About
Elizabeth Patton is Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is the author of Easy Living: The Rise of the Home Office (Rutgers University Press, 2020). Her research focuses on discourses of gender, race and class in the history of media, representations of urbanism and suburbanism in popular culture, and the impact of communication technologies on space and place. Liz’s current book project, Documenting Black Leisure as a Form of Resistance, examines the history of Black leisure and tourism in the US through media of the Jim Crow era. Specifically, this book will focus on how home movies and photography have been used to document and promote leisure practices as a form of covert resistance. She is the recipient of the 2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. Recent research can be found in edited volumes such as Media Crossroads: Intersections of Space and Identity in Screen Cultures (Duke University Press, 2021) and Race and the Suburbs in American Film (SUNY Press, 2021). She currently serves as managing co-editor of Mediapolis: A Journal of Cities and Culture.
Content Editors
The Interdisciplinary CoLab at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County is a summer internship in interdisciplinary narrative-based research. The following Content Editors served as interns over the month of June 2023, working on the project “Documenting Places of Resistance: Black Tourism and Leisure during the Jim Crow Era.”
Nicole King is a class of 2025 student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she is pursuing degrees in Africana Studies and Art History. She is a member of organizations such as Sunrise DC and Black Lives Matter DC (BLMDC). Upon her completion of her undergraduate studies, she intends to pursue a career as a curator in museums that focus on Black art and the Black experience.
Ava Mason is a class of 2024 student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she is pursuing a degree in Political Science and a minor in Africana Studies with a certificate in the Honor’s program. She is a member of the Pi Sigma Alpha Political Science Honors Society. Ava is also treasurer of the Curl PWR club and a member of the Women of Color Coalition. Upon completion of her undergraduate studies, she intends to pursue graduate school with a focus on civil rights policy.
Sam Scheck is a class of 2024 student at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where they are pursuing a degree in Computer Science and a minor in Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies. They are a scholar at the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) and a co-lead of CWIT’s K-12 Outreach Committee. Upon completion of their undergraduate studies, they intend to pursue a career in software engineering.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Alyssa Brumis, who diligently served as my graduate research assistant during her time in the Language Literacy and Culture doctoral program at UMBC. Her insights and dedication were invaluable to the progression of this research. I’d also like to extend my sincere thanks to Isabella Konecky, who provided exceptional support during her time as my summer high school research assistant. My travels for this project were made possible, in part, by the Franklin Research Center Travel Grant and the Hartman Center Travel Grant from the Rubenstein Library at Duke University, and the NEH Summer Stipend. I am also indebted to the CAHSS Dean’s Research Fund at UMBC, my home institution, for their generous backing of this project. Lastly, I’m honored to have received the support of the 2023 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, which has greatly facilitated my work.
