Baltimore Field School 2.0
As part of UMBC’s Public Humanities program, Baltimore Field School is an ongoing approach to community engaged research that moves from extractive approaches to research and instead is aimed at building sustainable and ethical projects while helping make the university’s outreach infrastructure more equitable.
From 2022-2023, we completed the Baltimore Field School 2.0: Undoing & Doing Anew in Public Humanities which was composed of 13 UMBC graduate students, staff, and faculty along with 8 community partners and 3 team leaders. This leg of the field school was funded by a public engagement grant from American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) of over $150,000. The grant will funded collaborative projects developed with community fellows and will focus on food and land justice, racial equity, and journalism/public information. The cohort of community fellows included: Betty Bland-Thomas of South Baltimore Partnership, Yesenia Mejia of Creative Alliance, Curtis Eaddy II of Presidential Brands, Eddie Conway and Cameron Granadino of Real News Network, Tisha Guthrie of Poppleton Now and Baltimore’s Renters United, Lisa Snowden of Baltimore Beat, Aishah Alfadhalah of Mera Kitchen Collective, and Eric Jackson of the Black Yield Institute.
From 2020-2021, we implemented the inaugural Baltimore Field School (BFS), launched through a $125,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2020. This group was composed of 15 UMBC faculty, staff, and graduate students with 2 community fellows.
For more information contact Director of Public Humanities – Department of American Studies, UMBC – Sarah Fouts sfouts@umbc.edu.
BFS 2.0 is funded by an ACLS Sustaining Public Engagement Grant
2024 BFS Updates
In June 2024, Sarah Fouts presented as part of an online professional development workshop series titled “Teaching the Publicly-Engaged Humanities to Undergraduates.” Organized by HumanitiesX, DePaul University’s Experiential Humanities Collaborative, and the Public and Applied Humanities Program at the University of Arizona, the series connected faculty across disciplines to discuss approaches to teaching project-based and community-engaged humanities courses. The workshop featured presentations from invited speakers, followed by
Q&A and a guided activity.
During May 2024, Nicole King presented a keynote “The Field is Us:” Building Collaborative Public Humanities Projects” and workshop “Listening Across Difference: From Stories to Narratives” at Allegheny College and a keynote “The University in the Neighborhood: Research and Teaching with the Community in Baltimore” for the Provost’s DELTA Teaching Forum at Johns Hopkins University.
In May 2024, we received Honorable Mention for the Public Humanities Award for Leadership in Practice and Community for our Baltimore Field School and Building Ethical Community and University Partnership. The award is part of the Consortium of Humanity Centers and
Institutions (CHCI) which will be held at UC Berkeley in May 2024.
On April 26, 2024, the Baltimore Field School hosted the “The Field is Us” Spring Symposium, titled “Building a Movement: Connecting Housing and Land Justice in Baltimore,” at Mobtown in Baltimore City. This event, sponsored by Public Humanities, Dresher Center, Orser Center, Maryland Traditions, CIRCA, and the Department of American Studies. It brought together scholars and community organizers to explore equitable, community-led development models for Baltimore’s historically disinvested neighborhoods.
Key themes included development without displacement, land trusts, solidarity economics, and community-controlled development. Panelists included Nicole Fabricant (Towson University), Sonia Eaddy (Poppleton Now), Ash Esposito (Baltimore Renters United), Tisha Guthrie (Poppleton Now/Baltimore Renters United), Lenora Knowles (UMD and Village of Love and Resistance), Meleny Thomas (South Baltimore Community Land Trust), Loraine Arikat (Community Wealth Fund), Nicole King (UMBC), Sarah Fouts (organizer), and Peerada Phoomsiri (UMBC student worker). The symposium highlighted
the importance of collaborative efforts between academia and grassroots activism to address systemic inequalities and promote sustainable, community-driven urban development. The symposium is archived in UMBC’s Special Collections.
In March 2024, Nicole King, Tahira Mahdi, and Sarah Fouts co-authored the peer-reviewed article “Rethinking the Field in Crisis: The Baltimore Field School and Building Ethical Community and University Partnerships.” The article was published in the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement. It examines ethical community-university partnerships, focusing on the Baltimore Field School as a case study.
In February 2024, Sarah Fouts and Nicole King gave a keynote talk at Holy Cross University in Worcester, MA, titled “The Field is Us: Building Ethical Community and University Partnerships with the Baltimore Field School.” They engaged with faculty, administrators, community partners, and students involved in the Scholarship in Action program led by Isabelle Jenkins and Mary Conley to celebrate five years of community-engaged scholarship. Through this exchange, they shared insights from the Baltimore Field School and learned from Holy Cross’s own innovative community engagement efforts.
