Race, Place, & Equity Cohort
We are seeking 20 students for a special Engagements opportunity funded by the Mellon Foundation. The Race, Place, and Equity cohort will engage with historic systems of power and privilege in the Charlottesville area and introduce students to recent and ongoing acts of strength and resilience that celebrate Charlottesville’s many differences and contribute towards a more equitable society.
Each course offers fully paid on-site visits to local sites and activities, including, among others, the Monacan Indian Nation, James Madison’s Montpelier, local theatre/dance productions, the Virginia Film Festival, and sites around UVA Grounds, in partial fulfillment of the Engaging Grounds requirement. A particularly special feature of this cohort is its partnership with community residents and activists, many of whom have contributed to the design and content of these four courses. Our community partners will share with the cohort some of their personal and powerful experiences.
The cohort will fulfill the four Engagements Pillars through a year-long sequence of courses that address intersections of race, place, equity, and community engagement. Students will be introduced to histories and legacies that have shaped Charlottesville and central Virginia while also learning the fundamentals of place-based and community-based learning. Students should be prepared to attend at least one extra-curricular event off-grounds per quarter. Transportation will be provided and all visit fees covered.
To apply
To be part of this special year-long cohort opportunity, indicate so in the pre-enrollment form in your New Student Portal.
Students are also asked to respond to question one, and to choose one out of the remaining questions to answer (250-500 words each):
- What is the social responsibility of a public university in the 21st century?
And choose one of the following:
- What does race, place, and equity mean to you?
- In an increasingly global society, what is your responsibility to educate yourself about other lived experiences?
- In what ways do you think that learning about past histories of oppression can help you understand the present and face the future?
Race, Place, and Equity Cohort course listings
Aesthetic Engagement: Performing the Black Aesthetic
Eric Ramirez-Weaver and Leslie Scott-Jones
Western artistic pedagogy inherently hinders and alters how people of a global majority enter creative processes and spaces. This remains true even when modern theatrical productions or concert dance emphasize alterity, global styles or traditions. In this class, using the creative processes of theater and dance, you will experience different perspectives on and about stage based production. You will identify key aspects of the Black aesthetic, and gain the ability to unpack the tacit underlying assumptions which inform global creative practices, commonly referred to as ideological frameworks. Utilizing history, scripts, staged works, and classic performances, students will evaluate theatrical and dance languages in order to unpack the lived experiences of the global majority, explore alternatives, and critically interrogate the ways that form, function, rhythm, and performance create and support identity. Weekly, we will approach our course through a series of juxtapositions, placing in dialogue one play and one dancer or company, exploring common themes and posing complementary questions.
Empirical Engagement: The Numbers Are Not What They Seem!
Dan Spitzner
This course guides students to engage with empiricism from a place of creativity, curiosity, and ethical priority. It exposes students to multiple dimensions of empiricism, covering both the benefits and harms of its associated perspectives and accompanying methodologies. In doing so, it brings to the fore a contextualized and worldly understanding of empiricism. The course looks critically at modes of inquiry that are anchored in the triad of scientific experimentation, numerical measurement, and statistical analysis, subsequently opening a path to exploring the intersections of statistical practice with ways of knowing that emphasize the social context of inquiry, and that define objectives from ethical rather than scientific criteria. Students are exposed to methods of empirical inquiry beyond the quantitative, including qualitative methodologies, transformative and emancipatory practices, arts-based inquiry, community-based practices, and to accompanying challenges that arise in multi-methodological research teams. Numbers are not as simple as empiricism promises them to be. This course aims to bring out their inherent multi-dimensionality and complexity.
Engaging Differences: Origin Stories: Identity, Migration, and Homelands
Shilpa Davé
Why do we attach importance to origin stories? How does knowing our heritage (family history or national history) influence the way we imagine the past, the present, and the future? In this course we will examine tales of creation myths in the superhero genre, stories of world building from immigration and science fiction narratives, and chronicles of the American Dream. We will ask why are different perspectives integral and valuable to the way we engage with others. Class discussion and assignments will be framed around questions of how origin stories frame and influence discussions about power, privilege, and difference. How does our sense of self and our cultural values relate to constructions and portrayals of American national narratives such as the settlement of the New World or icons such as the Statue of Liberty? We’ll examine how creation myths and origins appear in superhero films such as Black Panther and Wonder Woman, delve into companies that focus on ancestry and heritage tours, and document how origin stories are a part of our own family histories and where/what we call home.
Ethical Engagement: Building UVA: Memory, History, Descendant Community
Lilian Feitosa
UVA is an internationally recognized historic place, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Looking back at its history, however, certain aspects are more visible and celebrated than others. In this course we discuss how we can examine UVA's history more ethically in collaboration with local members of the Descendants of the Enslaved Communities (DEC). We will learn about the architectural history of the Academical Village, the role of enslavement in building the university, and recent efforts to document this role and bring its centrality into view. The course includes the examination of rare historical documents in the Special Collections Library, field trips to local historical landmarks, and interaction with several DEC members.