Spitz shares an account of her journeys and experiences abroad below.

My trip started in the Czech Republic, where I am researching the children’s drawings from Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp. This project started for me years ago when Peter Jelavich, a Weimar period historian who is now at Johns Hopkins University , asked me to work with him on a children’s opera, ‘Brundibar’ by Hans Krasa, which was produced in the camp and performed entirely by children. (This opera was performed last year in Baltimore at the Chizik Amuno Synagogue, where I gave an illustrated introductory talk.) Since first visiting the camp 20 years ago, I have written and lectured on the opera and Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, the Bauhaus-trained artist who became the children’s art teacher. Over 4,000 drawings survive today, saved and hidden by her before she was taken to the gas chambers of Auschwitz; to write on them is my next project.

Prague, meanwhile, is an exquisite city uniquely preserved with much of its beauty intact. Its castle spires, Charles Bridge, Wenceslas Square, Josefov (Jewish Quarter with its maze-like streets), State Opera House (where I heard ‘Rusalka’ by Antonin Dvorak, the premier Czech composer, with its limpid rippling score, its libretto based on Hans Christian Andersen’s story of ‘The Little Mermaid’), and graceful ubiquitous ‘art nouveau’ style constitute a few of its aesthetic delights. Prague was also the home of Franz Kafka, at least one of whose haunting works we read each spring in my Honors College Great Books II seminar.

From Prague I flew to India, where I had been invited to give the Alumni Lecture to the English department at Ravenshaw University in Cuttack. Cuttack, a 1,000-year-old city, overflows with a teeming population, streets crisscrossed by the unceasing motion of bicycles, rickshaws, motor scooters, pedestrians, cows, trucks and cars tooting constantly, no traffic signals, yet a deep sense of order. I was also invited to give the keynote address in an International Conference on Politics and Children’s Literature. This, my fourth lecturing trip to India, was as stimulating and rewarding as previous ones. My lectures were attended by students, faculty and various dignitaries, including the vice chancellor and a judge on India’s high court.

Four professors invited me back to their homes while I was there, each visit providing me with insights into daily life; I met family members, including a clever son and a charming daughter, as well as husbands, wives, parents, a poet and several artists. I attended a performance by a renowned performer of Oria traditional dance (done with bells at waist and ankles, elaborate finger movements, body isolations, and carefully choreographed facial expressions).

Before the premier social event of the conference, I was dressed by two of the ladies in a shimmering navy sari flecked with gold and given a bindi. The ensemble engendered quite an outburst of when we three arrived for the event! Indian hospitality has long been legendary, and I must pronounce these legends entirely well-deserved. The students truly made me miss their UMBC Honors College counterparts!

Papers at the conference included one by a gifted maker of “livres d’artiste,” Raja Mohanty, who said that poetry springs from our quarrels with ourselves (which I loved), and another by a children’s book publisher from Delhi, who pointed out that, because the Indian government recognizes 20 official languages, while in the schools children use English, the question of original language versus translation arises with a vengeance. Preserving local tongues in the face of globalization offers challenges, but ones well worth meeting.

My final afternoon was spent in nearby Bhubaneswar at a local school, where I spoke to an assemblage of 150 children. This prospect seemed a bit daunting, but it went extremely well, and when it was over, the children, neat in their uniforms, swarmed me begging for my autograph! Completely surprised, I tried drawing tiny flowers and small animals in their notebooks, but the children with their clamoring and pushing soon overwhelmed me. I realized this must be how a rock star feels!

The last day of my stay also included a re-visit to Bakul, an arts foundation established by Sujit Mahapatra four years ago. Sujit, who is young, energetic, dynamic, and original, had invited me to lecture at the project’s initiation, and I wanted to return and see how it had developed. Bakul offers the population a unique free children’s library, where young people can drop in and read to their hearts’ content. Imagine the magical premises: jungle paintings climb the walls; mats nestle on the floor; the doors stand open; shelves burst with colorful books, so that boys and girls can simply enter, take them down and lie on the floor or curl up and get lost in other times and spaces. Everything at Bakul is done by volunteers, and volunteers from all over the world have sent books in many languages. We are seeking a documentary filmmaker to create a visual record of Bakul.

Home again, bedazzled, inspired, infused, brimming with images, ideas, and discoveries, I am looking forward to sharing them with my Honors College students in the spring.

Hrabowski is president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. UMBC, as it’s called, was once known primarily as a commuter school. Today, this mid-sized state university has earned a reputation as one of the most innovative schools in the country. Especially when it comes to getting students into math and science and keeping them there.

So begins a segment on “60 Minutes” that follows UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski and Meyerhoff students and alumni to explain the UMBC approach to graduating more students, especially minorities, in STEM fields.

See the full segment here.

In searching for assisted living for a family member, Morgan recommends looking beyond a facility’s cosmetic factors to attend to the individual habits, interests and needs of the person who will live there. “What are their priorities?”; “How important is flexibility in their daily routine?”; “What about continuing lifelong behaviors, like having a drink before dinner, attending religious services or spending time outdoors?”

