Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

150 Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
graduate students, was due to the fact that Turner and Sealy worked hard
to ensure that participants shared their research and capitalized on the possibility
for community that ASPIR offers.
University of Michigan
A significant portion of the Ford grant at Michigan was earmarked to support
undergraduate and graduate research, although the proposal primarily
centered on research that “defines and advances the field.” Michigan has a
long-standing tradition of recruiting clusters of African American Studies
faculty in traditional departments. However, during the mid- to late 1980s,
several members of the Center for Afro-American Studies (CAAS) faculty
were recruited by other institutions. The University successfully recruited
new faculty, but these personnel changes created some feeling of discontinuity.
The Ford initiative provided an important means for CAAS to reconstitute
itself as a cohesive intellectual center.
Ford funds were used to provide release time for faculty to develop
CAAS curriculum and research resources, including a study abroad program
in Barbados. Individual awards went to faculty and students for travel
and research. In addition, the Ford grant underwrote “Reflections and Revisions:
Twenty Years of Afro-American and African Studies” (1991), a
major conference; a series of graduate student conferences; and “Race, Culture,
and the Politics of Intellectual Inquiry,” a colloquium series.
We were impressed by the fact that although Michigan is a large campus,
CAAS programming succeeded in maintaining a sizeable audience
from diverse campus constituencies. By all accounts, the conferences and
colloquia contributed to the establishment of ongoing debates and discussions
that still enliven CAAS intellectual activity. Moreover, the graduate
students with whom we met were an exceptionally gifted group. All felt that
CAAS faculty, plus the programs and opportunities offered, enabled them
to explore the interdisciplinary implications of their work in ways that their
home departments would not have allowed.
One of the major strengths of the Afro-American Studies faculty at
Michigan is its interest in diasporic studies. As a result, the graduate student