#JustAndEquitableNow: Reimagining Arts and Humanities in Our Universities

The #JustAndEquitableNow team reflects on what it means to make, teach, and research the arts when communities are protesting against longstanding injustices and demanding better futures. The project team considers materials by thinkers in a variety of disciplines and subject positions to inform our research-based action. Our aims are to put the theorising we read and write into action through our work together and with community partners. We attend with care to the joys and difficulties that come with attempts to forge new structures for learning, teaching, and creating.
Each member of the project team has already engaged in solo research that attempts to assess and dislodge disciplinary and institutional assumptions. Members of the project team have already worked together as part of a summer seminar funded by Emory’s Mellon Humanities PhD Interventions Project, and we have received an Emory-Wits Collaborative Research Grant to support five-day team meetings in Johannesburg and Atlanta plus our ten-day research stay in Ghana. A Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Study team fellowship will allow us to develop a robust foundation for future activities in Ghana, engage with worldwide colleagues through a two-day workshop, and start work on a peer-reviewed edited volume.