RWU Public Humanities and Arts Collaborative
The Co-Lab at RWU reimagines public stories, histories, and storytelling by changing the dynamics of whose stories get told, how, and by whom. The work of The Co-Lab at RWU centers historically marginalized or erased populations and invites them to work with us to investigate and tell a set of new defining narratives and representations for the New England region.
The interdisciplinary Co-Lab at RWU is dedicated to sharing and fostering inclusive narratives, representations, and histories that make historically marginalized or erased populations audible and visible. The Co-Lab at RWU cultivates knowledge rooted in authentic, reciprocal, and ethical collaboration between scholars, communities, and practitioners in the arts and humanities. We collaborate with communities to transform our disciplines through scholarship, programs, and methods that center community perspectives, needs, and knowledge.
On Friday, June 7, 2024, the Roger Williams University Public Humanities and Arts Collaborative (The Co-Lab) will host (Re)Telling: Crafting New Stories of Race and Place in Southern New England at the Providence Public Library in Providence, R.I. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, this regional public humanities gathering will bring together organizations, groups, and institutions engaged in the public humanities work of researching, crafting, and sharing stories about race and place in our region.
(Re)Telling Conference Details
The Community-Engaged Public Humanities Training series supports faculty in exploring public humanities pedagogy and project development methods and ethical and reciprocal community engagement practices.
The Co-Lab at RWU is pleased to present the third annual Hidden Truths: Stories of Race and Place lecture series. This series features the research and policy work of RWU faculty and staff that resurfaces untold histories and complicates received knowledge and understandings of our collective pasts. The series engages the campus community and the public in deeper understandings and informed dialogues around how past inequities continue to impact societal and cultural realities and disparities today.
The RWU Public Humanities and Arts Collaborative (The Co-Lab) is sponsoring a four-part series on anti-racist community engagement in Spring 2024 featuring four of the editors for the recently released book Anti-Racist Community Engagement.
The Co-Lab at RWU focuses on engaging the public in the areas of history, the visual and performing arts, heritage and heritage conservation, space and place, material and visual culture, historical narrative, and public education and intellectualism. Our investigation of topics related to inclusive narratives includes the spoken, the written, the visual, the theatrical, and the embodied, as we imagine the ways that people are both the producers and the products of their geographical and cultural landscapes.
Faculty, students, and staff across disciplines at Roger Williams are engaged in public humanities and arts projects that make underrepresented stories and groups in our region, our country, and around the globe more audible and visible. Working closely with communities near and far, these projects call attention to past and ongoing injustices, as well as the resiliency and creative survival of these groups.
A prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities grant assists with creation of new Public Humanities and Arts (PHA) minor, supports faculty fellows and community partners to develop courses centered on community projects.
A prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities grant assists with creation of new Public Humanities and Arts minor, supports faculty fellows and community partners to develop courses centered on community projects
RWU research team of faculty and students and the Providence Cultural Equity Initiative partner on reparative justice project for Providence Truth-Telling, Reconciliation and Reparations initiative.
Interdisciplinary series examines racial justice issues in Indigenous, Black and communities of color locally and globally, stemming from colonization, civil rights struggles, war, the slave trade, immigration and environmental politics.
