Nicole King

Academic Interests

Commons Groups

HC

Recent Commons Activity

joined the group Urban Studies
joined the group Public Humanities

About

Nicole King is an associate professor of the Department of American Studies, an affiliate professor in the Language, Literacy, and Culture doctoral program, and director of the Orser Center for the Study of Place, Community, and Culture at UMBC. Her research and teaching interests focus on issues of place, power, and economic development. King’s scholarship analyzes changes to the social and built environment during the rise of consumer culture in the twentieth century—such as the development of vernacular landscapes of tourism in the U.S. South and the decline of industrial neighborhoods in Baltimore. She is an editor of the book Baltimore Revisited: Stories of Inequality and Resistance in a U.S. City (Rutgers University Press, 2019), the author of Sombreros and Motorcycles in a Newer South: The Politics of Aesthetics in South Carolina’s Tourism Industry (University Press of Mississippi, 2012), and numerous articles. She co-founded the Baltimore Traces: Communities in Transition public humanities project where students work with local partners to research historic neighborhoods and complete oral history interviews focused on preserving the opinions of those who live and work in Baltimore. King’s research and teaching is based on the belief that looking and listening to a place can be a transformative act.

Education

PhD in American studies from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2008

MA in comparative literature and cultural studies from the University of New Mexico in 2001

Blog Posts

CV

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Publications

RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS

Books

Baltimore Revisited: Stories of Inequality and Resistance in a U.S. City (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019) – lead editor with Kate Drabinski and Joshua Clark Davis

Sombreros and Motorcycles in a Newer South: The Politic of Aesthetics in South Carolina’s Tourism Industry (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012)

Journal Articles

“Building Together” in Baltimore? Corporate Mega-Development and Coalitions for Community Power,” Urban Affairs Review, June 2021, 1-37, co-authored with Meghan Ashlin Rich.

“Sounds of a City: Podcasts and Public Humanities in Baltimore,” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, Volume 25, Number 1 (2021).

“Reckoning with Regionalism: Race, Place, and Power in Urban History,” Review Essay, Journal of Urban History (2021) Vol. 47(1) 209–214.

“Preserving Places, Making Spaces in Baltimore: Seeing the Connections of Research, Teaching, and Service as Justice,” Journal of Urban History, May 2014, Vol. 40 (3), 425-449.

Chapters in a Book

“Baltimore Traces: Public Humanities, Zines, and the Connecting the Classroom” in The Routledge Companion to Publicly Engaged Humanities Scholarship, in press / forthcoming 2023

“The Superblock: A Downtown Development Debacle, 2003-2015” in Baltimore Revisited: Stories of Inequality and Resistance in a US City (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2019)

Co-authored with Michelle Stefano, “Community-Based Methods for Envisioning Deindustrialization: Mapping Baybrook and Mill Stories Projects of Baltimore, USA” in Onciul, B.A., Stefano, M.L., and Hawke, S., eds. Engaging Heritage: Engaging Communities (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2017), 119-137.

“Behind the Sombrero: The Story of Identity and Power at South of the Border,

1949-2001,” Anthony Stanonis, editor, Dixie Emporium: Consumerism, Tourism, and Memory in the American South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008), 148-174.