Past Summer Short-term Fellows: 2009-2014

2014

Garnette Cadogan
Independent Scholar, New York City, New York
Project Title: The Myriad Roots of Jamaican Popular Music
Mr. Cadogan conducted research at the Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research, Chicago Public Library Special Collection, and the Melville J. Herskovits Collection at Northwestern University.

Melanie Chambliss
PhD candidate, African American Studies and American Studies, Yale University
Project Title: Saving the Race: Black Archives and their Conceptualization of African American History, 1914-1968
Ms. Chambliss conducted research at Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection and the University of Chicago Special Collections.

Rev. Mark Koschmann
PhD candidate, American Studies, St. Louis University
Project Title: African American Religious Communities and Urban Activism on Chicago’s West Side, 1950-1970
Rev. Koschmann conducted research at the Chicago History Museum, West Side church organizations, Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection, and the University of Illinois, Chicago Special Collections.

Austin McCoy
PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Project Title: Chicago Works Together: Progressive Black Governance and Economic Development during the Harold Washington Administration, 1983-1987
Mr. McCoy conducted research at Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection and Special Collections, the University of Illinois, Chicago Special Collections, and the Chicago History Museum.

2013

Jovonne Bickerstaff
PhD candidate in Sociology, Harvard University
Project Title: Steppin’ into Black Space: Chicago Steppin’ as a Support Network for Enduring Black Couples
Ms. Bickerstaff conducted her research at Illinois Institute of Technology Archive’s Bronzeville Collection, and the Chicago History Museum’s Keepers of Culture Westside and Southside Collections.

Linda Chavers
PhD candidate in African and African American Studies/Literature, Harvard University
Project Title: The Minds of Richard Wright
Research conducted at Chicago Public Library.

Ann Eskridge
Independent Scholar/Writer
From Coon to Rag: The Pekin Theater’s in Developing Chicago’s Black Tin Pan Alley
Project Title: Ms. Eskridge conducted her research at the DuSable Museum of African American History, Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research, Roosevelt University Library, Chicago Public Library, Chicago History Museum, and the Chicago Defender Archives.

Melissa Ford
PhD candidate in American Studies, St. Louis University
Project Title: African American Working Women and Labor Activism in Chicago, 1920-1940
Ms. Ford conducted her research at the University of Illinois, Chicago Special Collections, the Chicago Public Library, the University of Chicago Special Collections, and the Chicago History Museum.

Lloren A. Foster
Assistant Professor of African American Studies, Western Kentucky University
Project Title: Opportunity or Experiment? Residential Segregation and the Issues of Community in Chicago’s Maple Park Neighborhood
Dr. Foster conducted research at University of Illinois, Chicago Special Collections and the Chicago Public Library.

Danielle Legros Georges
Writer, Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Project Title: Letter from the Congo
Ms. Legros conducted research at the Chicago Public Library and the University of Chicago, Special Collections.

Claudia Jacques
PhD candidate in Media Studies, Plymouth University, UK
Project Title: Social Origins of Chicago’s New Negro Artists and Intellectuals: A Photographic Survey
Ms. Jacques conducted her research at the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Research Collections and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Tsitsi Jaji
Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania
Project Title: Classic Black: Art Songs by Black Composers as Poetry Criticism
Dr. Jaji conducted research at Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research and the Chicago Public Library.

Sandy Jordan
Independent Scholar, Genealogist
Project Title: Clifford Jordan’s Jazz Experience and How it Influenced his Contributions to the Jazz World
Ms. Jordan conducted her research at the DuSable Museum of African American History and the University of Chicago Special Collections.

Amy M. Mooney
Professor of Art and Design, Columbia College, Chicago
Project Title: Strategies for Visualizing Chicago’s Cultural Capital: The Black Portrait
Dr. Mooney conducted research at the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection and the University of Chicago Special Collection.

Dr. Rob Prince Obey
Assistant Professor, Bowling Green State University, Huron, OH
Project Title: Reclaiming Uncle Tom: Heroic Identity, Racist Minstrelsy Reversals, and the Tragic Paradox with James Baldwin’s “Everybody’s Favorite Protest Novel”
Dr. Obey will conduct research that will begin to answer the question of when the term “Uncle Tom” was first accepted by African Americans. Using resources available from the Consortium the project will utilize Plantation records and other documents in the Harsh Collection at the Chicago Public Library, rare film archives at Columbia College, Collections of the works of James Baldwin, and records of the Chicago Defender to piece together a narrative that will tell the story of how a heroic character created by Harriet Beecher Stowe was revised by misrepresentations of the character and how those misrepresentations were completely accepted by African Americans after the civil war. Dr. Obey will conduct his research at the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection and Columbia College.

