Research initiative continues impact: examining race and memory
March 10, 2025 | Ruby Wang
What began as a temporary, three-year initiative offering support to focused research topics, the Institute’s Race, Memory, and Reckoning Initiative has now become a sustained component within the flagship Faculty Fellowship Program.
The RMR initiative aims to examine the complexities of “race” in our history and institutions. Now, examining race through research will be a long-term commitment. “We’ve refocused the Race, Memory, and Reckoning Initiative,” said Patricia Parker (FFP ’02, ALP ’11), director of the IAH. Each awarded fellowship allows scholars to research how race relates to personal, intergenerational, and systemic memory.
Outside of her leadership at the Institute, Parker also co-chairs the University Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward with history professor Jim Leloudis (FFP ’92, ’97; ALP ’03). Guided in part by Parker’s research in communication studies, the Commission is building community engagement partnerships through collaborative research that honors the descendants of enslaved ancestors who built the early University.
For Parker, the commitment to this kind of research is critically important to the mission of a global public Research 1 university. “Many faculty choose academic careers at public universities to conduct research that gives back to their communities,” said Parker. “Often, topics related to race are at the forefront of what’s happening in their community.”
Faculty fellowships to empower research
The Faculty Fellowship Program embraces the weaving of humanistic disciplines to advance scholarship on topics in the arts, humanities, and qualitative social sciences. Fellows receive an on-campus, semester-long leave to pursue research and creative work on publications, exhibitions, compositions, and performances.
The initiative works in conjunction with the Faculty Fellowship Program by dedicating specific fellowships for projects on race, memory, inequality, and related areas. In previous years, the program has also dedicated fellowships to projects related to focused topics such as digital humanities, creative artistry, and mental health.
In its inaugural year, the initiative awarded fellowships to John Sweet and Oswaldo Estrada. Sweet worked on a project mapping areas of segregation in Chapel Hill through GIS mapping technology. Estrada wrote short stories on Latinos in the state based on real accounts in his project, “Tar Dreams: Latina/o Stories of Migration in North Carolina.”
Fellowships offer faculty dedicated time to work on projects that later become publications, performances and award-winners. “During my time as a fellow, I wrote a piece, ‘Under My Skin,’ which was a finalist for the Doris Betts Fiction Award. As a result of my fellowship, this spring, I will publish DREAMS IN TIME OF WAR / Soñar en tiempos de guerra with the University of New Mexico Press,” said Estrada.
The initiative allowed Glenn Hinson to work on “The Descendants Project–Reckoning and Reconciliation in the Aftermath of N.C. Lynchings” in spring 2022. Today, the Descendants Project continues to evolve. The project plans to work with Community Remembrance Coalitions to gather later this year.
Enriching research through community
In addition to offering time to work on a project, the fellowship connects scholars with one another. “As an artist, it’s so important to have a community that supports your work. The IAH has been that community for me,” said Samuel Gates, who was awarded a faculty fellowship in fall 2022 to work on the one-person show, When the Swelling Goes Down.
Shannon Gonzalez, who participated in the Faculty Fellowship Program in 2023 shared similar sentiments: “The fellowship provided an opportunity for me to make meaningful connections with other faculty across campus. We were able to slow down, think and write together, and support the development of each other’s projects.” The space and time were critical in helping Gonzalez complete the manuscript for “The Secrets of Silence: Black Women Speaking on Police Violence and Invisibility.”
Other RMR faculty fellows include Herica Valladares, who worked on “Fashioning Empire: Roman Women and their Objects” in fall 2021. Then, Heidi Kim received a fellowship in spring 2023 to conduct research for the proposal “Beyond Reparations: The Lessons of the Japanese American Incarceration.”
Since the fellowship, Kim has broadened the scope of the book to examine the political and popular culture of American apology and reparations. Presently, she’s working on an article focused on the theoretical aspects of literature and activism about the remembrance of Japanese American incarceration. During the fellowship, she also worked on a project on Asian American literature that will be a part of Oxford’s Very Short Introductions series.
Looking forward with the initiative
Though fellows under the Race, Memory, and Reckoning initiative work on projects themed around racial remembrance and history, many address issues relevant to now. Most recently, Seth Kotch worked on “Dead South: A History of the Death Penalty in the Former Confederacy” in fall 2024. Anna Agbe-Davies is the current Faculty Fellow supported by the RMR initiative. She is researching artifacts and archives associated with African American women to reveal the demands of daily life and their struggle for equal rights.
“My scholarship uses the methods of archaeological analysis to demonstrate how people can challenge racially oppressive systems, maybe even dismantle them…through the everyday material actions taken by each one of us, past or present,” says Agbe-Davies.
In addition to Faculty Fellowships, the Institute offers grants to promote research diversity. Last fall, the IAH launched the Arts and Humanities Grant for Research Diversity to support its aims in promoting research that expands knowledge on various backgrounds, cultures, and histories.
The IAH recognizes that there are often barriers to attaining success in institutions. Consistent with its mission to empower faculty to achieve their full potential, the Institute will continue dedicating funding towards initiatives like RMR that support faculty pursuing impactful research, providing time, community, and other resources to ensure their success.
Visit the webpage for Race, Memory, and Reckoning to learn more about the initiative’s history, previous programming, and research it has supported.
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