Featured Reckonings Updates
Save-the-Date: Jazz Square Celebration: International Jazz Day at Union United Methodist Church on Wednesday, April 30th
The Boston Jazz Foundation, in collaboration with Reckonings, the Claremont Neighborhood Association, and Union United Methodist Church, will hold an International Jazz Day concert and historical exhibit in Boston on Wednesday, April 30th, 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m., at Union United Methodist Church, located at 485 Columbus Ave. This celebration of jazz on both a local and international level and of Jazz Square (the intersection of Columbus and Massachusetts Avenues) will feature performances by Jason Palmer, one of the most-in-demand trumpeters and composers of his generation and faculty at the New England Conservatory, and Amanda Shea, a renowned spoken-word and multidisciplinary artist, educator and activist residing in Boston. Please check out the Boston Jazz Foundation website for more details soon, and this site for information on Jazz Square.
Dec 16 Freedom House Celebrates 75 Years of Impact and Community
On December 16, Freedom House in Dorchester marked its 75th anniversary with a celebratory event honoring its ongoing commitment to equity, education, and leadership. Guests explored interactive exhibits showcasing pivotal figures and stories from the organization’s rich history, while reflecting on its transformative role in the community. The evening also introduced the Freedom House and Roxbury/Dorchester Community Stories book project, inviting attendees to engage in its creation. With inspiring speeches from CEO Charmaine Arthur and more, the celebration looked toward the future of Freedom House’s mission, continuing to empower generations through advocacy and collaboration.
Watch our video recap of the Freedom House 75th Anniversary on the Reckonings YouTube channel
Reckonings Call For Artist(s)-in-Residence 2025
Hidden Histories: Call for Artist(s)-in-Residence with the Reckonings Project and Community Partners at Northeastern University Boston
The Reckonings Project invites applications for artist(s)-in-residence to engage with hidden histories of Boston and/or the New England region. We are looking for an artist or a team of artists who see art as an entry point for discovery, engagement, and communal experiences. The artist or team of artists will co-design interactions with Reckonings and community partners and archives–and as feasible with local community arts organizations or libraries.
The resulting creative work can be permanent, temporary, or ephemeral and should take place/be displayed in the City of Boston or surrounding communities.
(Applications have now closed.)
Reckonings Projects
Asian American Resource Workshop Through the Years
The Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW) is a member-led nonprofit organization that serves as a home for pan-Asian communities in Greater Boston. AARW envisions a future that "honors all Asian Pacific Islander communities, including diasporic and Indigenous People of East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, Pacific and Caribbean Islands, Native Hawaii, and Oceania."
Unsettled Accounts
Unsettled Accounts is a community-university collaboration dedicated to documenting, investigating, and archiving past and present injustices in housing and land ownership in Boston, which have had a disproportionate impact on Black Bostonians. Co-led by Roxbury activist Dianne Wilkerson and Northeastern urban planning and public policy professor Lily Song, the project works in partnership with the Reckonings Project, the ICA (Institute for Contemporary Art) Teen Photography Collaborative, and Homes for Equity.
Reckonings Newsletter
Check out our newsletter to learn more about our work and the work of our community partners!
Remembering Prof. Ángel David Nieves
The Reckonings Project team honors and remembers our Co-Principal Investigator, colleague, and friend, Ángel David Nieves. As one of the co-founders of Reckonings, Ángel brought not only a guiding vision for the project, but also a trusted voice in both social justice and community partnership which he developed over a long and celebrated career in the digital humanities.
Ángel David Nieves was Dean’s Professor of Public and Digital Humanities and Professor of Africana Studies, History, and Digital Humanities in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH) at Northeastern University and an Affiliate Professor in the Department of English and in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs, Director of the Graduate Program in Public History, and Director of the Humanities Center in CSSH. Among his many publications are An Architecture of Education: African American Women Design the New South and the award-winning People, Practice, Power: Digital Humanities Outside the Center, and articles in journals such as American Quarterly or The Journal of Planning History. Nieves received his Ph.D. from Cornell University in the history of urban development and Africana Studies. He held an M.A. in socio-cultural anthropology and Women’s Studies from Binghamton University (SUNY) and a Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.) degree from Syracuse University.
Please see this message from December 15, 2023.
Ángel's career and life are commemorated by his friends, family, and colleagues on a memorial website, https://www.angeldavidnieves.com. We encourage you to share your memories.
