Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

216 Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
tion for which the Historical Library has also received Ford funding). Having
such a remarkable repository of archival materials within easy reach
constitutes a real benefit to faculty members and students in African American
Studies at Wisconsin.
The University of Michigan Conference
In March of 1999, the third and final major component of the Midwest Consortium’s
Ford initiative—an interdisciplinary conference—was convened at
the University of Michigan. Although a formal site visit to Michigan was not
conducted, both reviewers attended this meeting and later met with key figures
involved in the institutionalization of African American Studies at the
university. Entitled “Black Agenda for the 21 st Century: Toward a Synthesis
of Culture, History, and Social Policy,”this conference constituted an apt and
well-planned capstone to the three-year series of projects funded by the Ford
Foundation at the four Midwest Consortium schools. Perhaps the most notable
strength of the meeting was the diversity of scholars in attendance. The
speakers and invited participants were not restricted to Consortium institutions
and the presence of faculty members from non-elite schools was especially
gratifying. The format was also conducive to thorough engagement
with an issue and to open exchange of opinions. Each session was built
around a paper submitted by a single scholar and involved formal responses
to that scholar’s presentation. Particularly timely was a session dedicated to
technology that leads one to recommend an entire conference on the topic.
The overview of the three-year Midwest Consortium initiative presented
as part of the conference at the University of Michigan filled in many
of the gaps in our review of this multi-institutional Ford project. For instance,
although the format of the seminar at Carnegie Mellon University
(CMU) was similar to that at Wisconsin, the graduate student participants
were not limited to those from Consortium schools. Specifically, the CMU
seminar included students from the University of Pittsburgh. Professor
Trotter, the director of the CMU seminar, also noted plans to add a comparative
ethnicity component to such courses in the future.