Summer Institute – June 21 – 25, 2021
Programming for the 2021 Baltimore Field School will be virtual and panels recorded with participants permission. All texts are suggestions for contextualizing the work of the summer institute. We will be focused on 1) research statements (manifestos) and potentially developing collaborative public humanities projects 2) discussing collective ethical principles for collaborating on public humanities work in Baltimore. The overarching goal is to critically think together with one another and local and regional partners on the methods and ethics of the work we all do. We strive to move towards more collective and ethical structures within and beyond the academy and with individuals and the cultural institutions we work with in Baltimore. Think critically together. Methods as ethics.
Black Yield Institute: Maroonteenth Cherry Hill Urban Garden, 900 Cherry Hill Rd. → moved to VIRTUAL programming
Friday June 18, 2021
Virtual Screening of Displacia: Vacants in the Village, followed by discussion with the filmmakers at 6PM Meeting link available here
Saturday June 19, 2021
Virtual Mama Juanita Day/Juneteenth Celebration @12PM
Virtual Liberation Lounge @4PM Meeting link available here
SCHEDULE
| Date: MONDAY, June 21 | Theme: Introductions: Methods as Ethics |
| Check out: Humanities for All, A Typology of the Publicly Engaged Humanities Read: Tuck and Yang, Decolonization is Not a Metaphor, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 2012. Read or Listen: Toni Morrison, “The Fisherwoman,” introduction to A Kind of Rapture: Robert Bergman (1998) – 4 pages pdf + audio (22 min). | Video: Food Access and Land Sovereignty in the DMV with Chris Newman and Eric Jackson For more info:https://blackyieldinstitute.org/ Black Yield Podcast |
| MORNING (9:30am – 12pm): 9:30 – 9:40am: Welcome from Dean Kimberly Moffitt | 9:45 – 10:50am: Introductions + guiding principles 10 min BREAK 11am-12pm: Goals: Methods as ethics (method manifesto/statement) → positioning // thru line |
| LUNCH BREAK (12pm-1pm) | |
| Afternoon: 1-1:20pm 10 min BREAK 2:30-3pm: debrief // manifesto discussion 4:30pm OPTIONAL HAPPY HOUR Mulberry’s @ HOLLINS MARKET – meet folks face to face (outside at a distance on the patio) | Eric Jackson Black Yield InstituteEric Jackson is the founder and Servant-Director of Black Yield Institute. Black Yield Institute is a Pan-African power institution based in Baltimore, Maryland, serving as a think tank and collective action network that addresses food apartheid. Topic: Eric will be discussing “sovereignty and relationships with the academy.” He will give tips on how BYI approaches their work and offer up some thoughts on how academics can and will need to approach collaboration and possibly partnership with the community. |
| Date: TUESDAY, June 22 | Topic: Methodology (fieldwork) |
| SUGGESTED: Video: A View From Somewhere: Moving Towards Anti-Extractive Fieldwork Approaches BFS kickoff 4/20/21 Reading: Ashanté Reese, Refusal as Care: Ethnography from Elsewhere, Anthropology News, June 2019. | Read: Nicole King, “Sounds of a City: Podcasts and Public Humanities in Baltimore,” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, Volume 25, Number 1 (2021). Check out: A Place Called Poppleton (2021) 10 – 11am: Baltimore Traces Panel → Nicole King, AMST + Bill Shewbridge, MCS Curtis Eaddy, Community Fellow 2021 Moderator: Imani Spence |
| LUNCH BREAK (12 – 1pm) | |
| 1 – 2:20pm: Panelists: Dominic Nell, farmer and founder of City Weedshttps://www.facebook.com/CityWeeds/ Rodette Jones, Filbert Street Community http://filbertstreetgarden.org/ Ulysses Archie, Baltimore Gift Economyhttps://baltimoregifteconomy.wordpress.com/ Sha’Von Terrell, Black Church Food Security Networkhttps://blackchurchfoodsecurity.net/ Moderator: Eric Jackson | Title: Embodying Black Land & Food Sovereignty Description: The panel is an ode to ancestral energies around liberation through land and food. Through deeply introspective questions, panelists will share their stories, experiences and perspectives on the concept of Black Land and Food Sovereignty. Panelists will also share the reality of their work of building, including the struggles and the rewards of their respective works of reclaiming community control in Baltimore. The conversation will largely flow with personal reflections and anecdotes from the fields of liberation. Please be ready to listen and ask thoughtful questions of these brilliant people. |
| 2:30-3pm Fellows Debrief | |
| Date: WEDNESDAY, June 23 | Topic: Teaching/Research and Beyond Empathy/Nostalgia? |
| 10am – 12pm: | Writing Wednesday (no virtual meeting) → morning time to write/edit your methods manifestos |
| LUNCH BREAK (12-1pm) | |
| Lawrence T. Brown is an equity scientist and the director of the Black Butterfly Academy, a virtual racial equity education and consulting firm. Nicole Fabricant is an associate professor of anthropology at Towson University. She teaches classes on environmental justice, resource extraction, political economy of Baltimore, and Participatory Action Methodology. Panelists: Recently, three CLTs were awarded $750,000 from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF), a pot of city money established through a multi-year grassroots effort and funded through excise taxes on speculative real estate activity. This panel features representatives from two awardees, the South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT) and Charm City Land Trusts (CCLT). Sarah Jacklin, Housing Coordinator for Charm City Land Trust Meleny Thomas, Executive Director of the South Baltimore Community Land Trust Moderator: Mike Casiano, AMST@UMBC | 1-1:50pm: Conversation with Lawrence Brown + Nicole Fabricant (BFS consultants) Title: Nurturing an Ethics of Solidarity & Care: Fostering Collective Impact in the Public Sphere Reading: Laura Pulido, Frequently (Un)Asked Questions about Being a Scholar Activist 2 – 3:30pm: Title: Doing the Work: Exploring the State of Community Land Trusts in Baltimore City Description: For years, organizers, activists, and stakeholders have pushed for the creation, support, and prioritization of community land trusts (CLTs) in Baltimore as correctives to speculative and for-profit housing development. Through rallies, signature drives, grassroots fundraising, ballot initiatives, coalition-building, legislative lobbying, and other strategies, CLTs and their allies have secured major victories at the city level to allow for the development of permanently-affordable housing to combat the structurally racist involuntary displacement of low-income city residents. Panelists will detail the histories of their respective CLTs, past and future successes and challenges, and how they conceptualized and plan to execute each of their AHTF-backed projects |
