Seventeen Brooklyn College Projects to be Funded as Part of CUNY’s BRESI Initiative to Further Transform Ethnic Studies on Campus and Beyond

Sept. 22, 2022

The Brooklyn College campus

Brooklyn College is proud to announce that 17 projects from various academic departments and other areas of the college were awarded a total of nearly $300,000 in funding through CUNY’s Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (BRESI) program.

CUNY recently announced that thanks to a generous gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 126 awards totaling $1.8 million across CUNY will be used to work toward the expansion of a more inclusive curriculum; increase opportunities for students to engage in Black, Race and Ethnic Studies-related research and internships; promote focused efforts to improve campus climate; strengthen its already robust centers and institutes; help faculty to advance their publications and research; and launch an array of new relevant initiatives.

“We are delighted that 17 Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies projects, developed by our faculty, staff, and administrators, have received BRESI program support,” said Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, Anne Lopes. “These projects range in scope from curriculum development and faculty research to initiatives focused on campus climate. These efforts will impact student learning and faculty scholarship for many years to come.”

Brooklyn College Awardees

Faculty Support for Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Publications

Rosamond King, Proposal Title: Black Light: Digital Literature from Africa and Its Diaspora
Malcolm Merriweather, Proposal Title: Hear Black Women’s Voices: “I, Too, Sing America.”
Aleah Ranjitsingh, Proposal Title: Becoming Black: Afro-Caribbean and/in ‘Black America.’ An Oral History Project.
Gunja SenGupta, Proposal Title: Indexing book, Sojourners, Sultans and “Slaves”: America and the Indian Ocean in the Age of Abolition and Empire (forthcoming, University of California Press, 2023)

Departments, Programs and Black, Race and Ethnic Studies-Related Initiatives

Mona Hadler, Proposal Title: The ALQKAA Symposium: A Cross-Ethno-Gender Korean/Asian Studies Initiative.

Existing Race and CUNY Black, Ethnic Studies Centers and Institutes

Alan Aja, Proposal Title: Research Assistance/Programming Support for the Maria E. Sánchez Center for Latino Studies at Brooklyn College (CUNY).
Marie Cerat, Proposal Title: Ayiti in the City.
Prudence Cumberbatch, Proposal Title: Institutionalizing Activism at CUNY: The Emergence of Africana Studies at Brooklyn College, A Case Study.
Zinga A. Fraser, Proposal Title: Redefining the Shirley Chisholm Trail in 2022 and Beyond.

Black, Race and Ethnic Studies-focused Projects to Improve Campus Climate

Yung-Yi Diana Pan, Proposal Title: Another Curriculum is Possible: Decolonization, Multi-Generational Voices, and the Creation of Cross-Campus Native/Indigenous (N/I) Studies Initiatives at CUNY.
Naomi Schiller, Proposal Title: Claiming Our Campus: A Participatory Action Research Project on Student Experiences and Analysis of Brooklyn College’s Campus Climate.
Crystal Schloss-Allen, Proposal Title: BFS Ambassador Program.

Creating Black, Race and Ethnic Studies-Focused Student Internships

Emily Molina, Proposal Title: Flatbush African Burial Ground Student Internship Program.

Black, Race and Ethnic Studies-Focused Mentored Student Research

Lawrence Johnson, Proposal Title: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Decolonizing Sociology.
Sophia Suarez, Proposal Title: Promoting URM Participation and Development in STEM Research of Electrospun Nanofibers.
Alex Vitale, Proposal Title: Policing and Social Justice Project.