Our first statewide humanities conference is happening this summer.
Together, we will explore the humanities’ potential to promote inclusion, dialogue, and social justice through storytelling.
This summer, Maryland Humanities will bring together a diverse group of cultural workers— community members, museum professionals, service providers, public historians, educators, interpreters, students and others involved in humanities efforts and community engagement—to highlight the various programs and best practices related to storytelling taking place in the state and wider region. This includes how we document, share and collect stories broadly, from exhibition development, podcasts and media creation to oral history projects and film.
We are particularly interested in highlighting innovative ways that storytelling is being used to engage communities and promote dialogue. Storytelling is being interpreted in a very inclusive manner, from how we construct narratives, their role in the formation of community identity, how we create memory, interpreting complicated/divisive stories, how stories can be used in reconciliation and healing, etc. Formats will include roundtable discussions, program presentations, and facilitated conversations.
Schedule
9:00 – 10:00 a.m. | Breakfast & Registration
10:15 – 11:00 a.m. | Interactive Activities
Interactive activities will include guided meditation, facilitated discussion, and artmaking.
Further details are forthcoming.
11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. | Breakout Sessions: Panels & Workshops
Panel 1: Telling Community Stories
This panel will provide an opportunity for cultural workers from different Maryland communities to present how they are documenting and sharing local stories in a variety of ways. Panelists include:
Alanah Davis is a Baltimore-raised, award-winning journalist and cultural worker who uses storytelling as a tool for connection, understanding, and change. Her work focuses on documenting how people, neighborhoods, and public systems intersect, with a particular emphasis on making complex civic issues accessible and meaningful to everyday audiences.
Ashley Minner Jones is a community-based visual artist and folklorist from Baltimore, Maryland, where she has lived on the same block her entire life. Her interdisciplinary practice is deeply rooted in place—usually in the context of the U.S. South—and is focused on honoring and celebrating everyday people by lifting up their stories.
Rob Lee is a speaker, podcast producer, host, and educator. He currently serves as the executive producer and host of The Truth In This Art Podcast, an independent arts-and-culture series with 900+ episodes. He teaches Podcasting Essentials at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and leads the podcast curriculum at Baltimore School for the Arts.
Panel 2: Reparative Stories
This panel will focus on how different organizations are dealing with Maryland’s difficult past and working toward healing and reconciliation.
Maya Davis is Director of the Riversdale House Museum, a former 19th Century Plantation home constructed through enslaved labor and operated through bondage of generations of men, women, and children. Maya is bringing a new approach to Riversdale by collaborating with descendants of the enslaved families who lived and labored there and institutionalizing reparative programming.
Panel 3: Storytelling with Media
With new media platforms available to share stories, new audiences are being engaged through creative platforms. This panel with discuss several of these methodologies.
André Chung is an award-winning photojournalist, photographer, and filmmaker based in the Washington/Baltimore region. Using bold composition and emotional content, his empathetic, documentary-style work has been honed over a 30+ year career in newspapers, magazines, and nonprofit work.
Rona Kobell is a regional reporter for The Baltimore Banner. Prior to that, she covered the Chesapeake Bay and its people for 18 years, beginning at The Baltimore Sun, then at the Chesapeake Bay Journal, and then as the managing editor and lead writer for Chesapeake Quarterly magazine, which is part of Maryland Sea Grant.
Jason Loviglio is professor and founding chair of Media and Communication Studies at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He is author of Empathy Machines: This American Life, Podcasting, and the Public Radio Structure of Feeling. He is co-editor The Routledge Companion to Radio and Podcast Studies (2002) and Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media.
Ann Tropea is an editorial leader, communications strategist, and media educator dedicated to advancing storytelling as a tool for civic engagement and social connection. As Assistant Director for Engaged Media at UMBC, she leads the Student Media Collective, advising student journalists, creators, and editors as they produce work across print, broadcast, and digital platforms.
12:30 – 1:15 p.m. | Lunch
1:30 – 2:15 p.m. | Plenary Session: Keynote Speaker, Senator Cory McCray
Cory McCray is a Maryland State Senator representing the 45th Legislative District in Baltimore City, where he is committed to expanding opportunity, strengthening communities, and delivering real results for working families.
A proud son of Baltimore, Senator McCray began his career as an electrical apprentice and now stands as a journeyman electrician—bringing a working-class perspective to public service that is rare in legislative spaces. He is the only member of the Maryland General Assembly to have completed a registered apprenticeship, and his lived experience continues to shape his work in workforce development, education, and economic mobility.
In the Senate, he serves on the Budget and Taxation Committee and chairs the Health and Human Services Subcommittee, where he plays a key role in shaping the State’s budget and advancing policies that impact some of Maryland’s most vulnerable communities.
McCray is also the author of The Apprenticeship That Saved My Life, a guidebook and call to action that highlights apprenticeship as a powerful pathway to success. Through his work in the legislature and in the community, he continues to advocate for systems that provide real access, real exposure, and real opportunity—especially for young people who are too often overlooked.
He is a devoted husband to his wife, Demetria, and a proud father to his four children—Kennedy, Reagan, CJ, and Bryson—who continue to inspire his work and commitment to building a better future for the next generation.
2:30 – 3:30 p.m. | Breakout Sessions: Panels & Workshops
Panel 4: Telling Stories with Primary Sources
Panel 5: Sharing Stories with the Written Word
This panel will convene multiple local and independent publishers to discuss how a local publishing can not just produce and sell books, but also provide a model for using storytelling and literacy to cultivate and engage your community.
Panel 6: Student Storytellers
Maryland educators and students are involved in documenting and presenting stories about their communities. The panel will showcase a number of projects from high school and college students engaged in these efforts.
3:45 – 4:00 p.m. | Closing
4:30 – 5:30 p.m. | Annual Meeting – “This Has Happened Before: The Humanities as Democratic Resistance”
This Has Happened Before: The Humanities as Democratic Resistance
Historians know this playbook. When authoritarian movements rise, they target the same things: archives, libraries, universities, curriculum, public memory, and the people who ask hard questions about power. What is happening right now in the United States is not unprecedented. It has happened before, and the humanities give us the tools to recognize it, name it, and resist it.
Humanities education is not a cultural nicety. It is a survival skill for democracy. And the question before us is not only how we protect it, but how we teach and engage differently going forward.
You won’t want to miss this conversation after the conference.