Elevating African American studies
Four colleges create partnership to help amplify the programs
Amid a slow build of reckoning on race and racism within the past decade, Houston area colleges have emphasized the need for African and African American Studies programs. Universities such as Rice and Prairie View A&M have made strides to establish a program like the one at the University of Houston, which hosts the state’s oldest Black Studies program — and one of only two in the state.
Now, academics across Houston are looking to pool their resources and talent, creating an academic organization committed to elevating and expanding African and African American Studies scholarship across their campuses.
Just ahead of Black History Month, Prairie View A&M, Rice, Texas Southern University and UH announced the creation of the Southeastern Texas African and African American Studies Consortium — a partnership that will aim to expand such studies during a time of growing interest in the field.
“It allows us to come together and amplify the work we’re all doing so we’re not working in silos anymore,” said Melanye Price, endowed professor of political science at Prairie View A&M, in a written statement. “And I think what that will allow us to do is to bring really interesting programs, conferences, lectures and all of those things to
“People are realizing the need to address issues of race in ways that are creative and productive.”
Anthony Pinn, founding director of Rice’s
Center for African and African American Studies
our community — both our campus communities and the Greater Houston community.”
Anthony Pinn, founding director of Rice’s recently established Center for African and African American Studies, said the consortium will capitalize on the untapped potential of the four colleges and allow for more dialogue across the campuses.
“It seemed to be things that we could do together for African American Studies that we could not do isolated at our individual campuses,” said Pinn, who also serves as Rice’s Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities.
The group has already discussed creating a curriculum that cuts across campuses, teaching students what is happening at other institutions and giving additional perspectives on program material, Pinn said.
Shared benefits
Price, who is also director of Prairie View A&M’s planned Ruth J. Simmons Center for Race and Justice, said the pairing of predominantly white institutions such as UH and Rice with historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) such as Prairie View A&M and Texas Southern can be beneficial all around. Students at mostly white colleges can increase their experience or knowledge on multicultural and racial issues, and students at HBCUs, which have been historically active in fights against inequality, can have more exposure to other campuses, Price said.
Securing grants that will enable the universities to “generate research projects bigger than any one institution” is also a major priority, Pinn said.
The timing is also crucial, Pinn notes. With social justice and race issues at the forefront of a national policy debate following events such as the police killing of George Floyd last year, it’s a unique historical moment, he says.
“People are realizing the need to address issues of race in ways that are creative and productive,” Pinn said. “For us at Rice, it’s only now that we have an institutional development that really allows us to participate in this conversation.”
Rice two years ago launched its Center for African and African American Studies, which has since expanded its African Studies minor and developed an introduction course and a new graduate certificate program.
UH recently lost its director James L. Conyers, who died on Jan. 25. Conyers began teaching at UH in 2002, and served as one of the founding members of the consortium, which he described as an exciting opportunity “to share research, pedagogy and institutional developments,” according to a university release.
“Being around smart people who are doing good work … that’s always a perk,” Conyers said.
Virtual talk planned
Prairie View A&M, one of two public historically Black universities in Texas, has taken steps toward establishing its own African American Studies program — first launching its African American Studies Initiatives with a speaker series in 2019. The program, which is backed by $1 million in grants and gifts, will be housed in the future Simmons Center, which has received at least $1 million in personal donations and will launch virtually Feb. 10.
“It will allow us to participate in national and international conversations on the development of African and African American Studies,” Pinn added.
The consortium will hold its first event — a virtual panel discussion on “The History of African and African American Studies in Southeastern Texas” — on Feb. 19 at 6:30 p.m.
Panelists will include Nicole Waligora-Davis, associate professor of English at Rice, UH historian Gerald Horne, and Cary Wintz, a distinguished professor of history at Texas Southern who also directs TSU’s master’s program in history. Wintz recently returned to TSU from a yearlong stint with the Air Force Academy, where he taught the academy’s first African American history class.
Pinn said the consortium will likely convene and host events virtually or remotely for the remainder of the semester and summer, with hopes of offering a blend of in-person and online events in the fall — all of which will depend on the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. But the schools have taken some positives from educating students during the pandemic.
“One thing we learned is that we can harness a much larger audience” with virtual or online services, Pinn said. “Geography is not an issue and we don’t want to lose that, but we also recognize there’s a deep value of allowing people to come together. Our goal is to blend the two.”