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Neighborhood Narratives 
Project Lead: Dr. Charles McKinney, Associate Professor of History
Faculty Collaborators: Dr. Charity Clay, Visiting Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies; Dr. Rober Saxe, Professor of History

Faculty and students are conducting oral interviews with members of selected neighborhoods and communities from across Memphis to gather, preserve and promote living histories of individuals from diverse backgrounds. These oral narratives will play a crucial role in gaining an understanding about the lived experience of community members, while providing new insights into how personal, community-level, and city-level decisions collectively shape and structure neighborhoods and communities. The project has begun in the south Memphis neighborhood of Whitehaven. The work will culminate in an exhibit about South Memphis at the Museum of Science and History (formerly known as the Pink Palace).  

Understandings Raleigh's Literacy Landscape Through Photovoice
Project Lead: Dr. Laura Taylor, Assistant Professor of Educational Studies 

This project supports parent and family empowerment in Raleigh, a majority Black (81.3%) neighborhood in north Memphis with a population of approximately 36,000 residents. Raleigh has been identified by the Memphis Early Literacy Consortium (ELC) and Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) as a “literacy zone,” which is a group of neighborhood schools and systems that provide family supports, wraparound services, and literacy resources. Laura Taylor, Associate Professor of Educational Studies, is leading a project using photovoice to document the Raleigh community’s literacy assets as well as areas of need. Photovoice is a tool that has been used by community groups and researchers to empower members of a particular community to share their experiences and expertise by taking and collaboratively reflecting on photographs around a particular topic. Here, photovoice is being used as a way for Raleigh parents and caregivers to document how literacy exists in their lives, including how they and their families use literacy within their daily activities, the literacy resources they have access to, and their barriers to literacy learning (for themselves or their families). The information generated from this process will then be used to inform the distribution of resources and development of future programs to support literacy learning in Raleigh.

Reimagining Memphis through the Eyes of the Unhoused
Project Lead: Dr. Hadi Khoshneviss, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Sociology
Faculty Collaborator: Dr Evie Perry, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Sociology

This project involves iRaST faculty and student fellows re-imagining Memphis from the perspective of some of our most vulnerable citizens, Memphians who endure housing insecurity. Memphis has a large population of persons who are unhoused, and the limited resources for these citizens are generally not optimally located or easily accessible. Researchers are studying how the unhoused perceive the design, distribution, and location of resources in Memphis using a go-along ethnography that combines informal conversations and formal interviews as researchers accompany unhoused persons as they navigate the city on their daily routes. The interviews will inform a counter map of the city that places resources (e.g., shelter, food, health care, and public transportation) where they would be most beneficial. Our community partner for this work is The Hospitality Hub, an NGO located in downtown Memphis that works to end homelessness in Memphis by connecting individuals with the resources they need to achieve stable housing and better health outcomes. 

Historical Racial Justice Project

Project Leads: Dr. David Maxson, Assistant Professor of Media Studies & Dr. Jasper St. Bernard, Visiting Assistant Professor of History and the American South 
Faculty Collaborators: Dr. Tim Huebner, Provost and Professor of History

The lingering effects of racial injustice are evident in Memphis, and yet there are numerous stories that remain untold. ��������ר�� would like to continue its relationship with two local organizations that are committed to telling these stories, Zion Cemetery and the Lynching Sites Project (LSP) of Memphis. Zion Cemetery is the oldest African American cemetery in Memphis. After the Civil War in 1873, a group of Black Americans formed the Sons of Zion and purchased 16 acres outside Memphis city limits. The cemetery was active from 1876 to 1925, spanning Reconstruction, the yellow fever epidemics, World War I, and the Jim Crow era. It is estimated that 30,000 African Americans are buried there; however, many of the graves today are unmarked due to decades of neglect and natural erosion. Zion was abandoned until 1990 when it was documented by local researchers and placed on the National Register of Historic Places. Thomas Moss, William Stewart, and Calvin McDowell, the 1892 lynching victims who fueled Ida B. Wells’ anti-lynching activism, are buried there, as are other notable Black Memphians. ��������ר�� has a decade-long relationship with Zion, and we would like to enhance this relationship through faculty-led research projects that will amplify the history of Zion and tell the stories of Black Memphians who are buried there. The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis is a local organization that wants “the whole and accurate truth to be told about the history of Shelby County” and believes that “we can heal and grow in understanding when we face openly the history of racial violence in our community.” According to the Equal Justice Initiative, 4,400 lynchings occurred in the American South between 1870 and 1950; 36 of those took place in Shelby County, TN. In 2015, LSP began researching those victims with the goal of erecting historical markers at the lynching sites for all 36. Tim Huebner, Associate Provost and Professor of History, serves on the boards of both of these organizations and will mentor faculty and students who work on historical research projects for both Zion and LSP.

