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Reckoning: Race, Memory and Reimagining the Public University was a shared learning initiative in the College of Arts & Sciences that took place in fall 2019. It was designed to support student learning and discussions about heritage, race, post-conflict legacies, politics of remembrance and contemporary projects of reconciliation. The classes allowed students to understand what comparative cases reveal about Carolina’s own experiences and provided opportunities for faculty to discuss how to realize the promise of what it means to be a public university in 21st-century America. UNC’s research centers and institutes augmented course-based learning with events and allied research opportunities.
Courses, Topics, Readings, Projects
- The initiative incorporated two types of courses:
- Foundational courses included those with a focus on race, U.S. racial politics, the history of truth and reconciliation processes, the South and civil rights and similar issues.
- New Directions courses engaged the same topics from diverse perspectives across multiple fields, sharing relevant lessons from comparative cases.
- Shared readings: Each course allocated three class sessions to common reading assignments so that all students participating in the initiative had meaningful intersections amid diverse academic terrain.
- Gathering: Faculty and students participated in a Student Reckoning Forum in November that featured a speaker discussing one of the readings. The gathering provided an opportunity for students to connect with the wider learning community and to propose ways to extend the effort.
Outcomes
The initiative had three stated outcomes:
- Practice difficult conversations: an ability to enter discussions about contentious topics in ways that lead to mutual understanding.
- Gain a vocabulary for engaging this moment: a chance to study terms such as heritage, reparations, memory, story, racial justice, reckoning, truth and reconciliation, inclusion and other words that let us grapple with what this moment raises for us.
- Connect diverse fields to current issues, learning how to provide new frames of understanding for contemporary concerns.
Fall 2019 Courses
For more information about each course, visit the Course Descriptions page.
Foundational Courses
Course Number | Course Title | Instructor |
---|---|---|
AAAD 491 | Class, Race, and Inequality in America | Kenneth R. Janken |
AMST 210 | Introduction to the American South: A Cultural Journey | Seth Kotch |
ANTH 370 | Southern Legacies: The Descendants Project | Glenn Hinson |
ANTH 448 | Health & Medicine in the American South | Martha King |
GEOG 225 | Space, Place, and Difference | Altha Cravey |
HIST/AMST 110 | Introduction to the Cultures and Histories of Native North America | Malinda Maynor Lowery |
HIST 395 | Race & Memory at UNC | William Sturkey |
HNRS 353 | Slavery and the University | Jim Leloudis |
SOCI 122 | Race and Ethnic Relations | Kathleen J. Fitzgerald |
New Directions
Course Number | Course Title | Instructor |
---|---|---|
AMST 201 | Literary Approaches to American Studies | Annette M. Rodriguez |
CLAS 051 | Greek Drama from Page to Stage (FYS) | Al Duncan |
CMPL 460 | Transnational Romanticism | Janice Koelb |
FOLK/ENGL 487 | Everyday Stories: Personal Narrative and Legend | Patricia E. Sawin |
FREN 150 | Globalization and the French-Speaking World | Dorothea Heitsch |
GLBL 383 | Global Whiteness | Mark Driscoll |
HIST 279 | Modern South Africa | Lauren Jarvis |
RELI/ASIA/ARAB 681 | Arabic Sources on American Slavery | Carl Ernst |
SPAN 344 | Latin@ American Cultural Topics | Emil Keme |