Reckonings Project Team
Principal Investigators
Kabria Baumgartner is a historian of the nineteenth-century United States, specializing in the history of education, African American women’s and gender history, and the New England region.
Dan Cohen is the Vice Provost for Information Collaboration, Dean of the Libraries, and professor of history at Northeastern University. His work has focused on the impact of digital media and technology on all aspects of knowledge and learning, from the nature of libraries and their evolving resources, to twenty-first century research techniques and software tools, to the changing landscape of communication and publication.
Together with Kabria Baumgartner and Dan Cohen, Uta G. Poiger leads the Reckonings Project. Her work focuses on new community-engaged frameworks for the humanities, supported by digital technologies. Poiger has held a number of administrative leadership roles at Northeastern.
Reckonings Project Faculty
Régine Michelle Jean-Charles is a Black feminist literary scholar and cultural critic who works at the intersection of race, gender, and justice. Her scholarship and teaching in Africana Studies include expertise on Black France, Sub-Saharan Africa, Caribbean literature, Black girlhood, Haiti, and the diaspora. She is the author of Conflict Bodies: The Politics of Rape Representation in the Francophone Imaginary (Ohio State University Press, 2014), The Trumpet of Conscience Today (Orbis Press, 2021), and Looking for Other Worlds: Black Feminism and Haitian Fiction (University of Virginia Press, 2022). She is currently working on two book projects–one explores representations of Haitian girlhood, and the other is a co-authored interdisciplinary study of sexual violence entitled The Rape Culture Syllabus. Dr. Jean-Charles is a regular contributor to media outlets like The Boston Globe, Ms. Magazine, WGBH, America Magazine, and Cognoscenti, where she has weighed in on topics including #metoo, higher education, and issues affecting the Haitian diaspora.
Denise Khor is a media historian working on early cinema history, film preservation, and Asian American film and media culture. She is the author of Transpacific Convergences: Race, Migration and Japanese American Film Culture before World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2022), which explores the historical experiences of Japanese Americans at the cinema and traces an alternative network of film production, circulation, and exhibition. Areas of research specialization include film and media history, early cinema, nontheatrical film, critical ethnic studies, and Asian American Studies.
Jessica Parr (she/they) is a historian of the Early Modern Atlantic, specializing in race and memory long eighteenth century, as well as in digital humanities, and archival studies. They are the author of Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the Making of a Religious Icon (U. Press of Mississippi). The book explores Whitefield’s development as a symbol shaped in the complexities of revivalism, the contest over religious toleration, and the conflicting roles of Christianity for enslaved people. Evangelical Christianity’s emphasis on “freedom in the eyes of God,” combined with the problems that the rhetoric of the Revolution posed for slavery, also suggested a path to political freedom. (Photo credit: John Legg. Courtesy of The Bright Institute.)
Dr. Lily Song is an urban planner and activist-scholar who holds a joint appointment between the School of Architecture and the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University. She is an award-winning educator who teaches courses on anti-displacement, participatory action research, public participation, community-driven design, and community development. Song’s research and scholarship focus on the relations between urban infrastructure and redevelopment initiatives, socio-spatial inequality, and race, class, and gender politics in American cities and other decolonizing contexts. Her work both analyzes and informs infrastructure-based mobilizations and experiments that center the experiences and insights of historically marginalized groups as bases for reparative planning and design. She has published in a number of journals, including the Journal of Architecture Education, Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Urban Affairs, International Development Planning Review, and Planning Theory and Practice.
Reckonings Staff
Dzidzor (Jee-Jaw) is a Ghanian-American folklore, performing artist, author, and curator. Dzidzor’s style of call and response has combined traditional storytelling in Afro-folklore and Poetry Slam through a sonic experience. Dzidzor is moved by the responsibility to alarm the power/abundance in the midst of bodies while creating a practice of care and freedom through creativity. Dzidzor is the founder of Black Cotton Club and partners with Grubstreet, ICA Boston, and Boston Public Schools to teach creative empowerment workshops in Boston.
Jen Grieve is the project manager for Reckonings. She coordinates and aligns the project’s activities, tracks project and grant deliverables, and enables better communication and collaboration across the team and with partners. She brings almost five years of Northeastern institutional knowledge and relationships to the project. Jen also has a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Emerson College and B.A. in Political Science from Penn State University.
Greg Lord is a designer and developer with over 15 years of experience in digital humanities research and development. His previous experience includes the University of Maryland’s MITH (Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities), Hamilton College’s Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi), NASA, and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), having served in roles as a graphic/web designer, software engineer, 3D modeler, and virtual reality developer.
