Geoff Ward

Geoff Ward’s scholarship examines racial politics of social control, and the pursuit of racial justice, historically and today.

Geoff Ward is Professor of African and African-American Studies and faculty affiliate in the Department of Sociology and American Culture Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis. His scholarship examines the racial politics of social control and the pursuit of racial justice, historically and today. His work appears in numerous academic journals and anthologies, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the Ford Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. In addition to numerous research articles and essays, he is the author of The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2012), an award-winning book on the rise, fall, and haunting remnants of Jim Crow juvenile justice.

His current projects examine broader histories of racist violence, their legacies, and implications for repair. In addition to research and teaching in this area, Ward serves as director of WashU & Slavery, an initiative of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2) aligned with the global consortium of Universities Studying Slavery. Finally, he is involved in several related community-based initiatives, including the Mayor's Commemorative Landscape Taskforce in Clayton, MO, and the Reparative Justice Coalition of St. Louis, a network of volunteers working with Equal Justice Initiative and other partners to address legacies of racist violence.

Recent publications:

Gaby, S., D. Cunningham, H. Lee, G. Ward, and A. Jackson (2021). "Exculpating Injustice: Coroner Constructions of White Innocence in the Postbellum South." Socius 7 LINK
Doering, Z. (2020). “From This Moment: Museum Futures. Conversations with Tom Freudenheim, Anika Walke, and Geoff Ward.” Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy 6(2): Museum-Politics-Management: 9-23. LINK
Ward, G., N. Petersen, A. Kupchik, and J. Pratt (2019). "Historic Lynching and Corporal Punishment in Contemporary Southern Schools." Social Problems LINK
Cunningham, David, G. Ward and P. Owens (2019). "Configuring Political Repression: Anti-Civil Rights Enforcement in Mississippi." Mobilization: An International Quarterly LINK
Pérez, R. and Ward, G. (2019). "From Insult to Estrangement and Injury: The Violence of Racist Police Jokes." American Behavioral Scientist, 0002764219842617. LINK
Ward, G. (2018). "Living Histories of White Supremacist Policing," Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 15(1). LINK
Ward, G. and P. Hanink (2017). "Deliberating Racial Justice: Towards Racially Democratic Crime Control." In J. Jackson and J. Jacobs (eds.), Handbook of Criminal Justice Ethics. New York: Routledge. LINK
Ward, G. (2016). "Microclimates of Racial Meaning: Historical Racial Violence and Environmental Impacts." Wisconsin Law Review, 575. LINK

For more about research in these and other areas visit my personal website or my page on Academia.edu.

Creative projects:

In addition to more traditional scholarly research and writing, I use creative and digital projects to support research and teaching, engage broader audiences, and facilitate the visibility, use and impact of this work. These include:

Monumental Anti-Racism, a collaborative StoryMap exploring the racial politics of public memory, and highlighting global practices and student proposals centering anti-racist commemorative intervention;
The Racial Violence Archive, a digital resource for research, teaching, and engagement focusing on histories of racial violence and their legacies today;
Truths and Reckonings: The Art of Transformative Racial Justice, a teaching gallery exhibition at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and John M. Olin Library at Washington University during Spring 2020;
Black Memory Work, a StoryMap and podcast showcasing the work of several students in the Spring 2020 Senior Seminar and Capstone in the Department of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

recent courses

Monumental Antiracism

This course examines the contentious racial politics of commemorative objects and practices, and theoretical and practical aspects of commemorative work as a strategy of anti-racism, through close readings of relevant texts, case studies, and a practicum component involving collaborative development of a memorial archive and student-led memorial design projects.

Learn more at the class StoryMap

Juvenile Justice in the Black Experience

This course examines the socio-legal past, present, and future of American juvenile justice, with a focus on the black experience. The course is organized in three parts. Part I surveys the late 19th and early 20th century development of the "parental state," its institutional centerpiece (the juvenile court), and principle legal subjects ("dependents" and "delinquents"), as these took shape alongside the contemporaneous rise of 20th century American Apartheid (i.e., Jim Crow). Part II examines key changes and challenges in contemporary juvenile justice, centering transformations of this institution in the wake of the black freedom movement, and remnants of Jim Crow juvenile justice in the post-Civil Rights Movement period. Finally, Part III considers possible futures of youth justice, and practical strategies for achieving equal protection within and beyond law.

Histories of Racial Violence, Legacies, and Reckonings

This course examines legacies of historical racial violence and contemporary reckoning efforts, with emphasis on the African American experience. The course combines seminar readings, discussion and academic writing on legacies of racial violence with a practicum component, where individual students and groups of students and faculty conceptualize and develop projects intended to clarify and disrupt legacies of racial violence, facilitating contemporary reckoning. The seminar and practicum explores and encourages a broad range of remedial efforts, including public policy measures, original research, archival development, commemorative efforts, and a related array of mediums, including visual art, design, film, digital projects, and other creative interventions.

Memory for the Future

Co-taught with Prof. Anika Walke (History), and supported through the RDE initiative in the Center for Humanities, this course leverages the concepts of multidirectional memory and reparative curatorial practice to develop new forms of humanities education and practical public history. This concept emphasizes the productivity of commemorating different, yet related histories of systematic violence such as the Holocaust, slavery, apartheid, genocide, and colonialism if/when they confront each other in the public sphere. The objectives are to conceptualize, design and create spaces and practices of education, commemoration, and collaboration that rest on a dialogue between collectives impacted and implicated by these varied but related histories. Focusing on commemorative efforts through public memorials, monuments and especially museums, M4F blends classroom-based instruction (engaging related scholarship and acquiring practical and curatorial skills) with a practicum where students and faculty work with area institutions and local groups to apply reparative curatorial practices. Partners include the George B. Vashon and Griot Museums, the Reparative Justice Coalition of St. Louis, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, and others.

Geoff K. Ward

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recent courses

Monumental Antiracism

Juvenile Justice in the Black Experience

Histories of Racial Violence, Legacies, and Reckonings

Memory for the Future

in the news:

Public humanities lab takes on reparative memory to uncover the legacy of slavery in Missouri

Can St. Louis Become the Beloved Heart of America?

Washington University joins Universities Studying Slavery consortium