Hidden Truths: Stories of Race and Place in New England and Beyond: "Equitable Renewal: Reclamation and Repair"

Join us on Tuesday, February 6 at 7:00 p.m. for "Equitable Renewal: Reclamation and Repair" with Edgar Adams & Brian Hendrickson 

Reparations are a crucial means of acknowledging the irreparable harm done to BIPOC populations since the colonization of what is now the United States, but are they enough? Several US cities as well as the State of California have begun this difficult conversation and are helping to define what a “just” or “antiracist” city or society might look like. By focusing on the urban renewal programs of the 1950s and 1960s, reparations programs offer an opportunity to examine the planning and architecture professions’ role in perpetuating the racist policies and discriminatory real estate and lending practices responsible for our current landscape of inequity. Without a clearer accounting for the lasting impacts of this history, stark disparities in outcomes will only persist. This realization, and the murder of George Floyd, prompted Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza to commit to a comprehensive truth-telling, reconciliation, and reparations process in July 2020 that culminated in August 2022 with a municipal reparations strategy. In order to engage with these pressing issues, a community-engaged studio was proposed in collaboration with the organizers of Providence’s reconciliation framework. Together we examined three sites of past trauma and used design as a tool to both reveal and heal these ingrained physical and social scars. Students were tasked with intervening in the work of an acclaimed architect culpable in the erasure of a socially and economically integrated African Heritage and Indigenous neighborhood and helping to mend the marginalized and embattled community that became home to those who were ultimately displaced. By using design as research, students were also able to document what was lost and explore place-based strategies of repair and community-centered renewal that could inform future reconciliation and reparations efforts in Providence and elsewhere. 

Edgar Adams

Edgar Adams is a Professor of Architecture in the Cummings School of Architecture. Since joining RWU in 1992, he has served as coordinator of the Architecture program and was co-founder and coordinator of the Urban Studies program. Following his graduate studies in Urban Design, he worked on several award-winning academic buildings and urban design projects at Koetter, Kim & Associates in Boston and consulted w/ Michael Dennis Associates on the Carnegie Mellon Student Center. Since joining RWU, he has taught a range of courses while maintaining his focus on Urban Design. In 1994 he initiated the Prague Summer Study Abroad Program with Andrew Cohen and Andrea Homolacova Adams; and in 1999 he helped establish the RWU Rome Program (now located in Florence). His work with the Community Partnership Center is the product of many years of work with local communities through his topical studios in Urban Design. These studios reflect his research interests in equity in housing, resilient waterfront development, adaptive reuse, the impact of technology on urban form, Smart Growth strategies and Transit Oriented Development. 

Brian Hendrickson

Brian Hendrickson’s scholarship and teaching focus on interrogating and transforming racist institutional structures; constructing culturally responsive, student-centered, interdisciplinary writing and learning pathways across and beyond the curriculum; designing innovative, engaging, community-driven digital humanities projects; and better understanding how these various agendas can help students cultivate equity-minded and rhetorically engaged learning dispositions.

In the rhetoric and writing courses Dr. Hendrickson has taught at RWU - including Community-Based Writing in a Digital World, How Writing Works, Rhetoric of Science, Technical Writing, Writing the City, Writing Science, and Writing for Social Change - students frequently undertake digital, collaborative, community engagement projects with a range of partnering organizations, which in the past have included the Audubon Society, HousingWorks, Nature Conservancy, Providence Police Department Community Relations Bureau, Save the Bay, and YouthBuild Preparatory Academy, to name a few. Most recently, Dr. Hendrickson led a grant from the City of Providence’s African American Ambassador Group, through which he and his students collaborated with the Providence Cultural Equity Initiative, Providence Public Library, and a range of community stakeholders to develop a framework for the reconciliation phase of the City’s truth-telling, reconciliation, and reparations process, as well as an interactive, educational, digital presentation of the findings of the truth-telling report (see truth.rwu.me).

Link to view on Zoom: 

 https://rwu.zoom.us/j/98739611940

Save the date for other presentations in the 2023-24 Hidden Truths Series

March 5, 2024: “The Story of a Narragansett Indian Tribal Member,” a presentation by Sonia Thomas, Narragansett Indian Tribal Member, teacher, and Eastern Blanket dancer

April 16, 2024: “Educational Segregation and Inequality in Rhode Island,” a presentation by Nicole Dyszlewski, Taino Palermo, Samuel Filiaggi, Monica Teixeira de Sousa, and Kerri Ullucci, community leaders from the School of Law and School of Humanities, Arts and Education

The Co-Lab

The Co-Lab @ RWU is pleased to present Roger Williams University's fourth annual Hidden Truths: Stories of Race and Place lecture series. This series features the research and policy work of RWU faculty and staff and community members that resurfaces untold histories and complicates received knowledge and understandings of our collective pasts. The series engages the university community and the public in deeper understandings and informed dialogues around how past inequities continue to impact societal and cultural realities and disparities today. It is sponsored by the Co-Lab, the Office of the President and the Provost’s Office.
 
All lectures will take place virtually and will be available for later viewing, making the presentations modular and accessible to work into courses. To view past presentations in the series, visit RWU’s YouTube channel.

All members of the campus community and the general public are welcome to attend these virtual conversations.