Associate Professor Mirelsie Velázquez was awarded a 2020-21 research grant by the OU Arts and Humanities Forum. Her project is titled “Space, Place, and Schooling: African American and Indigenous Oklahoma, 1865-1925."
The Arts and Humanities Forum at the University of Oklahoma awards up to five faculty grants of up to $5,000 each per year in support of research and other creative activities corresponding to the Forum’s interdisciplinary annual theme. The 2020-2021 Forum theme focuses on “Ruptures and Reconciliations.”
Fitting with this year’s theme, “Space, Place, and Schooling: African American and Indigenous Oklahoma, 1865-1925” speaks to the need to place both Oklahoma and communities of color (African American and American Indian), into a larger conversation within the history of American education and the U.S. more broadly. By centering and documenting schools and schooling, Velazquez hopes to challenge monolithic readings of schools as not only sites of oppression within Oklahoma and Indian Territories, but similarly speak to how both groups enacted agency to situate these spaces as sites of liberation prior to statehood.
The Arts & Humanities Forum encourages faculty projects that are individual or collaborative, that create substantive intellectual exchange among a diverse group of scholars on multiple levels (locally, nationally, and globally), and that engage the “public square.” There are no discipline restrictions so long as the work fits solidly within an artistic/humanistic framework. The grants support creative programs, projects, and events that contribute to a vibrant culture of arts and humanities at the University of Oklahoma.
Forum Grants function as seed money for projects that can lead to external funding proposals (both individual and institutional), and thus help advance the broader strategic trajectory of the humanities and arts at OU.
Forum Grant recipients will be expected to participate actively in Arts & Humanities Forum events that focus on the Forum’s selected annual theme and to help build intellectual community for the arts and humanities at OU. Note that due to the Covid-19 pandemic, all events related to Forum Grants may be online.
