Libraries Announce 2020 Faculty Fellows
Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) announces two 2020 Faculty Fellows grant recipients: Joan Bryant, associate professor in African American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Kathryn Everly, professor of Language, Literature and Linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences. Each recipient has committed to a four-week summer residency in 2021 at SCRC that includes a number of workshops and training sessions on handling special collections materials, teaching students how to search for materials, and the logistics of designing successful assignments with rare and fragile materials. The fellows, who applied and were selected by a committee, will teach their new courses the following year and will each receive a $5,000 stipend.
Joan Bryant will focus on developing an upper level course on American freedom that fully integrates archival research with student analysis of sources about the experiences of antebellum free people of color, freed people contending with emancipation, and reformers navigating Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow. Kathryn Everly will develop a course that analyzes the Spanish Civil War and its impact on literary, cinematic, political, and artistic works through investigating political and personal papers, as well as the Harold Jones’ collection of works from Salvador Dali.
Kathryn Everly, professor of Language, Literature and Linguistics in the College of Arts and Sciences
Joan Bryant, associate professor in African American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences
Syracuse University Libraries’ SCRC Faculty Fellows program aims to support innovative curriculum development and foster new ideas about how to transform the role of special collections in University instruction. Each fellow receives instruction on how to provide students with a unique opportunity to handle, analyze and interpret SCRC’s primary source materials in their class, as well as ongoing course support. The original funding for the SCRC Faculty Fellows Program was made possible through the generosity of the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, which promotes the advancement and perpetuation of humanistic inquiry and artistic creativity by encouraging excellence in scholarship and in the performing arts, and by supporting research libraries and other institutions that transmit cultural heritage.
“The Special Collections Research Center Faculty Fellowship creates an ideal situation for faculty to partner with special collections librarians and archivists for an invaluable undergraduate learning experience. Due to on-campus circumstances this year around the Covid-19 pandemic, the work of our two selected fellows will be postponed until next summer. We appreciate Joan’s and Kathryn’s flexibility with their plans,” said Petrina D. Jackson, director of SCRC. “We’ve witnessed with previous faculty fellows the value for undergraduate students to deeply explore primary source research, learn how to critically analyze a document or artifact, and be exposed to spectacular rare and unique materials. Student participation in these courses elevates their work and engages them in impactful ways.”