Reckonings – A local history platform for the community-archivist

Featured Reckonings Updates

Friday, September 27, 7pm
Jazz Square History and Live Music
The Red Room at Cafe 939, 939 Boylston St., Boston

Saturday, September 28
11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Jazz Square Dedication Ceremony
Cacao Patio, 570 Columbus Ave., Boston

Join the Jazz Square Celebration on September 27 and 28, 2024: Celebrating the Past and Shaping the Future of Jazz in Boston

The Reckonings Project invites you to dream about the future of jazz and celebrate its storied past in Boston this September as we help activate Jazz Square, the corner of Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues, in collaboration with the Boston Jazz Foundation, the Clairemont Neighborhood Association, Wally’s Jazz Cafe, Jazz Boston, and Union Church. On Friday September 27th, come join us for cocktail hour at A.T. O’Keefe’s and a concert at The Red Room. On Saturday, September 28th, come celebrate the dedication of Jazz Square in front of Cacao. Each night the festivities will continue with sessions at Wally’s Jazz Cave. Throughout the two days, Reckonings will contribute with portable historical markers on the history of jazz clubs in Boston and a self-guided Boston Jazz Tour organized by Northeastern students. These contributions build upon the work that students, staff, faculty and community members have done as part of the Black Artists of Boston project.

Friday, September 27, 7pm
Jazz Square Live Music
at The Red Room at Cafe 939, 939 Boylston St., Boston
(Admission is free. First come, first serve.)

Saturday, September 28
11:45 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Jazz Square Dedication Ceremony
Cacao Patio, 570 Columbus Ave., Boston
11:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Performance by New England Conservatory musicians
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Speaking and musical program guided by Dzidzor Azaglo

To keep the celebrations rolling, visit Wally’s Cafe Jazz Club in Jazz Square after the festivities on both Friday and Saturday night!

Reckonings Collaboration with Unsettled Accounts Featured in Boston City Hall Photo Exhibit

The ICA Teen Collective is exhibiting portraits of Bostonians whose property was taken unjustly in the Mayor’s Neighborhood Gallery until September 5. See these photos from the opening reception on August 22, and read about Unsettled Accounts, the multi-partner collaboration led by Northeastern urban planning and public policy professor Lily Song, in our August 2024 Newsletter.

Wed April 3, 2024
6:30pm - 8pm EST
Renaissance Park 310
1135 Tremont St
Boston, MA 02120

Community-Driven Archiving: Empowering Preservation and Engagement

Wed April 3, 2024
6:30pm - 8pm EST
Renaissance Park 310
1135 Tremont St
Boston, MA 02120

Judith Opoko-Boateng explores the intersection of archiving practices and community engagement, emphasizing the vital role of inclusive approaches in sustaining cultural legacy. Drawing from personal experience and best practices, she delves into strategies for collaboratively archiving cultural materials while fostering meaningful community involvement. From grassroots initiatives to institutional partnerships, Opoko-Boateng will highlight the power of participatory archiving in safeguarding diverse narratives and fostering a sense of belonging. Furthermore, navigating complexities of representation, and ensuring inclusivity in archival processes, she seeks to advance the discourse on community-driven archiving as a transformative force in cultural preservation efforts.

Judith Opoku-Boateng
Senior Archivist, University of Ghana

Judith Opoku-Boateng is the Senior Archivist in charge of the J. H. Kwabena Nketia Archives of the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana. She holds formal qualifications in Sociology and Archival Studies from the University of Ghana, as well as specialized certificates in Audiovisual Heritage Preservation (AHP).

Black Women Lead: March to Dedication Celebration
March 9, 2024
10:30am - 4pm EST
Thelma D. Burns Building
575 Warren St
Boston, MA 02121

Black Women Lead: March to Dedication Celebration

March 9, 2024
10:30am - 4pm EST
Thelma D. Burns Building
575 Warren St
Boston, MA 02121

Black Women Lead Website

In honor of Women's History Month we welcome you to join Boston's first ever March to Dedication Celebration.

Continuing to highlight while inviting the community to an up close look at the city's largest art project, the Black Women Lead Banner Project.

The event will begin in Dudley Square Park with a short gathering before we collectively march to the Thelma Burns Building. The indoor celebration will include exhibits to each honoree, entertainment, refreshments, activities to recognize the leading women in your own life, and opportunity to read more about the honorees.

Fall 2023
Asian American Cinemas Course
Dr. Denise Khor
Greg Lord
Molly Brown
Cailin Roles

Rising Together: 40 Years in Community

Asian American Resource Workshop Through the Years

Asian American Cinemas, Fall 2023
Dr. Denise Khor
Northeastern University

Fall 2023 Asian American Media Activism in Boston

Reckonings worked with Dr. Denise Khor and the students of her course, Asian American Cinemas, in helping facilitate the development of an interactive timeline following the history and work of the Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW) over forty years.

AARW is a member-led, nonprofit organization representing pan-Asian communities in Greater Boston. Since their founding in 1979, AARW has worked to create "a future that honors all Asian Pacific Islander communities" through "political education, creative expression, and issue-based and neighborhood organizing."

Learn more about AARW here: www.aarw.org

This timeline follows AARW's history and work through materials held by Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections. It was created by students in Dr. Denise Khor's Fall 2023 course, Asian American Cinemas. Research and technical support provided by Greg Lord, Molly Brown, and Cailin Roles.

Asian American Studies
November 17, 2023
9AM – 5PM ET
East Village 17
Northeastern University
Boston Campus

Remember! Asian Americans and the Archive

A symposium hosted by Asian American Studies
November 17, 2023
9AM – 5PM ET
East Village 17
Northeastern University
Boston Campus

Conference Website

The archival turn has touched every field and subfield of scholarship, from legal history, family history, activist history, cultural and institutional history, to ways of thinking about empire, postcoloniality, diaspora, art, language, and geopolitical legacies. Our attention to archives and memory derives from our commitment to making the archive a living thing, composed out of community, solidarity, and a daring politics for Asian American Studies. In our thinking, the archive is no longer just a repository or destination for safeguarding reputable collections; it is the site of exchange, gift, generativity, and contestation.

Join Northeastern University’s Global Asian Studies Program for a one-day symposium that brings together scholars, student activists, and community organizers to think about the politics of the archive and its role in shaping what is forgotten and what is remembered.

The work of student activists has long been central to the institutionalization of Asian American studies (including at Northeastern), yet how do we collect, preserve, and remember this critical work? What is important to archive and to pass on for future generations? Can we revitalize our library and museum institutions by engaging with the community organizations that appointed us the stewards of their archives? How is the very field of Asian American studies and its affiliates, extensions, and intellectual and political allies doing the work of preserving, archiving, and re/collecting? Remember! Who remembers, and how?

Symposium Panelists

To learn more about the panelists, find their biographies here.

October 20 - 21, 2023

Black New England Conference 2023

I, Too, Sing:
Art, Music, and Writing in Our BIPOC Communities

A Hybrid Conference

Conference Website

Press Release

The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire is thrilled to announce its partnership with Northeastern University and the Reckonings Project for the 17th Annual Black New England Conference: I, Too, Sing: Art, Music, and Writing in Our BIPOC Communities.

Scheduled for October 20th and 21st at Northeastern University’s Fenway Center in Boston, the conference focuses on how BIPOC artists use the transformative power of the arts for empowerment and social change.

By bringing together community members, scholars, independent researchers, and artists, the conference serves as both an academic gathering and a lively celebration of Black and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) history, culture, and life.

"The panelists gathered all challenge the misconception that a single white perspective defines the pinnacle of artistic excellence," says JerriAnne Boggis, Executive Director at the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire. "This conference offers a platform for creators to discuss their work with other communities of color and explore the many ways we learn from each other, build on what’s been done, or create something completely new that empowers us all.”

The partnership with Northeastern University represents a significant stride towards expanding the conference's impact and reach.

"I am thrilled about our partnership with the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire,” says Uta Poiger, Special Advisor to the Provost on Humanics and Professor of History at Northeastern University, and a lead on the Reckonings Project. "This collaboration embodies Northeastern University's commitment to fostering inclusivity and elevating the diverse voices and narratives of people of color. Through the power of art, music, performance, and writing, this conference promises to be a dynamic platform for dialogue and empowerment, aligning perfectly with our mission to create positive change in our communities."

Principal Investigators

Full Profile

Kabria Baumgartner

Dean's Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies

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.

