BMRC Announces 2010 Fellowship Recipients
April, 2010
CHICAGO, IL - The Black Metropolis Research Consortium (BMRC) is pleased to announce the twelve recipients of the BMRC's Short-Term Fellowships in African American Studies. This is the second year of the BMRC's Fellows Program, which provides support for outstanding researchers of all disciplines from across the country. Fellows receive $3,000 per month for one to two months during the summer.
The BMRC's Fellowships for 2010 were awarded to scholars, and artists who have exhibited excellence in their discipline(s), have a significant body of work characterized by originality, and have demonstrated a need to conduct research in the archives and collections of BMRC members. The 2010 Fellows represent a diverse spectrum of research disciplines, including: African American Studies, English, Music/Composition, Music Theory, Social Science and Theater.
The 2010 BMRC Fellows are:
Thomas Bahde - Independent scholar/researcher, San Diego, California. Project Titles: The Life and Death of Gus Reed: Race and Justice in the World of a Nineteenth-Century Thief and Slavery in a Free State: Masters, Slaves, and Labor in Illinois, 1818-1850. Mr. Bahde will conduct research related to two book-length projects concerned with African-Americans in early Illinois. Mr. Bahde will use collections at the University of Chicago, as well as the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Woodson Branch of the Chicago Public Library for his research.
Ifa Bayeza - Ifa Bayeza is a playwright based in Chicago, Illinois. Ms. Bayeza's recent play, The Ballad of Emmett, received critical acclaim during its run at the Goodman Theater. Project Title: High Jinks - musical theater piece on the founding years of DuSable High school and its annual production High Jinks. Famed DuSable High School Music director, Walter Dyett, lead productions of High Jinks that featured students, such as, Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, and Redd Foxx. of Ms. Bayeza will use collections at the Center for Black Music Research, Illinois Institute of Technology, Roosevelt University, University of Illinois--Chicago, and the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Woodson Branch of the Chicago Public Library during her fellowship term.
Dexter Blackman - Assistant Professor, History, Loyola Marymount University. Project Title: "Let Whitey Run His Own Olympics: African American Pan-Africanism, the Olympic Project for Human Rights, and the anti-Apartheid Movement. Mr. Blackman will conduct research in support of his manuscript, a revisionist account of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), the Black Power attempt to build a black boycott of the 1968 U.S. Olympic team. Mr. Blackman will use collections at Northwestern University, and the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Woodson Branch of the Chicago Public Library.
Geoffrey Bradfield - Geoffrey Bradfield is a saxophonist and composer based in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Bradfield has toured extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Africa, including appearances at the Chicago Jazz Festival, Chicago World Music Festival, Milwaukee SummerFest, the Chicago Blues Festival, South by Southwest, Jazz in Nice, the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival and the Vienne Jazz Festival. Project Title: African Flowers: Dedications and Inspirations. Mr. Bradfield's research will refer to the arrangements, compositions, and letters of trombonist and composer Melba Liston for a new suite for jazz chamber ensemble. Mr. Bradfield will conduct his research using the collections of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College, Chicago.
Eurie Dahn - Assistant Professor, Literature, College of Saint Rose. Project Title: The Art of Living: American Manners, Race, and Modernism. Ms. Dahn will conduct research in support of her manuscript on race relations in literature and explore the modernist production of a discourse of decency that links consciousness to conduct. Ms. Dahn will use collections at the Chicago Defender, the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Woodson Branch of the Chicago Public Library, University of Illinois, Chicago, and the University of Chicago.
Jacob Dorman - Assistant Professor, History and American Studies, University of Kansas. Project Title: Vernacular Ethnology: African American Performance and Parody of Muslim and Oriental Identities in Minstrelsy, Vaudeville, and Early Cinema. Mr. Dorman's research will explore how Black performers and audience members used minstrelsy to portray people of other races and how, in so doing constructed Black vernacular pop cultural ethnology. Mr. Dorman will use collections at the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Woodson Branch of the Chicago Public Library, and the University of Chicago.
Catherine Fennell - Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University. Project Title: The Last Project Standing: Citizenship Ethics in the Wake of Public Housing. Ms. Fennell's research will support the development of a book manuscript, centered on the redevelopment of a Chicago housing project, investigating the cultural transformation of the American welfare state through the lens of the urban built environment. Ms. Fennell will use collections at Chicago Defender, the Chicago History Museum, the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Woodson Branch of the Chicago Public Library, and the University of Illinois.
Michelle Gordon - Assistant Professor, English, University of Southern California. Project Title: Bringing Down Babylon: The Chicago Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and African American Freedom Struggles, 1931 - 1969. Ms. Gordon's research will support the development of a book manuscript examining the Chicago Renaissance (1935-1953) and the city's Black Arts Movement (1960-1975) in relation to one another and to Chicago's concurrent black freedom struggles, offering a new kind of 'local literary history' of black Chicago that extends from the Great Depression through the early Black Power Era. Ms Gordon will use the collections of the Chicago History Museum, the DuSable Museum of African American History, and the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Woodson Branch of the Chicago Public Library.
Michael Largey - Professor and Chair Musicology, Michigan State University. Project Title: Finding Haiti: Authenticity and the Ethnographic Imaginary. Mr. Largey's research will support the development of a manuscript tracing the historical and political roots of ethnographic research done in Haiti during the 1930s, immediately after the nineteen-year U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915-1934). Mr. Largey will conduct on the Melville J. Herskovits Papers at Northwestern University for his research. View Presentation (ppt)
Andrew Rosa - Assistant Professor, History, Oklahoma State University. Project Title: St. Clair Drake: The Chicago/Africa Years, 1945-1967. Mr. Rosa will conduct research for a chapter in his upcoming biography on St. Clair Drake. The chapter will examine the ways in which Drake's scholarly and activist commitments against racial discrimination and war at the local level in Chicago eventually became linked to international struggles against colonialism and imperialism in Africa. Mr. Rosa will use collections at Roosevelt University, Northwestern University, the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Woodson Branch of the Chicago Public Library, and the University of Chicago.
Robert Weems - Professor, History, University of Missouri-Columbia. Project Title: Anthony Overton: The Life and Times Of An African American Business Tycoon. Mr. Weems will conduct research in support of his biography on Anthony Overton one of the most prominent businessmen in African American history. The proposed project is designed to illuminate the historic role of business and entrepreneurship in the African American experience. Mr. Weems will use the collections of the Chicago History Museum, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the University of Chicago. View Presentation (ppt)
Mabel Wilson - Associate Professor, Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture and Planning. Project Title: Progress and Prospects: Black Americans and the World of Fairs. Ms. Wilson will complete research of Chicago's expositions and museums and examine the history of the participation and experiences of black Americans in the charged social spaces of expositions held in the United States from the Post Reconstruction period to the Civil Rights era. Ms Wilson will use the collections of the Chicago Defender, the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection at the Woodson Branch of the Chicago Public Library, the DuSable Museum of African American History, and the University of Illinois
2010 Review Panel:
Martha Biondi - Director of Undergraduate Studies, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History, Northwestern University,
Monica Hairston - Executive Director, Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago,
Tracye Matthews - Associate Director, Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, University of Chicago.
The BMRC's Short-Term Fellowships in African American Studies is made possible by the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
