Please Welcome the University of Richmond to Universities Studying Slavery.
The Universities Studying Slavery (USS) movement continues to grow. We are honored to welcome the University of Richmond to the consortium, which has now grown to include thirty-four schools in the United States, Canada, England, and Scotland. The University of Richmond already has already established a project examining the history of race and racism at the school. University President Ron Crutcher, Dean Patrice Rankine, and Professor Nicole Maurantonio lead that effort.
The Race and Racism at the University of Richmond Project is an interdisciplinary initiative that documents, interrogates, and catalyzes community discussions on the history of race and racism at the university. Focused around student-centered research and community-based learning, this project contributes to broader conversations surrounding the role of the university in the local, regional, and national community.
The project entails three programmatic threads:
1) a publicly accessible digital collection developed in collaboration between students, faculty, and staff;
2) interdisciplinary courses designed to build content for the collection; 3) lectures, brown bags, and symposia thematically related to the project.
Weaving these interconnected curricular and extra-curricular threads of university of life together by engaging parallel (yet interconnected) discussions of past and present, the Race and Racism at UR Project will help establish the university as a place where productive analyses of the past are engaged with an eye toward building and fostering a community committed to racial equity.
They also have an active blog, where student reflections and analyses are posted, as well as feeds on Twitter (@URraceproject) and Instagram (also URraceproject).
We are deeply impressed with all the fine work going on at the University of Richmond and all the other members of Universities Studying Slavery. Here’s hoping 2018 will be another productive year for everyone.