Meet Arabia Morgan ’12, media and communication studies with a minor in theatre. Arabia currently resides in Los Angeles, California, where she works as a financial recruiter with Edward Jones and enjoys making a positive impact on the lives of others. She is also a content creator with a life goal of becoming a voice actor. In 2023, Arabia added another feather to her cap as an author after publishing her debut novel, But I’m Fine Tho: Khadija Parker—inspired by some writing she started at UMBC. Take it away, Arabia! 

Q: What initially brought you to UMBC?

A: I came to UMBC because a childhood friend, Victoria Sari ‘12, was attending the school. I was looking for a theatre program and decided to join her there. I hadn’t heard of the university prior to speaking with my friend. I immediately tried to embed myself in the campus culture to build community. I even started working in the dining hall to be able to provide for myself. Although I originally transferred to UMBC to major in theatre, I eventually changed my major to media and communication studies with a minor in theatre. 

Q: Who in the UMBC community has inspired you or supported you?

A: At UMBC, I found a place where I felt seen. I loved my professors and how they pushed me. I still use the skill sets that I learned from my leaders. People like Rebecca Adelman, professor and chair of MCS, Professor Bill Shewbridge, Professor Jason Loviglio, and so many other professors in MCS and theatre really helped shape my future. They gave me purpose.

Q: What is your favorite part of Retriever Nation?

A: UMBC has given me a community like no other. Even being an alum of so many years ago, I still feel connected within my MCS program. I constantly receive updates on jobs, professors’ retirement announcements, and more.

I graduated from UMBC in December of 2012 and have not stopped using my degree since. I have been invested in social media and have continuously grown my platforms over the years. I began writing my first novel during the COVID-19 pandemic, in June of 2020. It was one of the best decisions I could have made.  

Q: Can you tell us about your book?

A: I found a gray hair, which prompted me to write about my feelings regarding what I perceived as a midlife crisis. I not only wrote about things I’ve encountered, but things people close to me have gone through as well. Funnily enough, while I was at UMBC, I had started what I call a diary. I wrote in this diary from 2011 to about 2019 about different men I met. Not necessarily relationships, but if I met you at a club, store, gas station, or wherever, I  would write about it. I used some of the content as a muse to write about the main character of my book, Khadija Parker. 

But I’m Fine Tho: Khadija Parker is a romantic journey of self-love. It tells the story of Khadija Parker, a young woman from Charlotte, North Carolina. She has spent most of her life as a people pleaser and hopeless romantic. Turning 25 made no difference. She felt that there were still many unforeseen obstacles preventing her from finding her happily ever after. It wasn’t until 30 that a light bulb illuminated, making things appear a little clearer for her. Khadija learns to close the revolving door of broken promises and begins to seek her own destiny while dealing with sexual assault, failed relationships, and many tribulations. 

Pictured above: Morgan at a book signing from her book launch in February 2023.

Publishing this novel impacted me personally. I was afraid of the outcome. I often debated about putting this piece of work out into the world—would anyone even get it? Being an artist who creates real stories that the average person may go through is hard. A lot of people would rather read fairy tales and happy endings. I would rather write in truth.

Attending UMBC subconsciously started all of my accomplishments. For that, I thank you! 

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UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

Meet Jessica Floyd, Ph.D. ’17, language, literacy, and culture (LLC). She is an interdisciplinary researcher and scholar who investigates erotic worlds for what they might communicate about gender and sexuality. Her early interests began in her teens while reading the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom, which eventually led her to research John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester, while an undergraduate student at Towson University, and then as a graduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her interests eventually led her to study chanteys as a Ph.D. student at UMBC. Today, she is an adjunct instructor in the gender, women’s, and sexuality studies program at UMBC, and published her first book, Cabin Boys, Milkmaids, and Rough Seas: Identity in the Unexpurgated Repertoire of Stan Hugill, in 2024. Take it away, Jessica! 

Q: What initially brought you to UMBC?

A: I came to UMBC because I was encouraged by a graduate of the LLC program, Dave Truscello, Ph.D. ’04, who was a member of the very first cohort of LLC doctoral students. Once I met faculty from UMBC, I knew that it was the place where I could achieve my dreams of a Ph.D. It was my hope that I would be able to grow a career as a scholar, publishing books and articles that were exciting and which stoked my curiosity. I have been able to do that.