Assistant Professor of English and Communications
LeMoyne-Owen College 

Dr. Davis’ iRaST project, Queering Memphis Spaces and Place, will result in a new LeMoyne-Owen College course grounded in Black feminist teaching practices, where students will engage in intersectional conversations about race, class, gender, sexuality and space. In Queering Memphis, students will explore how Black and queer communities in Memphis and beyond have used storytelling, performance, media, and everyday writing as tools for survival, resistance, and self-definition. 

Bio: Dr. Seth E. Davis is a scholar whose work engages Black queer rhetorics, literacy studies, and cultural production. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor of English and Communications at LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis, ��������ר��. Dr. Davis earned his Ph.D. in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Women and Gender Studies from Syracuse University. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in Speech Communication and Theatre from ��������ר�� State University and a master’s degree in Communication Studies from Ball State University. Dr. Davis’s research theorizes practices such as reading, shade, and pulling trade as “fierce literacies” that enable survival, self-fashioning, and cultural legibility within Black queer communities. His scholarship has been recognized with three National Council of Teachers of English Lavender Rhetorics Excellence in Queer Scholarship Awards. Dr. Davis is also host of the Black College Matters podcast, which is dedicated to celebrating, discussing, and advocating for Historically Black Colleges and the global experiences of Black students.

Assistant Professor of History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 
Southern University and Agricultural & Mechanical College

Dr. Harrison’s iRaST project, Bounce With Me: Black Women’s Oral Histories, Bounce Music, and Southern Culture, is a humanities-based oral history and documentation project that centers southern Black women and femmes as primary cultural producers of bounce music. This project combines the curation of an oral history collection of Black women and femme cultural workers in south Louisiana + Memphis/Mid-South with the respective development of inaugural Black Digital Humanities (BDH) and Black Women’s Studies (BWS) courses that will use this historical archive. One focus of the project is to document the voices of Black women and femmes who promoted racial justice, equity, and social change in their art. A second component includes students engaging with members of the community while gaining hands-on training in public history, qualitative research, and digital humanities. The interviews will serve as the foundation of the BDH courses.

Bio: Dr. Christy Garrison-Harrison’s primary research foci are transdisciplinary explorations of the American South (with a concentration on Black women’s political leadership and influence upon economically developing Black communities within the region); Black Feminist Geographies; and the cultural dynamics of White American matriarchy. Secondary research interests include Black Women in 19th century colonial Europe and America. Dr. Garrison-Harrison is concurrently completing a forthcoming monograph on Black women’s community activism in Georgia during the modern Civil Rights’ Movement era, a manuscript on Louisiana’s Black female Bounce artists, and an essay on antebellum matriarchal culture. Long-term projects include producing a documentary short about three southern Black women activists and launching a production company spotlighting films that center women of color. Recent publications include “Interjecting a Black Feminist Geographies Framework into Social Science Research Paradigms,” “Conjure Women are Alchemists Who Can Transform Bright Green into Blue Gold,” and co-authoring “Remembering Jacqueline Anne Rouse, 1950–2020: Scholarship, Educational Advocacy, and Mentoring as Audacious Leadership.” 

Associate Professor of History
Howard University

Dr. Brown’s iRaST project, Ain’t Nobody’s Business, draws from the classic blues song written by Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins in 1921 and famously popularized by Chattanooga, TN, born and raised blues icon Bessie Smith. The phrase names a core blues philosophy: Black women’s insistence on sexual autonomy, pleasure, and self-definition beyond public judgment or moral surveillance. It captures the blues as both aesthetic practice and ethical stance—freedom claimed in the present tense. Ain’t Nobody’s Business is a community-involved documentary research project centered on living Black women blues artists rooted in Memphis and Nashville. Filmed primarily in Memphis, with selected interviews in Nashville, the project examines how humor and sexuality operate together as intentional practices of liberation—ways of confronting racialized and gendered constraint while asserting dignity, pleasure, and authority. The project aligns directly with the Institute for Race and Social Transformation’s mission to elevate marginalized voices through humanistic, community-engaged scholarship grounded in Memphis and the Mid-South.

