2021 TRAC Grant Awardees

GSS DEI TRAC Initiative 1

The Graduate School of Social Service (GSS) proposes to purchase the following book entitled “So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo for all full-time faculty, staff, and administration as the first step to begin the process of becoming an antiracist school. All faculty, staff, and administrators will be asked to read the book over the summer (2021). Upon our return in Fall 2021, a series of small group discussions will be convened throughout the academic year. Each group will meet a total of four times to discuss thoughts and ideas generated from the book. While discussion group topics will initially be guided by the discussion questions posed by Oluo that accompany the book, they will also include questions specific to the GSS organizational context and climate. Ideas generated from these discussions will inform the development of the next TRAC grant proposal.

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A Global Library of Anti-racist History Pedagogy

Beginning in the summer of 2021, the “Anti-racist History Pedagogy” working group of faculty and graduate students will develop a starter library of teaching units (cases, topics) and resources (assignments, sources, in-class exercises, recordings, etc.) that are designed for use in participants’ courses but can be adapted to courses across the undergraduate History curriculum. This process will begin with three meetings to prepare participants for independent work on selected units. Shared readings will be discussed at each meeting, with the goal of building a rudimentary knowledge base of anti-racist pedagogy. These readings will frame the group’s discussion of experiences, goals, and anticipated challenges. The third session will also consider and refine participants’ “pitches” for concrete teaching units/resources that they will develop over the summer. Collaboration and consultation through the development phase will continue digitally and culminate in an end of summer workshop of units/resources. Participants will implement their units/resources and, where possible, experiment with adapting additional material from the library in order to document and assess usability and student response.

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TRAC Getting Started Grants ($500-$2500)

Redesigning Human Variation (ANTH1600) to dispel racial myths

We propose to redesign Introduction to Human Variation (ANTH 1600) to integrate more questions of race into the life science core curriculum. This course focuses on the biological variations of the human species, and it currently contains one lecture on skin pigmentation and one on race. However, these are not enough to explain the social aspects of racism as distinct from biology and therefore instill the importance of anti-racism in the minds of students. Thus, we propose to incorporate lectures that expose various myths about human nature from the evolutionary perspective. This course will dispel such racist myths, looking to broaden the inquiry to other reasons why people are different, biologically and culturally.

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Development of Race-Related Exhibition Series Integrated with VART Art & Engagement Curriculum

This starter grant of $2500 would support the research, development, and coordinated planning of a series of five race-related exhibitions in Fordham’s Ildiko Butler Gallery, each of which would be curated by a BIPOC guest curator/artist/designer and would correspond with one of the five main courses in what will be the Visual Arts Program’s Art & Engagement (A&E) area of study through curricular tie-ins. The award would be divided equally among the five faculty members teaching these courses. Each faculty member would receive $500 to (1) research possible BIPOC guest curators; (2) secure a commitment from them to curate a show at Fordham; (3) discuss with that curator the expected content of their show and how it could be incorporated into the syllabus of the course with which it corresponds; and (4) attend at least three A&E meetings, at various stages of that process, to discuss ideas, progress, and challenges. If awarded this starter grant, we would apply for the TRAC Institutional Change grant in 2022 in order to help realize the first of this series of exhibitions.

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Theology Equity Workshop

We request $2150 to support our annual two-hour pedagogy workshop, which will take place in January, 2022. This workshop provides a context for faculty and graduate students to explore ways in which racialized, class, and sexual/gendered socialization, as well as religious commitments and identities (declared or perceived), inform and shape our research interests, pedagogies, syllabi, and classroom environments.

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Covering Race: Strengthen the Role of Journalism and Journalism Education in Anti-Racism

In 2020-2021, from the Black Lives Matter movement to the Stop Asian Hate campaign, news has been a major channel through which people can witness and interpret the racial struggles in the 21st century. Meanwhile, existing studies found low diversity in newsrooms, which contributes to the underrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities in news. Journalism has a crucial role to play in the anti-racism commitment; and so does journalism education. In CMS’ Journalism program, we aim to launch a two-phase anti-racism initiative to promote an anti-racism agenda in and beyond Fordham’s journalism classrooms. For phase one, we apply for the TRAC “Getting Started” Grant to create an applied resource archive organized around key race-related issues in journalism and newsroom practice. These issue units will be integrated in our introductory courses as well as many of our applied survey courses across Journalism major and minors. Based on the outcome of phase one, our goal for phase two is to organize at least two categories of workshops utilizing these newly-created resources to involve more Journalism instructors, students, and student journalists across campus media into our anti-racism journalism commitment.

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Antiracist Work in Disability Studies

The Disability Studies Program is requesting a $2,500 2021-2022 TRAC Getting Started Grant to facilitate our engagement in antiracist education. We plan to host a discussion / reading group, a roundtable, and a lecture (described in more detail in the proposal), all of which will facilitate conversations about antiracist work in disability studies; the relationships between race, racism, disability, and ableism; and the ways we can continue working to ensure that antiracist and antiableist work is central to how and what we teach across our curriculum. It is our intention that these activities are part of ongoing education and efforts and that they provide part of the basis for syllabus and curricular revision we can engage in the following year.

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Reexamining Philosophical Canons

We propose to form a study group to discuss and learn about the ways canons have changed at different moments in the history of philosophy, and across different traditions of philosophy, with an eye on how these changes can inform current efforts to reform our curriculum and diversify our Department. The group will consist of interested faculty and graduate students, and meet 4 times each semester during AY 2021-22. We will pursue a variety of different activities, including reading texts together that engage these questions, inviting colleagues from our Department to give informal presentations in their areas of expertise, and inviting speakers from the NYC area or on Zoom working explicitly on research on this topic. Our goal is to provide the space and time for extended reflection on and deep engagement with these issues, in order to enhance the Department’s continued efforts both to diversify its curriculum at all levels (core, undergraduate electives, and graduate), and to further the University’s goals of addressing racism and educating for justice. We also believe that 2021-22 is a particularly opportune time to convene this study group, given the upcoming core revision process being undertaken in Arts and Sciences.

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TRAC Institutional Change Grant ($5,000-10,000)

MLL Vocab Diversity Initiative Version 2.0

The second version of the successful MLL Vocab Diversity initiative continues and expands upon the curriculum reform and work started in AY20 with two principal components: 1) a summer and semester-long multilingual anti-racism language pedagogy tutorial/internship that will have students and faculty collaboratively work together to prepare recommendations for an anti-racist revision of the MLL language curriculum while they also archive, classify, and resource the contributions and content from the initiative this past year so that they can be used actively in our anti-racist language curriculum moving forward. Students and faculty would read foundational texts on anti-racist pedagogy and workshop these concepts with the invited speakers/experts who would also be presenting at the roundtables/workshops 2) a series of anti-racist roundtables/workshops (6 total) that intersect with the AY22 curriculum in ALL the foreign language classes 1001-1502 that we teach and that bring together students and faculty in a horizontal space to discuss anti-racism across different languages/cultures. Beginning with a mandatory anti-racism training for all involved, the objective is to reimagine MLL curriculum from a student-centered approach to anti-racism.

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Reorienting the Political Science Curriculum: Turning Introduction to Politics into A Core Anti-Racism Course in at Fordham

If awarded, the Department of Political Science will use a Teaching Racism Across the Curriculum (TRAC) Grant to re-evaluate, standardize, and transform its core introductory course, POSC 1100 Introduction to Politics. In line with the University’s goal to cultivate a diverse, equitable, inclusive, caring, and connected community, the department is committed to educating political science majors and undergraduate students across the University about historically institutionalized racial, ethnic, religious, and gender-based inequities. This proposed change in the curriculum will signify a fundamental reorientation of the introductory course to focus on the political history of racial, ethnic, religious, and gender-based injustices, as well as a curricular standardization of the course in terms of its learning objectives. Political Science is currently a top major at Fordham University, with 280 majors at FCRH and 115 majors at FCLC in March 2021. Since POSC 1100 is a multi-section course that all political science majors and minors are required to take, it reaches a sizable share of the student population.

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From Margin to Center: Archiving, Teaching, and Celebrating Race in Film and TV

“Media with a Mission: Curating Anti-Racist Film and TV Teaching Materials” is an initiative that seeks to create a collection of resources to assist the Film and TV (FITV) major of the Department of Communication and Media Studies (CMS) in teaching required courses in the theory and history of film and television. The collection will consist of media that engage questions of race and/or has been used by advertisers, film and television programmers, network executives, and/or educators for that purpose. We aim to involve students in the building of this collection, which will additionally be enhanced by the development of a new FITV course that speaks to issues of anti-racism in alternative media production.