Q: What do you love about the language, literacy, and culture program?

A: I loved the LLC program as it was a place where I was encouraged and supported in ways that I had never experienced before. The program is filled with faculty and mentors who are as excited about what you are doing as you are. There is nothing a student needs more than a group of people rallying behind them, and the LLC community felt like a safe and warm home.

My other favorite part of the LLC program and being in Retriever Nation is that I met my best friend and colleague, Steven Dashiell, professor of gender, women’s, and sexuality studies. He studied in the LLC program with me in my cohort. 

Photos above: Floyd with her co-chairs, Amy Froide and Laura Rosenthal, after defending her doctoral thesis (left). Floyd with her family, Bill Sapp (dad), Kathy Sapp (mom), Cory Floyd (husband), after graduating from UMBC (right).

Q: How would you describe the support you find at UMBC?

A: UMBC is a place where you will be academically challenged, but supported in ways that will transform you. Challenges create strong scholars, but you need allies to work through those challenges. At UMBC, every faculty member is there to see you succeed and will lift you up even when you are at your most vulnerable.

Q: What is your favorite part of Retriever Nation?

A: UMBC is where I earned my doctorate, something that I have wanted since I was a teenager. Being a graduate from UMBC will always be associated with that accomplishment, and I continue to have a warm memory of UMBC based on the experiences there, the people I encountered, and the things I accomplished.

Q: Who in the UMBC community has inspired you or supported you?

A: At UMBC, I was able to find a home. My mentor Amy Froide, director of UMBC’s Dresher Center for the Humanities, inspired me to keep pushing and was always in my corner to encourage me as I finished my doctorate. Dr. Froide counseled me during some of my most challenging rejections/revisions. Christine Mallinson, my LLC mentor and advisor, was always there to guide me toward the right path and to steer me in the direction I needed to go in order to accomplish my goals. Kate Drabinski, professor of gender, women’s, and sexuality studies, was also an incredible support and inspiration to me as I was working. She gave me space to stretch my legs and try things out, moving me towards my completed project. Carole McCann, professor of gender, women’s, and sexuality studies, provided the space for me and fellow LLC students to explore theoretical frameworks in gender and women’s studies in an intimate cohort. That experience was foundational to some of my theoretical work in the dissertation. She inspired me to be exacting.

Carole McCann hired me in the gender, women’s, and sexuality studies program in the spring of 2022, permitting me space to chase my dream of teaching at the four-year level. I have taught at the college level since 2011, but this was the first time that I taught at the four-year level and at a place that is dear to me.

I was hired to teach Intro to Critical Sexuality Studies, which is my passion and research focus. There, I introduce students to conceptions of sexuality, gender, and identity across time, from looking at erotic poetry from the Restoration in England to pulp erotic novels from the post-Stonewall era. I went on to teach Introduction to Gender and Women’s Studies and enjoyed working with students as we discussed foundational topics in the field.

Just this past fall 2024, I was asked to teach Doin’ It: Case Studies in the History of Western Sexuality, where I was able to draw on my doctoral work and teach an interdisciplinary history course, cross-listed with GWST. In my time teaching as an adjunct at UMBC, it has been exciting for me to work closely with students and see the incredibly creative projects and ideas they brought with them. What was most rewarding, for me, was seeing my own students light up in ways that I did as an undergraduate, taking some of their own research projects and developing them into conference papers, undergraduate theses, and even potential publications. 

Q: Can you tell us about your book?

A: In 2024, I published my first book, Cabin Boys, Milkmaids, and Rough Seas: Identity in the Unexpurgated Repertoire of Stan Hugill, which grew out of my doctoral work at UMBC. The monograph specifically analyzes bawdy chanteys, sailing worksongs of the sea, from the repertoire of famed chantey singer and collector Stan Hugill and were a part of a collection of songs he sent to Gershon Legman, a notable collector and researcher of bawdy content. As a Dresher Center Fellow, I was able to travel to Opio, France, to meet with Legman’s widow and acquire the correspondence between Legman and Hugill that they exchanged as they were in the process of sharing material. Early in my doctoral work, Judith Legman, Legman’s widow, sent me a copy of the chapter containing the songs from Hugill’s repertoire that were a part of this epistolary exchange. These songs were thought long-lost, and nearly every collector I met noted the rarity of the collection. 

