Kim Gallon and Cornelius Bynum
Please join me in congratulating Kim Gallon, assistant professor of history, and Cornelius “Neil” Bynum, associate professor of history, who have each won significant awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Both are affiliates of Purdue’s African American Studies & Research Center.
Kim received $245,299 for her project “Space and Place in Africana/Black Studies: An Institute on Spatial Humanities Theories, Methods and Practice for Africana/Black Studies Scholars,” which will be hosted by the African American Studies & Research Center and GIS Services at Purdue Libraries. In the summer of 2016, the Institute will invite 20 early and mid-career Africana or black studies scholars, graduate students, and librarians to explore key topics in spatial humanities. And in 2017, a follow-up symposium will take place at Hamilton College, home of the co-principal investigator Angel David Nieves, associate professor of Africana Studies and co-director of the Digital Humanities Initiative.
Kim is the founder and director of the Black Press Research Collective and an ongoing visiting scholar at the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Cornelius received an award of $200,000 for “From Plessy to Brown: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Twentieth Century.” This four-week program, hosted by the African American Studies & Research Center, is designed to help high school teachers incorporate African American history and culture into their classrooms by blending African American history and literature, geospatial information systems, and digital humanities. His collaborator is Chrystal Johnson, associate professor of social studies education in Purdue’s College of Education.
Cornelius specializes in twentieth-century African American history and is the author of A. Philip Randolph and the Struggle for Civil Rights.
These awards advance opportunities for both higher education scholars and high school educators to focus on black studies while incorporating digital technology, and both projects reach across disciplines to create a greater appreciation for contemporary scholarship in the humanities that has real world application.
Congratulations, Dr. Gallon and Dr. Bynum!
David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean
College of Liberal Arts