This stream includes initiatives that address the community impact of humanities education through the specific lens of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration is tied directly to the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, and its impact is intertwined with education, housing, civil rights, and drug legislation. Thus, this stream coordinates faculty and partner commitment to addressing the concrete impact of racism in the legal system.
Program Stream: Racism, Incarceration, and Displacement
Humanities 2020 Faculty Fellows work to enhance and advance humanities education through engagement with the issue of racism and through the development of collaborative initiatives with grant partner organizations throughout the Chicagoland area.
Development of partner initiatives began in January 2019. Initiatives with grant partners began in Summer 2019 and faculty fellows continue to develop collaborative projects with activists, artists, educators, and historians at partner institutions in the Chicagoland area.
This stream includes initiatives that address the community impact of humanities education through the specific lens of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration is tied directly to the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, and its impact is intertwined with education, housing, civil rights, and drug legislation. Thus, this stream coordinates faculty and partner commitment to addressing the concrete impact of racism in the legal system.
Qualitative Analysis to Improve Freedom From Trafficking
Grant Partner: Heartland Alliance
Faculty: Susan Long
Associate Professor of Psychology Susan Long, along with two student researchers, will conduct a qualitative analysis of Heartland Alliance’s Freedom from Trafficking programming. Heartland’s Freedom from Trafficking group provides comprehensive services through its Housing First initiative to foreign nationals – most of whom are from minority groups – who have been victims of human trafficking. Professor Long and the student researchers will analyze data on trauma recovery services to help the Freedom from Trafficking group identify how to improve the effectiveness of the services that they provide to their participants. Participant interviews begin in summer 2021, and the data analysis and research will continue throughout 2021 -2022.
Chicago Sun-Times Photo Archives Research
Grant Partner: Chicago History Museum
Faculty: Rudi Batzell, Cristina Groeger
Student fellows participating in the Sun-Times Archive Internship at the Chicago History Museum collaborated with curators to craft essays providing historical context for photos form the collection that highlight the history of race in Chicago. The essays are hosted on the Digital Chicago website (the website created as part of the Digital Chicago Mellon grant) and linked to from the Museum’s blog. Fall 2019 interns wrote about the life and murder of activist Fred Hampton and the Spring 2020 cohort explored the history of Latinx activists Rudy Lozano and the Young Lords. Hannah Bradford and Anna Hevrdejs, investigated Sun-times photos of the Harrison High Protests of 1968.