To learn more, read “Questions to Ask Before Choosing Assisted Living” or watch Morgan’s Talking Heads video. See also Morgan’s recent Washington Post letter “The unsung heroes of elder care.” Leslie Morgan is UMBC’s Lipitz Professor of the arts, humanities and social sciences for academic year 2011-2012 and one of the nation’s foremost scholars on aging.

This fascinating and deeply-moving account of Jewish family life before, during and after the Holocaust reveals how the Kaufmann-Steinberg family was pulled apart under the Nazi regime and left divided between Germany, the US and Palestine. The family’s unique eight-way correspondence across two generations brings into sharp focus the dilemma of Jews in Nazi Germany facing the painful decision of when and if they should leave the country.

See a previously posted video with Rebecca Boehling and Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg, a professor of biology at UMBC, on whose family letters the book is based.

The events of September 11, 2001 changed course of history. For Rebecca Adelman, assistant professor of media and communication studies, and Seth Messinger, associate professor of sociology and anthropology, they also changed the course of their life’s work. The attacks and subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan led them to study new issues and respond to new needs. This video includes reflections from Adelman, who examines imagery of the War on Terror, and Messinger, who works with veterans recovering from limb loss.

For more UMBC experts on 9/11, click here.

While cleaning out her mother’s closet a few years ago, Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg, a professor of biology at UMBC, discovered a worn brown cardboard box covered with German writing and filled with wartime letters. Most of the letters were dated between 1938 and 1941 – after her mother had left Germany and come to the United States. Now, thanks to Rebecca Boehling and Uta Larkey, an associate professor of German studies at Goucher College, this extraordinary family story comes to life in a new book: Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust

This fascinating and deeply-moving account of Jewish family life before, during and after the Holocaust reveals how the Kaufmann-Steinberg family was pulled apart under the Nazi regime and left divided between Germany, the US and Palestine. The family’s unique eight-way correspondence across two generations brings into sharp focus the dilemma of Jews in Nazi Germany facing the painful decision of when and if they should leave the country.

Published by Cambridge University Press.

Looking for a high quality assisted living facility can be a stressful experience for older adults and their families. The challenge starts when we ask, “What is high quality?” Dr. Leslie Morgan suggests a more helpful question: “What facility would best meet the individual personality and needs of my loved one?”

“Quality Assisted Living” provides results from a study on perceptions of what constitutes quality of life in assisted living facilities, funded by the National Institute on Aging. In this video, Morgan explains how her research team completed in-depth interviews with residents, staff and family members to tease apart the notion of “quality.” The book they’ve delivered is a down-to-earth, accessible discussion of topics ranging from dining preferences to housing regulations to financial issues, in residents’ own words.

Morgan is a professor of sociology at UMBC and a researcher with UMBC’s Center for Aging Studies. For more information on “Quality Assisted Living” see the book’s official website.

Lee Boot, associate director of UMBC’s Imaging Research Center, has been producing a series of videos entitled “Education Rethunk,” which deconstructs the education problem in the US by looking at it through the lens of culture.

Boot produced the videos for What Weekly and the blog WhoWeAm, which is a project of the Imaging Research Center seeking to discover who we are as individuals and as the collection of cultures that make our city, region and country.

Part One of the series, “Schools Unhinged,” features Diane Lee, vice provost and dean for undergraduate education at UMBC.

Other videos in the series:
Education Rethunk, Part 2: Edu-culture
Education Rethunk, Part 3: Ad-ucation
Education Rethunk, Part 4: Dusting Off Our Game

More videos will be posted as they become available.

When Maryland’s state legislature sent the Civil Marriage Protection Act back to committee in March, both supporters and opponents of the bill were left with a lot of questions. In this video interview by the student journalists of the USDemocrazy news blog, with support from UMBC’s Talking Heads, Jodi Kelber-Kaye discusses her concerns with how same-sex marriage legislation is addressed in the media, her own work as a marriage equality advocate, where Maryland stands in terms of LGBT representation at the state level, and next steps for the marriage bill. She also offers tips on how young people can become engaged in issues that matter to them by communicating with their state representatives.

Kelber-Kaye is a lecturer in Gender and Women’s Studies and director of the Women Involved in Learning and Leadership program at UMBC.

On April 19, 1861, Baltimore was the site of the Civil War’s pratt Street Riots. Here, Anne Rubin tells the story of the riots and the first casualties of the war.

Anne Rubin, associate professor of history, is the author of A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868, and, with Edward Ayers, the CD-ROM The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in The American Civil War Part I: The Eve of War, which won, among others, the E-Lincoln prize. She has authored articles and chapters in numerous Civil War books, magazines, and encyclopedias.

Rubin is now developing Sherman’s March and America, an interactive project that tells the story of the march through maps, photos, videos and voices, and writing a related book called Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman’s March and America, which will be published by UNC Press.