Debashree Sinha
PhD candidate, Department of English, University of Delhi, India
Project Title: Lost Poets: Black Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance
Ms. Sinha conducted research at the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection, Chicago State University Special Collections, and the DuSable Museum of African American History.

James West
PhD candidate, University of Manchester, UK
Project Title: More than a Magazine: Ebony in the Post-Civil Rights Era
Mr. West conducted research at the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection, Chicago State University Special Collections, the University of Illinois, Chicago Special Collections, and the DuSable Museum of African American History.

2012

Simon Balto
PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Project Title: The Law Has a Low Opinion of Me: Race and Policing in 20th Century Chicago
Mr. Balto conducted research at the Chicago History Museum, the Chicago Public Library’s Special Collection and the Vivian G. Harsh Collection, and the University of Illinois, Chicago Special Collections.

Mary Barr, PhD
Sociology and Africana Studies, Pomona College, Claremont, California
Project Title: Suburban Soul: The Untold Story of the Civil Rights Movement in Evanston, Illinois
Dr. Barr conducted research at the Art Institute of Chicago, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the University of Chicago Special Collections, Shorefront Legacy Center Archives, and the University of Illinois, Chicago Special Collections.

Tony Burroughs
Independent Researcher, Genealogy
Project Title: The Underground Railroad in Chicago
Mr. Burroughs consulted the collections at the Newberry Library, the DuSable Museum of African American History, and the Chicago History Museum.

Neil Clarke
Percussionist, Independent Scholar, Brooklyn, New York
Project Title: The Historical Presence of the African Drum in North America
Mr. Clarke used archival collections at the Chicago History Museum, the University of Chicago Special Collections, and the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College.

Jonathan Fenderson, PhD
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri
Project Title: Black Arts Metropolis: OBAC and Chicago as an Epicenter of the Black Aesthetic
Dr. Fenderson conducted research at the Chicago History Museum, the DuSable Museum of African American History, Northwestern University, and the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection.

Doria D. Johnson
PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Project Title: I Am Not What You Think I Am: African American Women and Domestic Service in the Suburbs, Evanston, Illinois, 1910-1945
Ms. Johnson consulted the archival collections at Shorefront Legacy Center, Roosevelt University, the University of Illinois, Chicago Special Collections, and the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection.
For further reading on recent work: Returning Home: The Centennial of the Abbeville Lynching of Anthony Crawford

Henri Peretz
Professor of Sociology, University of Paris, France
Project Title: The Social History of Black Chicago, 1904-1987
Dr. Peretz conducted research at the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection and Special Collections, the University of Chicago Special Collections, and the Chicago History Museum.

Joseph Parrott
PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Texas, Austin
Project Title: Resisting the Winds of Change: The International Politics of Portuguese Decolonization
Mr. Parrott conducted research at Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection and the Melville J. Herskovits Collection at Northwestern University.

Ian Rocksborough-Smith
PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Project Title: Contentious Cosmopolitans: Black Public History in Cold War Chicago, 1942-1972
Mr. Rocksborough-Smith conducted research at the DuSable Museum of African American History and the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection.

John Robert Terry
PhD candidate, Department of History, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Project Title: Blue Maxwell: Urban Policy, Maxwell Street Market, and the Chicago Blues
Mr. Terry conducted research at the Chicago History Museum, the DuSable Museum of African American History, the Chicago Public Library’s Vivian G. Harsh Collection, Chicago State University Special Collections, the University of Chicago Special Collections, and the University of Illinois, Chicago Special Collections.

Christine Woolner
PhD candidate, Department of Women’s Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Project Title: The Famous Lady Lovers: Race, Sexuality, and the Entertainment Industry in the World of the Classic Blues Women
Ms. Woolner conducted research at the Chicago Jazz Archive at the University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center, the Chicago Public Library’s Special Collections, the Chicago History Museum, and Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research.

2011

Sharon Beckford-Foster, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor of English, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York
Project Title: Richard Wright and His Modeling of West Indians as Modern Citizens

Michael Bramwell
Visual Artist, Cary, North Carolina
Project Title: Rough Trade: Representations of Slavery in Contemporary Visual Art

Gianpaolo Chiriacu
Musicologist, Leece, Italy
Project Title: Field Hollers and Cries: the Persistence of Archaic Forms of African-American Compositions

Spencer Dew
Visiting Lecturer, Department of Religious Studies, Iowa State University
Project Title: Engaged Journalism and Popular Religion: Moorish Science and the Chicago Defender in the 1920s and 1930s

Olivia Duval
Vocal Performer, The Kentucky Center Governor’s School for the Arts
Project Title: Classical Vocal Music by Black Composers

Mitsutoshi Inaba
Ethnomusicologist, Eugene, Oregon
Project Title: John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, an Oral History

Earnest L. Perry, PhD
Associate Professor and Chair, School of Journalism, University of Missouri
Project Title: Voice of Consciousness: The African American Press during World War II