The songs confirmed much of the cultural ideal about chanteys, which is that they are often salacious and highly erotic. Both my dissertation and the ultimate book project contend that chanteys are release valves for internal tensions: sexual, emotional, and psychological, and that sailors likely used chanteys as hidden transcripts that communicated complicated and kaleidoscopic desires. They are akin to confessions, and though they are often short and many sensations are buried under nautical metaphors, the songs are rich with complicated expressions of interiorities. 

My initial interest in chanteys grew out of my master’s-level work at the University of Maryland, College Park. I began researching chanteys as anecdotal discussion of them demonstrated that they were a lot like the bawdy poetry I studied of John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester. In fact, my initial interest in chanteys was based on hearing a rendition of “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” (not a chantey) sung at my kitchen table by my father. As I began researching chanteys, though, I realized that it was a far larger project than a master’s thesis, and ultimately proposed the chantey project when I applied for the Language, Literacy, and Culture Program at UMBC.

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UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

Meet Troy Suesse ’92, computer science. Troy was born the day that man first set foot on the moon’s surface—July 20, 1969—one small step for man, and one giant glimpse into Troy’s future. His parents gave him the middle name Armstrong to commemorate the occasion, in honor of Neal Armstrong, the first man who walked on the moon that day. Thus, Troy’s obsession with space began.In 2022, Troy published his debut novel, Maximum Capacity, a hybrid science fiction/dystopian story set 1,000 years into the future, where Earth becomes dreadfully overcrowded and its resources depleted. Take it away, Troy!

Q: What initially brought you to UMBC?

A: Fresh out of high school, it seems only a small subset of students have truly identified their life’s ambitions. That was the case with me. I lived close to UMBC, and I had friends and family who also attended the university. I found that UMBC hosted a vast array of majors to choose from, many in STEM, which was of particular interest to me. I dabbled in a few different courses of study until I found my ideal pathway—computer science. My degree has opened up wonderful opportunities in my career. 

In recent years, I’ve enjoyed watching UMBC’s sports programs grow. Perhaps most notably in 2018 when the 16-seeded men’s basketball team upset 1-seeded Virginia, the first time in NCAA men’s tournament history that has ever happened.

Q: What support does the UMBC community offer?

A: Make slow and steady progress toward your goals and dreams each day, but never isolate yourself from the resources that surround you. Most important of those resources—people. Connect with individuals who can help lift you to new heights, and accept the assistance of friends and mentors. I was able to find that at UMBC.

I’m thankful to the staff and faculty of UMBC for supporting me in my pursuit of a degree in computer science. But computers wouldn’t forever remain at the center of my life’s passion, as you will see shortly. I’ve always maintained a deep appreciation for planet Earth and all of its living things.

Left: Suesse, on the right, with Baltimore Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman. Right: Suesse with former NASA astronaut Terrence Wilcutt, who signed a copy of Maximum Capacity for the author.

Q: Who has inspired you?

A: All of the astronauts who have ever flown a ship have ignited my appreciation for our incredible planet. I was born the day that man first walked on the moon. Thus, my middle name is Armstrong, after the first man to walk on its surface. I’ve always been fascinated by the enormity and beauty of our galaxy and universe. So much so that I was compelled to write my first novel, Maximum Capacity.

Q: Can you tell us about your current job and your book?

A: I am a declassification officer in the Department of Defense (DoD)’s declassification services, where we enjoy the privilege of making gobs of fascinating historical information from the DOD archives available for public consumption.

In 2022, I published my first novel, Maximum Capacity. The story is set 1,000 years into the future, where Earth becomes dreadfully overcrowded and its resources depleted. Planet Earth has run out of room. There’s not enough food or resources to sustain the masses. So, for every baby born, another human must die. Those who do not contribute toward the common good and survival of the human race are considered expendable.

This adventure takes place in the vicinity of the Chesapeake Bay! 

Photo right: A Barnes & Noble book display after hosting a book signing event for Maximum Capacity.

* * * * *

UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.