Bio: Dr. Brown teaches African diaspora studies and 20th-century American history. She earned her B.A. in international history, magna cum laude, from Harvard University and her Ph.D. in American history and African diaspora studies from Princeton University. Tammy’s teaching, writing, and service to her community are connected through her interest in art, social justice, and biography as a methodological approach. In her first book, (University Press of Mississippi, 2015), Dr. Brown uses the life stories of Caribbean intellectuals as “windows” into the dynamic history of immigration to New York and the long battle for racial equality in modern America. Her current book project is a biography of rock & roll virtuoso Jimi Hendrix centering on the spiritual dimensions of his music. Tammy's research on race, feminism, art, and politics has been featured in various media outlets including TEDx, the American Civil Liberty Union's blog, NPR, and Vox.com. Dr. Brown’s selected awards include the Heanon Wilkins Faculty Fellowship and the Lavatus Powell Outstanding Faculty Diversity Award at Miami University, National Endowment for the Humanities’ Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant, and a research grant from the Gilder Lehrman Institute.

Assistant Professor of Visual and Performing Arts
Grambling State University

Dr. Duren’s iRaST project, Theatre for Justice: Developing Curricular Tools for Creating Plays/One-Person Shows Addressing Racial Justice, Equity, and Social Change, involved the development of a dynamic, community-engaged curriculum for students to create original plays/one-person shows that address racial justice, equity, and social change, with a specific focus on marginalized communities in Memphis and the Mid-South region. Students creates original plays/one-person shows addressing themes of racial justice, equity, and social change. Students researched stories and perspectives of marginalized communities in Memphis and the Mid-South region, while fostering partnerships with local organizations and individuals who are directly affected by systemic inequities. By combining creative expression, rigorous research, and community engagement, this project provided students with the tools to use theatre as a transformative force for social advocacy.

Bio: Dr. Prince Duren is from the city of Itta Bena, MS by way of Muskegon MI. Prince is a graduate of Jackson State University with a degree in Mass Communications and English. After graduating from JSU, Prince pursued his MFA in Play and Screenwriting at the University of Arkansas.  Prince has written several stages plays with many receiving local and national recognition.  Even though he enjoys acting, Prince garnered his most notable success as a playwright. Among his awards are the Lorraine Hansberry award from The Kennedy Center for American College Theatre Festival, Mississippi Theatre Association Award, and Stage Black One Act Festival Award, just to name a few. Among his many published works, he's most proud of his published essay "Identifying the HBCU Graduate and HBCU Experience" which can be found in The HBCU Experience Book. 

Assistant Professor of English
Clark Atlanta University

With iRaST support, Dr. Slavin developed a crime literature course housed in the Department of English & Modern Languages at Clark Atlanta University that was also taught at the  in DeKalb County, Georgia, through , an organization offering higher education to incarcerated individuals. This course provided students on CAU's campus and at Metro the opportunity to converse with each other about course texts, mass incarceration, and the impacts of narratives of crime in the “real world.” At the end of the course, students at CAU and Metro students presented their work and research to each other, as well as other members of the CAU and Metro communities. 

Bio: Dr. Slavin is an Assistant Professor of English at Clark Atlanta University. She received her Ph.D. from Emory University and previously worked as a Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Tech. Her research and teaching interests include contemporary postcolonial, British, and Irish literatures; prison education and mass incarceration; rhetorics and narratives of crime; neoliberalism; urban spaces and studies; mobility and travel; and postcolonial theory. 

Assistant Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies
Xavier University

Dr. Shepard’s iRaST project, Still Troubled Water: Combatting Reindustrialization in the Lower Ninth Ward, 20 Years after Hurricane Katrina, involved community-involved scholarship in the hardest hit community by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, during a critical time: during the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. To this end, she designed a course, Black, Green, and Grassroots, that immersed students in a community that has become tantamount in the fight for racial and environmental justice by combatting the reindustrialization of the Lower Ninth Ward. Students learned the flood history of the Mississippi River, the environmental history of the Lower Ninth Ward, and how to conduct oral history interviews/photovoice. In addition, the class supported to two activist organizations “Stop the Lock” and “Stop the Grain Train.” 

