INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP
ART OF FACT
Art of Fact – Reclaiming, Renaming, and Remaking Seeks to engage participants in reclaiming the internal and external spaces colonized by racism, racial trauma, and whiteness through a genealogical exploration of history and identity.
The desire and ability to make a place more equitable is predicated on the equitable connection a person or a people has to that place. Due to racism, Black and brown people’s relationship to place has historically and by design, been inequitable. Black people have been and are still being— through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery, Reconstruction, and gentrification— forcibly removed from land, then to land, and from and to land again and again. The resulting racialized trauma’s negative impact on most of our Black ancestors has meant that many of our great, great, great grands would not talk about their lives in “the South”. Their reluctance or outright refusal in the past to talk about their lived experiences has led to the reluctance or inability of current mothers, fathers, grands, and greats to relay any historical information in the present. In fact, this disconnection to land, history, and thus identity has impacted even the youngest
participants (who are in their early 20’s) in our first year of Art of Fact (AOF). Therefore, AOF, as a program of the Institute of Public Scholarship’s Humanities in Action program, seeks to “build on local, state and national [genealogical] conversations ... as a mechanism for social justice and dismantling inequity”.
The desire and ability to make a place more equitable is predicated on the equitable connection a person or a people has to that place. Due to racism, Black and brown people’s relationship to place has historically and by design, been inequitable. Black people have been and are still being— through the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, slavery, Reconstruction, and gentrification— forcibly removed from land, then to land, and from and to land again and again. The resulting racialized trauma’s negative impact on most of our Black ancestors has meant that many of our great, great, great grands would not talk about their lives in “the South”. Their reluctance or outright refusal in the past to talk about their lived experiences has led to the reluctance or inability of current mothers, fathers, grands, and greats to relay any historical information in the present. In fact, this disconnection to land, history, and thus identity has impacted even the youngest
participants (who are in their early 20’s) in our first year of Art of Fact (AOF). Therefore, AOF, as a program of the Institute of Public Scholarship’s Humanities in Action program, seeks to “build on local, state and national [genealogical] conversations ... as a mechanism for social justice and dismantling inequity”.
WORKSHOP 1
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WORKSHOP 2
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WORKSHOP 3 |
