Inclusion Faculty Fellowship Advances Oral History Project

Professor Gina Lewis Named a Visiting Faculty Fellow at UMBC

MEDIA CONTACT: Damita Chambers, dchambers@bowiestate.edu, 301-832-2628 mobile

(BOWIE, Md.) – A Bowie State University visual art professor, leading an effort to uncover lost stories of historic African American communities, was named an Inclusion Imperative Visiting Faculty Fellow with University of Maryland Baltimore County’s Dresher Center for the Humanities.

Professor Gina Lewis will spend the fall 2020 semester fellowship working on a Bowie State research project to collect oral histories from descendants of African Americans who lived and worked along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park, including the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC. An interdisciplinary team of student and faculty researchers, led by Lewis and BSU history professor Dr. David Reed, is documenting the history and culture of largely forgotten communities and individuals in photos, videos and other creative expression. The Bowie State research, funded by the National Park Service, is already underway. The Visiting Faculty Fellowship will enable Lewis to compile a comprehensive report of the team’s findings.

Lewis, who is also chairperson of the Department of Fine and Performing Arts, is using the fellowship to explore her interest in social justice art that inspires action.

“My interests lie in the creation of artwork that is grounded in interdisciplinary perspectives of world issues and solutions,” Lewis said. “With this project, I am particularly interested in the power of communicating the experiences of people by giving them agency in telling their own story and how that could be influential in how others perceive the story being told. The arts and humanities provide the means for confronting, contemplating and communicating the nature of our similarities and the beauty of our differences.”

Each Inclusion Imperative Visiting Faculty Fellow will advance their research in residence at the Dresher Center for either one semester or a full academic year and receive research support in a robust humanities environment, as well as access to an office and to administrative and research development services and other UMBC facilities. In addition to a stipend, fellows receive funding support of up to $2,500 for research and travel-related expenses. Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Inclusion Imperative is a five-year initiative to support diversity and inclusion in humanities scholarship and curriculum.

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