Bio: Dr. Shepard is an Assistant Professor in the African American Diaspora Studies Department at Xavier University in New Orleans. She previously taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Bates College. She holds a B.S. from Xavier, an M.A. in social sciences from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in African American studies from Northwestern University where she wrote her dissertation, “The Colonial Continuum: A Critique of Disaster in Post-Katrina New Orleans.” Through archival and oral history research, Dr. Shepard analyzes and theorizes on the intersecting relationships among race, ethnicity, gender, class, and place as they pertain to the histories, lives, and futures of African-descended people in the U.S. and beyond. In particular, her research examines the impact of colonialism on the rebuilding process of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Her approach is grounded in the Lower Ninth Ward and Isle de Jean Charles, and it is motivated by a desire for social justice and change. Her study has culminated in her recently published book, Settler Colonialism is a Disaster: an Analysis of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and During Covid-19, which has won the Darlene Clark Hine Book Award.

Andrew W. Mellon Visiting Scholar at the Margaret Walker Center
Jackson State University

Dr. Christina J. Thomas is currently a Mellon Visiting Scholar in the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University. Before earning her Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University in 2023, she was a Predoctoral Fellow for Excellence through Diversity at the University of Pennsylvania. iRaST is supporting Dr. Thomas’ work with the Freedom Information Service Library Project to preserve the collection of Civil Rights veteran Jan Hillegas and to provide archival and digitalization training to undergraduate and graduate students at Jackson State University.

Dean, Graduate College and Associate Professor of English
Hampton University 

Dr. Scott Challener is an Assistant Professor and Chair of English and Foreign Language at Hampton University. He serves a managing editor of the Hampton Renaissance, a student-run journal of the arts. Dr. Challener’s research and teaching interests include 20th and 21st Century U.S., Latinx, and Latin American fiction and poetry; modernism in English and Spanish; hemispheric studies; decolonization and decoloniality; literary and social theory. He was a 2023 Virginia Humanities HBCU Scholars Fellow. iRaST is supporting Dr. Challener’s iRaST work on two related projects, an encyclopedia entry for Encyclopedia Virginia on the Black Arts Movement at Hampton University and his research on Black Arts era poets and writers at HBCUs in Virginia and across the South.

Hannah Davis is a rising junior at ��������ר�� College from Fayetteville, AR. She is a double major in Political Science and Educational Studies. Her RIRS project focuses on the correlation between race and poverty and its impact on education and youth violence in Memphis. While doing this research she plans to create a policy recommendation based on evidence and responses of what K12 students of Memphis need to thrive. Faculty Mentors: Dr. Bruce Jackson, Assistant Professor of Spanish; Dr. Laura Taylor, Associate Professor of Educational Studies

Trinity Imani Williams is a Dean’s Scholar and an Honor Roll student at ��������ר�� College; she is also a community organizer in Memphis. As a rising senior, she is double majoring in Health Equity and Africana Studies. As a New Orleans native, Trinity was immersed at a young age in the beauty and essence of music in community. Her RIRS project is focused on the history and significance of community organizing in Memphis and how it serves to produce social change and revolutionary thought through music and policy. Faculty Mentor: Dr. Charles Hughes, Associate Professor of Urban Studies and History.

Veronica Holmes is a native of Memphis, TN and a senior English major and African American Studies minor at the illustrious Fisk University. She is a UNCF/Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a member of the W. E. B. Du Bois Honors Program at Fisk. During the ��������ר�� Institute for Regional Studies (RIRS), Veronica will be conducting research on the historical significance of the Black church in Memphis and how the church can better support Black youth and Black neighborhoods today. Faculty Mentor: Dr. Charles McKinney, Associate Professor and History & Chair of Africana Studies.

Virginia Rostick is from Tryon, North Carolina and a senior at ��������ר�� College majoring in Health Equity and minoring in Africana Studies and Spanish. As part of the ��������ר�� Institute for Regional Studies in summer 2024, she is researching transportation justice and mobility by exploring how social advocates and local organizations are utilizing policy as well as creative solutions to improve transit options for Memphis residents. Faculty Mentor: Dr. Charles McKinney, Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies