Reckonings Updates

Black Artists of Boston

Black Artists of Boston began as a collaborative endeavor between a graduate class at Northeastern University, a local performance artist Dzidzor Azaglo, and a group of community elders, who as artists, have been working in and around Boston for over thirty years.

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Unboxing the Archive

Unboxing the Archive is a digital storytelling video project that explores the rich and complex history of African Americans in New England. Using archival collections at historical societies and libraries, it features ten-minute videos covering fascinating, often overlooked stories on a range of topics, from slavery in New England to successful Black entrepreneurs.

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Reckonings Newsletter

Read the first issue of the Reckonings Newsletter introducing the Fall 2022 Reckonings team, and featuring Reckonings' co-creation work with The West End Museum and a poem by former Reckonings Research Assistant Shavaun Sutton.

Read It Here

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

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

Call for Course Proposals

Reckonings Institute in Social Justice & Community Archiving

June 26 - June 30, 2023

Download CFP (PDF) Apply Here

Reckonings Institute in Social Justice & Community Archiving

Through the generous support of the Mellon Foundation and Northeastern University, the Reckonings Project Summer Institute in Social Justice & Community Archiving is launching for summer 2023. The Reckonings Project builds collaborations with community partners, faculty, and students to empower BIPOC communities and residents in the preservation, creation, and curation of their community histories. 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.

Co-creation and co-curation are approaches to community enrichment wherein community partners and college teachers work together to build programming, archives, and exhibits that best serve BIPOC communities. Representatives from partnering community organizations will receive training in digital archival methods as well as gain access to necessary tools they deem fit for their work. They will be paid for their time participating. There will be a space where community and participant members can gather and share ideas in a knowledge-making setting. It is important to have the goals of community members centered that will also highlight the iterative nature of community-engaged work.

The June workshop is dedicated to training the inaugural cohort of community organizers and college teachers with the skills to go on to lead workshops, presentations, and classes. Before, during, and after the June workshop, the Reckonings infrastructure will support participants. Support will include, but is not limited to toolkits, design capacity, and general help with digital tools. The June workshop will be co-taught by Reckonings staff, our collaborator Professor Dorothy Kim from Brandeis, and community partners.

The 2023 Summer Workshop seeks community-based organizations and college teachers who are actively looking to document the rich histories of community organizations and surrounding communities in the New England region. For this first cohort, college teachers and community-based organizations need not come to the Workshop already having established these partnerships. Rather, participants should be interested in developing strategies together for building BIPOC histories and disseminating new narratives and new knowledge to the public in online and analog formats.

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.

We will be:

  • Providing key resources and training for individuals and organizations to incubate this work;
  • Building new skills for community groups, college teachers, and students;
  • Developing a network of skilled members who will provide research and resources for one another in order to build community;
  • Changing the narratives of local histories in order to center BIPOC communities.

Summer Institute participants will receive a stipend of $3,000 each. This will be paid in two Installments (in spring 2023 & at the end of the 2023 Summer Institute). Stipends can be used for travel, accommodations if needed, incidentals, compensation for your time, or other expenses. Community organizations can decide how to allocate the funds for the stipend. 

Get more information here & contact reckoningssummerinstitute@gmail.com with any questions or concerns. The deadline for this application is February 15th, 2023.

Reckonings Community and Institutional Partners

Reckonings Project Team

Principal Investigators

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Uta Poiger

Dean, College of Social Sciences and Humanities; Professor of History

Uta G. Poiger is Dean of the College of Social Science and Humanities and Professor of History at Northeastern University. With the college’s faculty, staff and students, she works to enhance the college’s and the university’s leadership in Experiential Liberal Arts.

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Ángel David Nieves

Professor of Africana Studies, History, and Digital Humanities; Director of Public Humanities

Ángel David Nieves is Professor of Africana Studies, History, and Digital Humanities in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (CSSH) at Northeastern University and is an Affiliate Professor in the Department of English and in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs.

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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.

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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.

Reckonings Project Faculty

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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).

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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.

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Isabel Martinez

Associate Professor and Director of Latinx, Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Dr. Isabel Martinez is a Latinx youth immigration scholar whose research has primarily focused on the transnational lives of unaccompanied immigrant teenagers from Mexico/Central America. She is currently developing the New York Latinx Comedy Project, an oral history project that situates Latinx voices within a history of the NYC stand-up comedy industry. She is the founding director of the Unaccompanied Latin American Minor Project (U-LAMP) and is the Fall 2022 CMAS Visiting Scholar at UH.

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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.

Reckonings Staff

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.

Dzidzor Azaglo

Program Coordinator & Community Archivist

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.

Current Co-Creators

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Victoria Dey

Research Assistant, Ph.D. Student in History

Victoria earned her B.A. in French and International Relations from the University of Rochester in 2021 and began the World History doctoral program at Northeastern University the following semester. Victoria’s research interests include the intentional modern manipulations of French memory during times of conflict that continue to influence race relations , identity, and other aspects of French society.

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Hunter Moskowitz

Research Assistant, Ph.D. Student in History

I am a doctoral student in World History at Northeastern with a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. My research interests include examining how workers have resisted, shaped, and mediated colonialism. I hope to understand how power operates in eighteenth and nineteenth century communities through studying the intersection between race, labor, and gender.  I am also currently a research assistant at the Worker Institute at Cornell University working on projects involving the role of labor unions in creating climate change policy.

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Alanna Prince

Research Assistant, Ph.D. Candidate in English

Alanna Prince is a PhD candidate in the university’s English department.  Her work focuses on late 20th and 21st-century Black literature and visual culture, with a particular emphasis on historical resonance, poetics, and gender/sexuality. She also has participated in several Digital Humanities projects on campus, including the Early Caribbean Digital Archive, where she acts as a Metadata and Acquisitions Lead.

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Cassie Tanks

Research Assistant, Ph.D. Student in History

Cassie Tanks is a first year World History Ph.D. student at Northeastern University. During the course of her studies, Cassie aims to deepen her engagement with public facing historical and archival work, as well as explore the histories of the Cold War, paramilitarism, liberation, and veterans experiences. She is a research assistant for Dr. Angel David Nieves and his 3D spatial history publication, Apartheid Heritage(s), and Reckonings.

Reckonings and Co-Creation

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