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Collaborative Pedagogies and Inclusive Art Histories

The Art History program seeks funding to launch the yearlong program “Collaborative Pedagogies and Inclusive Art Histories,” a series of interdisciplinary workshops on strategies for centering anti-racist and anti-colonial teaching and learning. Each workshop will feature art history faculty in paired conversation with a collaborator from within or from outside Fordham (e.g. faculty, staff, or student) on a specific focus topic, with the goal of laying foundations for the transformation of existing introductory and upper-level courses. Through each workshop, we hope to support our faculty to develop the tools and resources to develop 2-3 days of new content for their courses and empower one another to grapple with new ways of approaching our respective areas of specialization as informed by anti-racist principles. Our approach is collaborative in scope, pushing up against Western colonial notions that knowledge can be “acquired” or “mastered” by a single “expert” to instead center multiple perspectives and voices. The paired conversations thus will not be closed meetings but are open to all at Fordham who wish to attend, listen, and participate in broader discussion. The total budget for the program is $5850.

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Race and Teaching the History of the United States

During the 2021-2022 academic year, the “Race and U.S. History” reading group will identify and read undergraduate-accessible books selected by our historians of colonial, nineteenth-century, and twentieth-century U.S. history. The reading group will create teaching modules that reading-group members and other instructors can use to integrate issues of race, racism, and anti-racism substantively into the Understanding Historical Change courses (UHCs) that focus on the United States. The reading group will culminate in Spring 2022 with a pedagogy workshop and in Fall 2022, when our UHC courses will read and attend a lecture by an author we all teach. The group also proposes contracting a subject-area librarian to compile an on-line annotated bibliography of primary source material for teaching the history of race that can be found in the University library and databases, as well as in New York City institutions. These actions will constitute an impactful step toward transforming both the Core and Department curricula toward an anti-racist pedagogy, particularly since UHCs regularly account for approximately 60% of our course offerings and attract over 1000 students each semester at Rose Hill and Lincoln Center combined.

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Preparing Anti-Racist School and District Leaders

This project aims to support institutional change in the Graduate School of Education by redesigning core assignments and assessments in our master’s and Ed.D. programs in the Division of Educational Leadership, Administration and Policy. Two core assignments and four performance assessments will be designed to support and assess school and district leaders’ anti-racist leadership practice. Anti-racist educational leaders must be prepared to confront racism by critically examining and acting on practices and policies that perpetuate educational inequality. The assignments and assessments will address critical areas of anti-racist leadership, including developing: 1) racial awareness, 2) culturally responsive leadership with families and communities, and 3) leadership for equity-focused improvement. The grant will be used to both support the development of core curriculum and assessments as well as to foster collective learning among faculty in the division. In this way, this project aims to strengthen the curriculum and faculty pedagogy and increase our institutional capacity to support the development of anti-racist educational leaders.

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Spanish syllabi recreation and inclusion. SPAN 1001-1502

Our objective is to set a high priority on teaching Spanish reflectively with a clear understanding of social injustice. By joining forces, we intend to create a cogent and well thought-out set of materials, as well as to draft syllabi for Introductory and Intermediate level Spanish courses (SPAN 1001, 1002, 1501 and 1502) that will be informed by critical pedagogy in order to help our students of Spanish understand and work to counteract the institutional, systemic nature of white privilege. Additionally, we seek to include the voices of minority groups in American society in order to engage our students in constructive dialogues that will promote social justice.

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A Global Library of Anti-Racist History Pedagogy

During Summer 2021, the “Anti-racist History Pedagogy” working group of faculty and graduate students will develop a starter library of teaching units (cases, topics) and resources (assignments, sources, in-class exercises, recordings, etc.) that are designed for use in participants’ courses but can be adapted to courses across the History curriculum. This process will begin with 3 meetings to prepare participants for independent work on selected units. Shared readings will be discussed at each meeting, with the goal of building a rudimentary knowledge base of anti-racist pedagogy. These readings will frame the group’s discussion of experiences, goals, and potential challenges. The 3rd session will also consider and refine participants’ “pitches” for concrete teaching units/resources they will develop over the summer. Collaboration and consultation through the development phase will continue digitally, culminating in an August workshop of units/resources. Participants will implement their units/resources and experiment with adapting additional material from the library to document and assess usability and student response. Workshops will be held in Dec 2021 and May 2022 to evaluate what we have learned and determine next steps.

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This is My Moment / Este es mi momento: A Bilingual Creative Writing Project

“This is My Moment / Este es mi momento” consists of a series of workshops that address antiracism, first-person experiences with race, and creative writing in Spanish and English. There will be six one-session creative writing workshops for students and one small group workshop for faculty. This project addresses pedagogical needs for MLL, LALSI and the Creative Writing program. Advanced Spanish courses (SPAN 2001, SPAN 2301, SPAN 2655) will require students to participate in two workshops as part of their curriculum. Students will be able to share their writings in an online journal. The Creative Writing Program and LALSI will function as co-sponsors of this project by promoting workshops among their students. An MLL faculty member will convert each workshop into a single-day lesson plan as a document to be archived and shared with other faculty members on a Blackboard page, including the workshops’ recordings. Faculty can later adapt or incorporate this material into their classes. This project will impact students completing their language requirement in Spanish who are majoring in different disciplines across the university and students pursuing a minor/major in Spanish, Latin American and Latino Studies, and Creative Writing.

