Faculty & Staff Collaboration
Faculty and staff collaboration across WashU campuses, schools and departments is vital to understanding our institution's entanglements with the history and legacy of slavery, and the identification and promotion of transformative reparative approaches. These partnerships have been key to our progress so far and we seek to increase them through small grants supporting new and existing course and program development.
These small grants (up to $3,000) can be used to develop or enrich new or existing courses and programs that connect students or other campus-community entities (e.g., faculty, staff and community partners) to the broad objectives of the WashU & Slavery Project or key areas of emphasis. Broadly, the project aims to facilitate reflection on our institution's entanglements with the history and legacy of slavery, and the identification and promotion of transformative reparative approaches in St. Louis and beyond. As legacies of slavery are among the world’s most pressing problems, we aspire to create a model of university partnership with local communities for global impact.
Current Priority Areas for Research & Interpretation
Project collaborators are invited to engage a broad array of topics and methods relevant to the objectives of understanding and addressing the history and legacy of slavery, especially as relates to the institutional history of Washington University in St. Louis. We welcome collaborator applications engagement these questions in critical, expansive, and creative ways. Below we highlight key areas that may be especially fruitful, given the focus of our current collaborative research and interpretation efforts. These include:
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Stories of Resistance - Project collaborators are researching and creating public-facing interpretation of the stories of people who resisted enslavement in greater St. Louis, especially where there are ties to Washington University’s historical entanglements with slavery, such as by creating Storymaps about abolitionists and freedom seekers including William Wells Brown and Moses Dickson, or contributing to the preservation and memorialization of sites, facilities, programs connected to the history of the Underground Railroad through the National Park Service Network to Freedom Program.
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WashU People & Fields - Project collaborators are advancing research on Washington University’s founders, benefactors, and officials (e.g., administrators) and their relationship to slavery, including through research in WashU Libraries' University Archives and other archival collections. Study and other engagement with these foundations may include the early history of our schools, academic units, community partnerships, faculty and students.
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Mapping & Place-Based Interpretation - Project collaborators are examining histories of the St. Louis community and WashU campus landscapes as they relate to slavery and colonialism, and contributing to developing interventions that educate, memorialize, and promote healing. We are using digital mapping platforms to advance analysis of the history and legacies of slavery in greater St. Louis, such as by mapping sites of enslavement and its wake, tracking patterns of enslaver street names, and developing campus and community tours, exhibitions, memorials and other place-based interpretation.
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Digital Humanities - Database Development - Project collaborators are using research and digital humanities methodologies to contribute to public-facing databases that allow for more complete understanding of the history of enslavement and the slave trade, including such projects as Slave Voyages, the Saint Louis Integrated Database of Enslavement, and Freedom on the Move.
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Grant Eligibility and Requirements
All WashU faculty and staff are eligible to apply for collaborator grants and the application form will ask you to request a funding amount (up to maximum of $3,000) and explain how the requested funding will be used to develop or enhance a new or existing course or program. Eligible uses include transportation (e.g., field trip, guest speaker travel); teaching and learning resources (e.g., books for class or program use); speaker fees; and other expenses relevant to engagement with WashU & Slavery Project objectives. Funding recipients (and associate courses or programs) will be recognized as Project Collaborators and required to share experiences and insights facilitated by WashU & Slavery Project support, including summary feedback from course or program participant evaluations.
How to Apply
Click the "Apply Here" button (right) to apply for a collaborator grant. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and reviewed by the project steering committee. Support will be offered according to project fit and funding availability as applications are received and reviewed over the fall and spring semesters. Support for summer courses or programs should be submitted in the spring semester.
Pictured:
A group including WashU students, staff, faculty and community partners discusses plans for the reinterpretation of enslavement and freedom-seeking at Henry Shaw's Tower Grove House in the Missouri Botanical Garden, a site that is also significant to the early history of WashU, including advances in plant science (Photo: G. Ward).