Here is this week’s news of grants to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
George Washington University in the nation’s capital, has received a three-year, $496,000 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources to establish the District of Columbia Africana Archives Project. The funding will allow the university to improve cataloging, arrangement, and descriptions of more than 125 collections containing thousands of documents, photographs, and audio recordings chronicling the life of African Americans in Washington.
Jennifer
James, associate professor of English and director of the Africana studies program at the university is the co-principal investigator for the grant project. She stated, “The range of documents in these collections is impressive and many are exceedingly rare. We are confident that increased access will generate surprising discoveries about Black life in D.C. and lead to new and ground-breaking research.”
Emory University in Atlanta received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to hold a new summer institute entitled “Black Aesthetics and African Centered Cultural Expressions: Sacred Systems in the Nexus Between Cultural Studies, Religion, and Philosophy.” The institute will be held on the Emory campus from July 13 to August 1.
Pellom McDaniels III, an assistant professor of African American studies and co-director of the institute stated, “We have the components in place to do something truly special and engage deeply in questions about Black aesthetics.”
Howard University, the historically Black educational institution in Washington, D.C., received a $275,000 grant from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art to stage a dance performance entitled “Connecting the Gems of the Indian Ocean: From Oman to East Africa.” The production, that will premiere in April, will feature Howard University students, faculty, and alumni. The grant will also include funds for a lecture series, a video documentary, a catalog, workshops, and an exhibition.
Historically Black Morehouse College in Atlanta received a $5 million donation from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation that will be used to renovate the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Chapel on the Morehouse campus. The chapel was originally opened in 1978.