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Bridge to the Future: Transforming teaching and learning in Economics

We propose a series of workshops to provide anti-racism training and awareness of bias and the use of stereotypes in the teaching of economics and research methodology. We also propose to develop a tutoring plan for our MA students from less advantaged backgrounds. Until the last five to ten years, economics as a discipline has largely ignored the historical origins of widespread poverty and inequality faced by many individuals of colour. Economists often believe them to be something endemic to minorities rather than a byproduct of racist decision making and barriers to education and commerce. The workshops we propose below mix “teaching and doing” by providing seminars that raise awareness and point out different ways to think about issues alongside tangible “take-homes”. Each workshop will result in either a revised syllabus or course module that can be used or further modified in teaching a Fordham course. The workshops also provide a shared space for reflection and discussing our own experiences in addition to awareness raising instruction.

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Revisioning Fordham's Philosophy Curricula

The Philosophy Dept. is committed to creative development of curriculum, pedagogy, and institutional partnerships at all levels and in fulfillment of the central objective of the TRAC Institutional Change Grants. Our internal plan, “Philosophy Addressing Racism, Educating For Justice: A Roadmap For 2026,” was recently produced by the Climate Committee and its major objectives approved by the Department (April 2021). We now need support to undertake the assessment, development, and relationship-building that will help to shape our curriculum. This proposal aims to review and further develop our Core courses, Major and Minor courses, and Graduate programs. These changes, once approved and adopted, have the potential to shape Fordham culture in lasting and concrete ways, producing graduates, trained professionals, and Jesuit Scholastics who are prepared to think deeply and carefully about the values and ideals of the University’s Mission and Strategic Plan, and who are prepared to act effectively on questions of justice. The funding provided by a TRAC grant will allow us to pursue a broad and ambitious set of initiatives that have the potential to change Fordham significantly at curricular, pedagogical, and cultural levels.

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Decolonizing Anthropology Module Program

The main purpose of this grant is to create modules on 'decolonizing anthropology' that can be included in all future Introduction to Cultural Anthropology courses at Fordham. Decolonization and other critical perspectives have long been part of anthropology, particularly amongst feminist anthropologists and anthropologists of color and/or from the Global South. Despite these developments in the field, these critical perspectives are rarely included in our courses, and even less so in the introductory ones. The grant funding will enable a team of four faculty to collaborate and create a series of modules and resources that implement decolonizing anthropology and the politics of knowledge production at Fordham. Additionally, funding will be used to host guest speakers whose work has contributed to decolonizing the field. These guest speaker events will also serve as resources for all Introduction to Cultural Anthropology courses as well. Likewise, the concise modules, accessible on Blackboard to instructors, will allow our students to better assess the discipline’s deep colonial heritage, as well as, its decolonial contributions.

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Asian American Studies Working Group

This grant specifically addresses the need for more Asian American Studies content and curricular innovation at Fordham through the creation of an Asian American Studies working group. The university is embarking on a core curriculum revision with an eye towards "educating for justice,” so our proposal fits squarely with this mission. It would be ideal to include at least 10 Fordham faculty interested in revising and creating new curricular offerings. Our institutional change grant seeks to generate the existing curricular infrastructure that would eventually enable the campus to support a full-fledged Asian American Studies program.

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Teaching Anti-Racism Through a Historical Lens Across the School Psychology Curriculum

The goal of this project is to develop a core curriculum around the historical context of racism in the United States that can be integrated into existing school psychology courses. In order to truly be anti-racist practitioners, it is essential that our students understand that historical events that shaped current systems of racial inequality. Phase 1 work focuses on developing curriculum to integrate teaching and learning contents focusing on the history of race and racism in the United States from a domain general perspective for the courses of EDGE 6101: Race and Multicultural Education and PSGE 6401: Proseminar in Psychology of Bilingual Students. Phase 2 work focuses on developing domain specific knowledge and skills as it related to the historical context of racism in the areas of psychological assessment, consultation, and counseling, reflected through the courses of PSGE 7508: Cognitive Assessment, PSGE 7413: Advanced Assessment Seminar: Preschool Assessment, PSGE 7442: Roles and Functions of School Psychologists, and PSGE 6418: Emotional Disorders. Phase 3 work focuses on dissemination of the project outcomes to program-, school-, and university-level audiences, national conferences, and peer-reviewed journals.

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