Ibram X. Kendi (H. Rogers)
Assistant Professor, African American History, State University New York, Oneonta
Project Title: The Black Campus Movement: A Historical Analysis of the Struggle to Diversify Higher Education, 1965-1972

Cauleen Smith, PhD
Acting Associate Professor, Media Arts, University of California, San Diego
Project Title: The Solar Flare Arkestral Marching Band Project

Christina Maria Zanfagna
Lecturer in Ethnomusicology, Santa Clara University
Project Title: Holy Hip Hop in the City of Angels: Race, Rap, and Religion in the American Metropolis

2010

Thomas Bahde
Independent scholar/researcher, San Diego, California
Project Title: The Life and Death of Gus Reed: Race and Justice in the World of a Nineteenth-Century Thief and Slavery in a Free State: Masters, Slaves, and Labor in Illinois, 1818-1850
Publication: The Life and Death of Gus Reed: A Story of Race and Justice in Illinois during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Athens: Ohio University Press, Fall 2014.

Ifa Bayeza
Playwright, Chicago Illinois
Project Title: High Jinks

Dexter Blackman, PhD
Assistant Professor, History, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, California
Project Title: Let Whitey Run His Own Olympics’: African American Pan-Africanism, the Olympic Project for Human Rights, and the anti-Apartheid Movement

Geoffrey Bradfield
Saxophonist and Composer, Chicago Illinois
Project Title: African Flowers: Dedications and Inspirations. 
Performance: Columbia College Chicago Concert Hall, August 31, 2010. Performed parts of suite dedicated to Melba Liston. Album: Melba!, 2013.

Eurie Dahn, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of English, College of Saint Rose, Albany, New York
Project Title: The Art of Living: American Manners, Race, and Modernism
Has since published an article from work associated with the BMRC here: “‘Unashamedly Black’: Jim Crow Aesthetics and the Visual Logic of Shame,” MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 39.2 (Summer 2014): 93-114.

Jacob Dorman, PhD
Assistant Professor, History and American Studies, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
Project Title: Vernacular Ethnology: African American Performance and Parody of Muslim and Oriental Identities in Minstrelsy, Vaudeville, and Early Cinema

Catherine Fennell, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and the Center for Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University, New York, New York
Project Title: The Last Project Standing: Citizenship Ethics in the Wake of Public Housing
Publication: Last Project Standing: Civics and Sympathy in Post-Welfare Chicago.

Michelle Gordon, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California
Project Title: Bringing Down Babylon: The Chicago Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement, and African American freedom Struggles, 1931-1969

Michael Largey, PhD
Professor and Chair Musicology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
Project Title: Finding Haiti: Authenticity and the Ethnographic Imaginary

Andrew Rosa, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, Oklahoma
Project Title: St. Clair Drake: the Chicago/Africa Years, 1945-1967

Robert Weems, PhD
Professor, Department of History, University of Missouri-Columbia
Project Title: Anthony Overton: The Life and Times of an African American Business Tycoon

Mabel Wilson, PhD
Associate Professor Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, New York, New York
Project Title: Progress and Prospects: Black Americans and the World of Fairs 
Published: Negro Building: Black Americans in the World of Fairs and Museums. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

2009

Helen Brown, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Visual and Performing Arts, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
Project Title: Margaret Allison Bonds and Langston Hughes: Musical-Textual Relationships in the Arts Songs

Richard Courage, PhD
Professor, English Department, Westchester Community College/SUNY, Valhalla, New York
Project Title: The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1928-1950

Ayesha K. Hardison, PhD
Associate Professor, Departments of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University of Kansas
Project Title: Writing Through Jane Crow: Race, Gender, and Genre, 1940-1954
Dr. Hardison wrote a book based on some of the work she did as a BMRC Summer Short Term Fellow titled Writing Through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature and published an article in 2014 titled Where Author and Auteur Meet: Genre, the Erotic, and Black Female Subjectivity. She also published an article in 2013 titled Crossing the Threshold: Zora Neale Hurston, Racial Performance, and Seraph on the Suwanee.

Bonnie Claudia Harrison, PhD
Assistant Professor, Social Sciences, Kennedy-King College, City Colleges of Chicago
Project Title: Resisting Change: African Americans, Accommodation, and Conflict in Chicago’s Englewood, 1900-1920

Cynthia Hawkins
Director of Galleries, State University of New York Geneseo, Geneseo, New York
Project Title: Survey of African American Printmakers 1880 to the Present

Sarah Potter, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tennessee
Project Title: Family Matters: Domesticity and Everyday Life of Race, Class, and National Belonging in Postwar Chicago

Marcus Shelby
Composer/musician, San Francisco, California
Project Title: MLK (Oratorio for Jazz Orchestra)