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Inclusive Excellence Award
The Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies (AAHVS) at Duke established the Anti-Racism and Social Justice Initiative in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, amidst the recognition on a national scale that institutions were called upon to respond to increasing social and cultural tensions. The initial goal of the initiative was to confront and dismantle systemic racism within academia and the arts at Duke, reflecting the department’s commitment to fostering inclusivity and justice through concrete actions and sustained conversation.
In response to the pervasive issues of anti-Black racism and violence, AAHVS released a Statement in Support of Black Lives in August 2020. The statement was a collaboration between students and faculty from AAHVS and the Computational Media Arts & Culture (CMAC) department. This declaration affirmed the department’s solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and outlined a series of actionable steps for the department.
AAHVS Ph.D. candidate Elizabeth Brown and CMAC student Kate Guillen, among other graduate students, served as liaisons between students and faculty to identify initiatives that might be carried forward.
“The statement, I think, is the epicenter around which everything else circles. Conceiving it, writing it, and publishing it was a very collaborative effort among the students, faculty and staff,” Brown said.
Brown and Guillen contributed to the successful application for a Faculty Advancement Seed Grant to fund a central part of the initiative, the creation of the monthly Anti-Racism Pedagogy Forums, launched during the 2020-2021 academic year. Brown, Guillen, and AAHVS Ph.D. candidate Bryan Rusch, along with other AAHVS/CMAC graduate students, faculty, and staff, co-organized and hosted the first forum.
Subsequent forums in the 2021-2022 academic year were co-organized by then-AAHVS Ph.D. candidate and graduate assistant SaeHim Park, along with professors Hannah Jacobs, Pedro Lasch, and Beverly McIver. The forums served as platforms for in-depth discussions on topics such as critical archival studies, interrogating whiteness in provenance research, and anti-racist art-marking and teaching practices. On this effort, Park received the MicroAward for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion by the Graduate and Professional Student Government.
“Sustainability is crucial for keeping the platform active and continuing conversation. We sought to identify and share existing anti-racist practices in research, teaching, and service,” Park said.
As part of a broader commitment to addressing systemic racism, Park delivered an invited talk in The Graduate School’s Race and Bias Conversations series, initiated in fall 2020. This series aimed to deepen the understanding of systemic racism and bias within the graduate school community. As one of the sessions, Park shared insights from organizing the Anti-Racism Pedagogy Forums, highlighting how these discussions shaped her research and writing. Park also wrote an article about her experience, discussing key takeaways such as integrating administrative tasks with academic research, the value of personalized engagement in building mentorship relationships, and the significance of understanding participants’ unique experiences to foster inclusive discussions.
From the 2022 to 2024 academic years, Park, in collaboration with Jaskot, continued the Professional Development Workshop Series for graduate students in the AAHVS Department. They invited faculty members and alumni to participate. The workshops covered topics such as navigating publications, conferences, and service; designing syllabi; and sharing job search strategies for All-But-Dissertation (ABD) students.
Rusch was the first student representative for the Anti-Racism Taskforce for the department, helping solidify continuing practices for the department, such as monthly meetings between AAHVS department chair Paul Jaskot (who nominated Brown, Guillen, Park, and Rusch for the award) and graduate students to discuss inclusivity efforts.
“It was a sort of stop gap: we've got faculty having conversations. We've got students having conversations. We've got conversations that are happening at faculty meetings and executive meetings, but how are we making this consistent?’” Rusch said.
Now, Jaskot continues to convene and coordinate graduate students for feedback, with a special focus on extending the initiative’s impact to the CMAC department, which is shared between AAHVS and other departments.
While the day-to-day practices of the initiative have shifted over time, its work continues through the monthly meetings, during which discussions of the department’s practice of anti-racism is a standing item.
“It’s not, ‘We meet these guidelines, and we’re done,’ but rather a constant reflective process,” Rusch said.
Brown, Guillen, Jaskot, Park, and Rusch made clear in their statements that their contributions to the initiative are only part of the work.
“It’s so much larger than my involvement on the list,” Brown said. “It’s much larger than the named group on the award.”
Through the Anti-Racism and Social Justice Initiative, AAHVS demonstrates a steadfast dedication to creating an academic environment rooted in equity and social justice.
AAHVS Statement in Support of Black Lives
The AAHVS Statement in Support of Black Lives was published in August 2020 in response to the pervasive issues of anti-Black racism and violence. The statement was put together by a number of students and faculty from within the AAHVS and CMAC departments. This declaration affirmed the departments' solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and outlined a series of actionable steps for the department, including but not limited to: curriculum transformation, augmented mentoring for students and faculty of color, and developing a departmental task force to combat racism through clearly defined action items.