecution against indigenous peoples because they represent the peasant class, the class that [historically] starts upheavals,” Larios said.

Featured Photo Credit: Belqui Ríos, a senior family science major taking a course called “Great Themes of the Hispanic Literatures; Home, Homeland and Be/longings in U.S. Latina/o Texts.” For students like Ríos, the workshop provided an opportunity to reflect on their cultural roots and the idea of home. (Gabriela Martinez/For The Bloc)

Gabriela Martinez is a communications graduate assistant at the College of Arts and Humanities and may be reached at gcmdavila@gmail.com. 

On a normal night, McKeldin Mall is eerily quiet with groups of students coming through every so often.

However, on the night of Oct. 7, McKeldin Mall was anything but quiet. The center of campus was alight with color and song in honor of a long held Vietnamese tradition.

The UMCP Vietnamese Student Association (VSA) held its first ever Lunar Lanterns event, with the proceeds going to the charity “Kids Without Borders.”

This event was the last in a monthly series the organization holds at the start of fall semester called “VSA Month.” Though this was the first year they held the event, more than 700 individuals said they would attend through the VSA Facebook page.

“We meant for it to be much smaller, so we really had to up the production value,” VSA President Daniel Luu, a senior bioengineering major, said.

The night began with a fire juggling performance courtesy of the UMD Juggling Club. Most of the members spun flaming “poi,” a kind of tethered weight swung on a chain, while one member performed with a “dragon staff,” a pole with fire on both ends.

Members of the audience gasped and cheered as the fire got alarmingly close to their faces. A spotter stood behind with a fire extinguisher at the ready throughout the performance.

“I don’t really spin to hit the audience in the face,” Cody Silva, Juggling Club president and a senior animal science major, said.

Other performers included William Ma, who played his guitar and sang, and the Bui sisters Vivian and Alina, who performed an acoustic version of Britney Spears’ 2003 single,“Toxic.” All three musicians are members of VSA.

The hosts also raffled off Pho D’Lite, Target Express and Snowbots gift cards, along with cookies.

The lantern ceremony started about half an hour later than the advertised 8:15 start time. Before the release, Luu explained to the audience the significance of the lanterns in Vietnamese society.

The release at UMD was for the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival (Tet Trung Thu), a time to celebrate the harvest and “everyone that means something to you.”

The lotus-shaped lanterns were supposed to float from one end of the fountain to the other, but the current was too weak and the lanterns ended up trapped near the fountain’s stone edge. Luu joked about the incident as  the lanterns clumped together instead of floating down.

The organization sold around 500 lanterns and the crowd seemed unperturbed by the slight malfunction.

The proceeds from the event went to the Teach Me to Fish,  a program run by Kids Without Borders, which sends teachers to Vietnam to help orphans acquire skills they can use in the workforce after they’re forced to leave the orphanage at age 18.

Luu first got involved with VSA during his freshman year. He said the club has changed tremendously from when he first joined.

VSA’s head of public relations, Dennis Do, a sophomore computer science major, has only been involved with VSA since last semester, but he already considers the organization a large part of his life at this university.

Another major event held by VSA was the Mid-Atlantic Union of Vietnamese Student Association conference this past spring. The event was a chance for the VSA’s  11 schools in the region to network and receive mentorship from alumni.

Do said the club is working hard to change its image here on campus.

“VSA is seen as very FOB[fresh of the boat]-y and Asian around here,” Do said. “We’re just a whole bunch of people who want to share with people our culture.”

One of the big themes of the night was family. Dorothy Nguyen, a 22 year-old alumni of VSA, who came back for the event, said the club has grown significantly since she was treasurer and that it is in part due to a mostly new executive board.

With more than 70 active members involved in the club, VSA is one of the largest Asian student organizations on campus. However, Luu emphasized how the club is not only open to students from Vietnam or with Vietnamese heritage.

“You love us, we’ll love you back just the same,” Luu said.

Rosie Brown is a junior journalism major and can be reached at rosie.a.brown@gmail.com.

From classic novels to violent video games to a questionably-lit Tim Burton movie, it seems anything and everything has become Alice in Wonderland-themed these days.

However, the classic tale of a young girl traversing a magical fantasy land has found a new home at this university.

In honor of the 150th anniversary, or sesquicentennial, of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Hornbake Library is displaying a several-hundred piece exhibit on Alice and her impact through history.

The exhibit consists of items from the private collection of Clare and August Imholtz, ages 69 and 72 respectively. The two have been building their collection since the 1970s.

“We concentrate on books and ephemera. We don’t go out of our way to purchase dolls and porcelain, or Alice forks and spoons,” August said.

The Imholtzs’ full collection features more than 4,700 pieces of Alice memorabilia.

Only a fraction of the Imholtzs’ vast collection came to this university. Edith Sandler, the Graduate Assistant for Instruction and Outreach at Hornbake Library, said that despite the hundreds of items her team took out of the Imholtzs’ house to create the exhibit, the couple still had many more.

Sandler has been working on setting up the exhibit since last December.

“This is definitely the longest project I’ve ever worked on and [been] most involved [with],” Sandler said. “We wanted to make sure that the exhibit [met] [the donors’] expectations.”

The exhibit will also feature some of Lewis Carroll’s non-Alice works, though they never reached the levels of acclaim  of the Alice series.

August Imholtz said that trying to pick a favorite piece of his collection was like, “trying to ask a grandparent to pick a favorite grandchild.” Sandler’s favorite piece of the exhibit is an edition she has dubbed “Basketball Alice,” which reimagines the story as a large basketball game.

The staff at Hornbake Library is hosting months of activities and events to coincide with the display. Each month, the library will reveal a character portrait with information about specific characters from the novels. They also hope to have local elementary schools bring their students to campus to learn more about Alice.

According to August, the lasting appeal of Alice’s story comes from a human desire to “make sense of a world that doesn’t seem to make sense.”

The exhibit opened on Oct. 1, but the official reception will be held on Oct. 16. The reception is free and open to students.

The exhibit will run through July 2016.

Featured Photo Credit: Testudo wears the Mad Hatter’s hat outside of the Alice in Wonderland 150 Year Exhibit in Hornbake Library. (Josh Loock/Bloc Reporter)

Rosie Brown is a junior journalism major and can be reached at rosie.a.brown@gmail.com.

Hey there College Park!

It’s October, which means it’s time for some spookiness.

The Writer’s Bloc, University of Maryland’s designated literary arts publication, is accepting ongoing submissions, whether it be poetry, prose, songs, short stories or columns.