| WRITING PROJECT → | Post draft manifestos to google folder |
| Date: Thursday, June 24 | Arts and Humanities in Baltimore |
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| 10 – 11:20am: The Chicory Revitalization Project + Co-creating Projects Explore the Chicory magazine digital archive here: https://collections.digitalmaryland.org/digital/collection/mdcy/search Panelists: Mary Rizzo, organizer + BFS consultant Patrick Oray, Bard High School Early CollegeMelvin Brown, former editor of Chicory Patrice Hutton, Writers in Baltimore SchoolsVictor “Slangston Hughes” Rodgers, Dewmore Baltimore Keegan Cook Finberg (moderator) 11:30 – 12pm Fellows debrief | Title: Black Poetry Does: Connecting Young People to their History through Poetry. Description: The Chicory Revitalization Project was formed in 2018 to spur civic conversations about place, history and social justice in Baltimore using Chicory, a magazine that published the poetry and art of African American residents of Baltimore from 1966-1983. Panelists will discuss the significance of Chicory as a record of the voices of Black people from Baltimore’s past and how they’ve collaborated to incorporate its poetry into the lives of Baltimore youth today. |
| LUNCH (12 – 1pm) | |
| 1 – 2:30pm: The Beautiful Side of Ugly panel Public event → please register on Eventbrite Curtis Eaddy, moderator and organizer Shae McCoy, photographer Wendell Supreme, artist Phillip Golden, artist Check out the Out of the Block Podcast: The Beautiful Side of Ugly | Title: The Beautiful Side of Ugly: Unspoken Discussion Panel Description: panel will be a conversation on Black Thought, Black Culture, and Black Wealth with residents and influencers in Baltimore. Our panel will discuss some of the myths and truths about these three topics, how they impact urban trauma, and ways that we can strengthen these principles in our immediate communities. This panel’s topic is #ArtTherapy and how it impacts a community. We will unpack trauma in Baltimore, personal and community, and how it has impacted our neighborhoods. |
| WRITING PROJECT → | 2:30 – 3pm Read the manifestos of your breakout group members |
| Date: Friday, June 25 | Topic: Connecting with D.C. cultural inst. |
| Readings: Michelle L. Stefano, “Shifting Priorities and Building Strategies,” from Practical Considerations for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (Routledge, forthcoming July 2021). Caswell, M., Migoni, A. A., Geraci, N. and Cifor, M. 2017. “‘To Be Able to Imagine Otherwise’: community archives and the importance of representation.” Archives and Records 38 (1), pp. 5-26. Cifor, M., Caswell, M., Migoni, A. A. and Geraci, N. 2018. “‘What We Do Crossed over to Activism’: The Politics and Practice of Community Archives.” The Public Historian 40 (2), pp. 69-95. Guide on Cultural Documentation: Stephen Winick and Peter Bartis, Folklife and Fieldwork: An Introduction to Cultural Documentation, 4th edition, published by the Library of Congress, 2014 | Readings: A Right to the City: How Washingtonians have shaped and reshaped their neighborhoods in extraordinary ways, Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum, February 28, 2020 A Right to the City Booklet Maleke Glee and Carmen Robles-Inman, “Organizational Principle: Strengthen Community Bonds,” Exhibition, Fall 2019. |
| Morning Panel I: (10am-10:50am): Title: Community Collections at the AFC Description: The “Community Collections Fellowships” initiative focuses on communities documenting their own cultures/cultural expressions as staff plays a supportive (non-leadership) role. The project is funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to enrich the historical record/the AFC-LOC archives, enhancing their “representational belonging” of diverse communities, social groups, etc. Morning Panel II (11am – 11:50am) Title: “The Practice of Public Scholarship in a Gentrifying City: Working in, with, and for Communities” Description: This discussion of the methodology, ethics, and outcomes of public scholarship—and specifically public history—will draw on the recent example of the “A Right to the City” exhibition/project at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum which explored the history and contemporary dynamics of neighborhood change and community activism in one of the most rapidly gentrifying cities in the nation: Washington, DC. | Michelle Stefano, Folklife Specialist in the Research & Programs section of American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Allina Migoni, Reference Librarian, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC Samir Meghelli, Supervisory Museum Curator, Smithsonian Institution, Anacostia Community Museum |
| LUNCH BREAK (12-1pm) | |
| Afternoon: (1-3pm) 1-2pm: Manifesto workshopping breakout sessions | 2-3pm: Debrief and plan August reconvenving + brainstorm ideas for fall programming & follow up 4:30pm: A Place Called Poppleton walking tour – Register here though Eventbrite – meet at the Lion Brothers Bld @ 4:15pm → tour will begin at 4:30pm… happy hour to follow for the really engaged : ) |