VISITING SCHOLARS 2001 | 2002

Christopher Winship — Professor of Sociology, Harvard University

Project Title: Cops, Ministers, and the Boston Miracle

Abstract: This project is based upon seven years of participant-observation of a group of black ministers in inner city Boston collectively known as the Ten Point Coalition. A book is to be written on the so-called "Boston Miracle" - the historically unprecedented drop in violent crime and improvement in community-police relations that took place in the city during the 1990s. This is an immensely sociologically rich story raising questions about how the Ten Point ministers came to be seen as legitimate representatives of Boston's African American community, and how the city's "racial narrative" was transformed from an oppositional stance to one that evidences a determination not to "play the race card."

June E. Roberts — Ph.D. in Caribbean Literature, Boston College, 1999

Project Title: A Developing Aesthetic in the Fiction of Erna Brodber

Abstract: This project focuses on the interdisciplinary and Afrocentrist work of historian and novelist Erna Brodber, who writes postmodern allegorical fiction about the Caribbean and its history. It is argued that, in addition to their unique style, post-colonial concerns and feminist discourse, Brodber's novels illustrate a developing interdisciplinary aesthetic - one encouraging return to folk community and to African-derived folk spirit practices.

Robert W. Mickey — Ph.D. in Political Science, Harvard University, 2001

Project Title: Paths Out of Dixie: Southern Democrats in Transition from Authoritarian Rule, 1944-1972

Abstract: This project undertakes, through cross-national comparative study, to understand paths taken and rejected in the American South's post-WWII political development. In so doing, the hope is to generate testable hypotheses that comparativists may modify for use elsewhere.

Nicholas Rowe — Assoc. Professor of History, Eastern Nazarene College

Project Title: Romans and Carthaginians in the 18th Century: Race and National Identity in Britain and France during the Seven Years War

Abstract: This project explores the various contours of identity expressed by British and French writers in the context of 18th century colonial competition between these powers. It is argued that depictions by British and French writers of the peoples of North America, the Caribbean and India during this period not only shaped their readers' conception of the non-European "other," but served also to define and reinforce boundaries among the Europeans themselves.

Rebeccah E. Welch — Ph.D. in History, New York University, 2001

Project Title: Black Arts and Activism in Postwar New York, 1950-1965

Abstract: This project documents how artists self-consciously utilized their professional training to expand the role of culture in civic participation. Towards the end of the 1950s, mass media intersected with Cold War liberalism to create a unique public context for race talk in the mainstream. Evidence suggests that black artists active on the left in New York City during the postwar period took sound advantage of this historical moment to address an extended domestic and global audience on the subject of racial democracy. In the end, it is argued, the black cultural left not only forged a politics of the African Diaspora during this era, but did so without abandoning their struggle to build a multiracial social movement.

Rudolph P. Byrd — Ph.D. Yale University, American Studies; Assoc. Professor of American Studies and Director of Afro-American Studies, Emory University — "Black Philosophical Fiction: The Art and Imagination of Charles Johnson"

Catherine (Kate) Ellis — Ph.D. Columbia University, Anthropology "The Legacy of Jim Crow in Rural Louisiana"

Jeffrey Jones — Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison, Philosophy — Asst. Professor of Philosophy, Umass-Boston — "Historical Injustice and Social Reconciliation"

Miki Makihara — Ph.D. Yale University — Anthropology; Asst. Professor of Anthropology, Queens College, City University of New York — "The Politics of Tradition and Cultural Syncretism on Rapanui (Easter Island), Chile"

Melissa Nobles — Ph.D. Yale University, Political Science; Assoc. Professor of Political Science, M.I.T. — "Official Apologies: The Politics of Reconciliation in Australia, Canada, and the United States"

Sherrill Lea Stroschein — Ph.D. Columbia University, Political Science; Asst. Professor of Political Science, Ohio University — "Local Demography and Ethnic Party Mobilization in Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine"

Patricia Sullivan — Ph.D. Emory University, History; Lecturer and Research Associate, Afro-American Studies, Harvard University — "Struggle toward Freedom: A History of the NAACP"

05/08/2001