Olivia Gundrum, a senior Honors College English major and first-generation college student, graduates this May and will leave MSU having made a positive impact through her work to cultivate a racially informed curriculum within the College of Education. As an English major focusing on English Secondary Education, the interconnectedness of racial identity in the English classroom has always intrigued Gundrum.…
Supporting the voices of emerging artists has never been more important. The MSU Broad and the College of Arts & Letters are honored to have been able to do this work through the Who Is A Citizen? exhibition, which runs through March 21, 2021, at the MSU Broad Art Lab. The public is now invited to help support these emerging artists as…
Being built to blaze a trail in higher education with its focus on Black Feminisms, Black Genders Studies, and Black Sexualities Studies, the architects of the Department of African American and African Studies (AAAS), the newest department within MSU’s College of Arts & Letters, are unapologetic in this focus as they build the unit they have long dreamed about. Dr.…
David W.D. Dickson’s trailblazing career, spanning more than 40 years and five academic institutions, began at Michigan State University in the Department of English in 1948 when he became the university’s first Black faculty member and, a few years later, the first to be awarded MSU’s Distinguished Faculty Award. He also went on to become the first African American to…
“Why philosophy?” That’s a question MSU Philosophy Professor Kristie Dotson, formal advisor to the new Department of African American and African Studies (AAAS), has fielded many times before. Perhaps it is because she had never taken a philosophy course until she began graduate studies in philosophy. It could also be the centrality of Black feminisms in Dotson’s life and the…
Julian Chambliss, Professor in the Department of English, core faculty for the Consortium for Critical Diversity in Digital Age Research, and Val Berryman Curator of History for the MSU Museum, wrote the following article about the exhibit he curated for the MSU Museum, titled "Beyond the Black Panther: Visions of Afrofuturism in American Comics," for MSU Today.
Jessica and Michael Stokes, both doctoral students in the Department of English, received the MSU Excellence in Diversity Award for their work with the HIVES Research Workshop. They were nominated for this honor in the “Teams: Emerging Process” category.
What does religion in the United States sound like? We begin by exploring the question that animates the American Religious Sounds Project (ARSP), a collaborative research initiative co-directed by Michigan State University Religious Studies Professor Amy DeRogatis and Ohio State University Comparative Studies Professor Isaac Weiner.
Last year, at the start of Black History Month, College of Arts & Letters alumna Asmaa Walton began posting covers of art monographs, exhibition catalogues, and art biographies of African American visual artists to Instagram. An Art Education graduate, Walton was in the middle of her appointment as the Romare Bearden Graduate Museum Fellow at the Saint Louis Art Museum…
A leading advisory board of recognized philosophers has identified Michigan State University’s Department of Philosophy as a premier place for graduate students from underrepresented populations to earn a doctorate degree. In fall 2020, The Pluralist’s Guide to Philosophy commended the department’s approach, which fosters the use of traditional elements of philosophy while addressing practical issues of concern to society. Many…