I'm an associate professor of U.S. history at the University of Baltimore. I’m currently writing Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back (under contract with Princeton University Press), a retelling of the civil rights movement through its overlooked work against police violence—and the police who attacked the movement with surveillance, infiltration, and retaliatory prosecutions.

My first book, From Head Shops to Whole Foods, explores how organic food stores, feminist enterprises, Black bookstores and other businesses emerged from movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

My research has been supported by awards from the Fulbright Scholar Program, the Silvers Foundation, and the NEH Public Scholars Program. I've written for The Atlantic, The Nation, Slate, Jacobin, and The Washington Post, and my work has been highlighted in The New York Times, CNN, and Time.

April Kalogeropoulos Householder, Ph.D., is the director of Undergraduate Research and Prestigious Scholarships at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). April holds degrees in film production, art history, and comparative literature and has taught courses in film and media studies, and gender and women’s studies. In 2006, she completed her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Film Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. In 2016, April published her first book, Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is the New Black: Thirteen Critical Essays (ed.), and has published several other recent book chapters on intersectional feminist media history and theory. Her chapter on Baltimore’s radical feminists of the 1970s appears in Baltimore Revisited (2019). Her most recent publication is “Representations of Women in Greek American Films about the Greek Revolution” in The Greek Revolution and the Greek Diaspora in North America (Athens: Asini, 2022). Her chapter, “Greek American Feminist Artists: Radical Traditions,” with Kostis Kourelis (Franklin & Marshall College), is forthcoming. Her research interests include modern Greece and comparative media and identity politics. She lives in Baltimore with her son.

Fred Scharmen teaches architecture and urban design at Morgan State University’s School of Architecture and Planning. He is the co-founder of the Working Group on Adaptive Systems, an art and design consultancy based in Baltimore, Maryland. His work as a designer and researcher is about how we imagine new spaces for future worlds, and about who is invited into them. He received his Masters Degree in Architecture from Yale University. His writing has been published in the Journal of Architectural Education, Atlantic CityLab, Slate, Log, CLOG, Volume, and Domus. His architectural criticism has appeared in the Architect’s Newspaper, and in the local alt-weekly Baltimore City Paper.

Mary Rizzo is a writer and educator specializing in modern U.S. cultural history, urban studies, public humanities, and digital humanities.

Her book, Come and Be Shocked: Baltimore Beyond John Waters and The Wire, examines battles over the image of Baltimore by famous and infamous artists and city agencies trying to woo tourists and residents, showing how culture shapes cities and vice versa. Find upcoming book talks here.

As a public historian, she has done everything from lead tours of an 18th century house museum to strategic planning for the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. She brings her passion for inclusive public history to her work at Rutgers University-Newark where she created the public humanities MA track in the Graduate Program in American Studies to prepare students to be leaders in public history and humanities organizations. In 2017, Rizzo won the Teaching Award from the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance for the traveling and digital exhibit, Rebellion to Review Board: Newark Fights for Police Accountability.

Email her at mrizzonj@gmail.com. Follow on Twitter @rizzo_pubhist .