Full Profile

Dan Cohen

Dean of Libraries; Vice Provost for Information Collaboration; Professor of History

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.

Full Profile

Uta Poiger

Professor of History

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

Full Profile

Régine Michelle Jean-Charles

Director of Africana Studies, Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice, and Professor of Africana Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

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.

Full Profile

Denise Khor

Associate Professor of Asian American Studies and Visual Studies and Associate Director of Asian American Studies

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.

Full Profile

Jessica Parr

Professor of the Practice in History

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.)

Full Profile

Lily Song

Assistant Professor of Race, Social Justice & the Built Environment

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 Azaglo

Community Partnership Coordinator

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

Project Manager

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

Assistant Director of Design & Program Manager

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

Full Profile

Melody Asaresh Moghadam

Research Assistant, Ph.D. Student in World History

Melody is a World History PhD student at Northeastern University. She earned her bachelor’s degree in music from Wright State University. She has experience working as a press assistant at Huskiana press, Northeastern’s experiential letterpress studio, and was a research assistant for Apartheid Heritage(s) Project. Her research interests include the history of imperialism in Iran in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, history of the Great War, and Environmental history of the Middle East.

Julia Block

Reckonings Multimedia Editor Co-Op

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.

Full Profile

Emily Helen Boyer

Research Assistant, Ph.D. Student in History

Emily graduated from the American University in Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2020, where she received a BA in History with a minor in Art History. She then attended and graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2022, receiving a MA in Museum Studies. Emily has worked at both the Scottish Rite House of the Temple (October 2020-February 2021) and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (September 2022-April 2023) as a museum intern, and most recently was contracted by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (June 2023-August 2023) to assist in digitizing a conservation project. Emily’s research interests include public history, the study of monuments and their purpose in American society, and studies surrounding the legacy of the American Civil War. Born and raised in Delaware, Emily is excited to begin her studies at Northeastern University in 2023 and is looking forward to exploring New England!

Andres Garcia

Research Assistant and Digital Assets Manager Co-op

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.

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.

Read this Toolkit

Black Artists of Boston: Interview Toolkit

Written by Cassie Tanks | Edited by Alanna Prince

Read this Toolkit

Reckonings Community and Institutional Partners

Reckonings Summer Institute

Reckonings Institute in Social Justice & Community Archiving

From June 26-30, 2023, Reckonings hosted its first annual Reckonings Summer Institute in Social Justice & Community Archiving. This Summer Institute promotes the methods and practical application of co-creation and co-curation among community organizations and college teachers across the Boston and New England region.

Visit the Reckonings Summer Institute Website

The 2023 Summer Workshop sought community-based organizations and college teachers who were actively looking to document the rich histories of community organizations and surrounding communities in the New England region. In 2024, we plan to welcome a new crop of community organizations and college teachers to work with us. For our second summer, in June 2024, participants of the Summer 2023 program will be invited to lead workshops for the second Institute.

Get more information on the Reckonings Summer Institute website or contact reckoningssummerinstitute@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.

Reckonings Projects

Black Artists of Boston

Unboxing the Archive

Reckonings Newsletter

Featured Reckonings Updates

Join the Jazz Square Celebration on September 27 and 28, 2024: Celebrating the Past and Shaping the Future of Jazz in Boston

Reckonings Collaboration with Unsettled Accounts Featured in Boston City Hall Photo Exhibit

Community-Driven Archiving: Empowering Preservation and Engagement

Black Women Lead: March to Dedication Celebration

Rising Together: 40 Years in Community

Asian American Resource Workshop Through the Years

Remember! Asian Americans and the Archive

Symposium Panelists

Black New England Conference 2023

I, Too, Sing:
Art, Music, and Writing in Our BIPOC Communities

A Hybrid Conference

Press Release

Remembering Prof. Ángel David Nieves

Reckonings Project Team

Principal Investigators

Reckonings Project Faculty

Reckonings Staff

Current Co-Creators

Reckonings Toolkits

Pedagogy from the Community to the Classroom

Unboxing the Archive: Telling Overlooked Stories through Video

Black Artists of Boston: Interview Toolkit

Reckonings Community and Institutional Partners

Reckonings Summer Institute

Reckonings Institute in Social Justice & Community Archiving

Contact