Current Co-Creators
ThankGod Ahumibe is a second year master’s student of English at Northeastern University. His research lies at the intersection of rhetoric, composition, and digital humanities, and how these can be utilized as a tool to advocate for social-justice with particular focus on the Nigerian literary landscape. He is enrolled in Northeastern University’s Digital Humanities certificate program, where he is working on an innovative project to digitize and encode poems by a Nigerian poet. This project aims to highlight themes of social justice, cultural heritage, gender issues, political commentary, and emigration, demonstrating his commitment to preserving and promoting Nigerian literature through digital means. He currently collaborates with JerriAnne Boggis of Black Heritage Trail New Hampshire to develop a workshop for creating, hosting, and successfully delivering a community engagement talk series. He also works as a Graduate Tutor at the Northeastern University writing center. In addition to his academic pursuits, ThankGod has an affinity for creative writing. Prior to his current studies, he earned a master’s degree in Discourse Analysis from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. This background in linguistic analysis informs his current work, providing a solid foundation for his exploration of rhetoric and composition.
Julia Block is a fourth-year student pursuing a B.A. in Media and Screen Studies and English at Northeastern University. She is interested in expanding her skills in multiple disciplines, focusing on merging the written word with audiovisual media to express ideas and convey meaningful narratives.
Tiffany Cruz is a Ph.D. student in the English Department at Northeastern University, specializing in people of color in nineteenth-century British literature. Passionate about amplifying the voices of those from the past and bringing them to life in the present, she also explores contemporary texts that adapt classic works, examining the enduring interest in historical novels and the significance of centering people of color within these narratives. Her research focuses on the constructions of genre and how they shape both classical and modern texts, particularly in relation to race, while exploring how literature reflects and influences societal values and identities. She is also a research assistant on the Nineteenth Century for Northeastern’s Mapping Black London.
From July to December 2024, Andres Garcia, a third-year Computer Science major and Game Design minor, is working as one of the Underecologies Research Assistant and Digital Assets Manager Co-ops with Drs. Manjapra and Poiger. For Reckonings, Andres has focused on researching musicians who played in the venues of Jazz Square, and is developing a musicians’ database as well as digital tools to make community contributions to archives dedicated to Boston’s inspiring and complex jazz history possible.
Safia Ibrahim is a first-year student at Northeastern University pursuing a B.S. in Criminal Justice and Psychology. Her interests include immigration, prison reform, and exploring the intersection between mental health and the criminal justice system. She is passionate about understanding how these issues shape and influence one another within the legal system.
Holly Lyczak is a first-year student pursuing a B.A. in International Affairs and Spanish at Northeastern University. Her studies have made her interested in policy making at an international level. This can include topics on women’s and civil rights, immigration, and the environment with a focus on ethnic and cultural inclusion within these policies. She is passionate about learning about how various international organizations pertaining to global politics shape policy, specifically in Spanish-speaking countries.
Anne is a second-year Journalism and Communication Studies student with a minor in Public Relations at Northeastern University. She is passionate about creating stories that resonate with people and exploring various mediums to share them, such as writing, cinematography, and photography. Her goal is to create work that not only informs but also captures the interest of the audience.
Reckonings Toolkits
Pedagogy from the Community to the Classroom
Developing a series of toolkits using a co-creation methodology and a series of practices requires a deliberate spirit of collaboration. Collaborations for the Reckonings Project begin with community members taking the lead in determining, laying out, and defining the terms of their needs for public history projects and making those a part of the work, when possible, of courses taught at Northeastern.
Unboxing the Archive: Telling Overlooked Stories through Video
Written by Hunter Moskowitz
The Black Artists of Boston Interview Toolkit (this is part of a series of toolkits from the project) was developed as part of a graduate level course in spring 2022 at Northeastern University. The toolkit is very much derived from a co-creation process between students and community members making this unique among existing guides on the internet. This part of the toolkit focuses on the technical aspects of conducting an interview and on the physical production.
Black Artists of Boston: Interview Toolkit
Written by Cassie Tanks | Edited by Alanna Prince
The Black Artists of Boston Interview Toolkit (this is part of a series of toolkits from the project) was developed as part of a graduate level course in spring 2022 at Northeastern University. The toolkit is very much derived from a co-creation process between students and community members making this unique among existing guides on the internet. This part of the toolkit focuses on the technical aspects of conducting an interview and on the physical production.
