12-year-old Mariam and her 9-year-old brother, Ibrahim, in Lebanon after being displaced and out of school for over a year due to the conflict in Syria  (DFID – UK Department for International Development, 2013)

“Home and the Human,” a Martha A. Mitten Professorship project, is a collaborative endeavor between faculty, students, and members of the Baltimore-area community. It features coursework, workshops, visiting scholars and artists, film screenings, interviews, collaborative documentary projects, and this website for collecting stories and gathering together the threads of the project. 

The objectives of “Home and the Human” are: to foster understanding, support, and exchange between immigrants, refugees, and all members of the greater Baltimore community; to develop a broad humanistic, historical, and culturally-informed understanding of current crises of homelessness, economy, and war; and to lay the groundwork for ongoing exchange and development between all project participants.  The broad goal of the project is a humanities-based cross-cultural experience with value to all, building a network between the community and the university that has a positive social and psychological impact upon the refugee community in Baltimore while also developing a specific curricular impact in the College of Liberal Arts and in the broader Towson University community. 

For more information, contact:

Prof. Jennifer Ballengee, Ph.D.
Martha A. Mitten Professor of Liberal Arts
Director, Graduate Program in Global Humanities
English Department
Towson University

jballengee@towson.edu