Two grants, from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Mellon Foundation, are supporting a network of collaborative, public humanities projects initiated by Tao Leigh Goffe, assistant professor of Africana studies and feminist, gender, and sexuality studies (FGSS) in the College of Arts and Sciences.
The collaborative grants, totaling more than $2 million, support Goffe’s goal of making humanities research in digital and in-person channels accessible to both researchers and the public.
Goffe received a $50,000 NEH/AHRC New Directions for Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions grant, a joint match-funded initiative between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) , in collaboration with Eddie Bruce-Jones. Executive Dean at Birkbeck Law School, University of London.
During a two-year project on colonialism and citizenship, they will create an interactive website that brings together collections in the United Kingdom and the United States – including some from the Cornell University Library – and will design programs to introduce scholars and the public to various digital and physical properties.
The integrated archive of humanities, law and social sciences is expected to be launched by 2024; Goffe and Bruce-Jones hope it will generate new multifaceted scholarship on indentured servitude and colonialism and increase public knowledge of the topics. The collection will include a wide variety of objects, including maps, contracts, ship logs, music, oral histories and even recipes.
The project is directly related to Goffe’s book project Black Capital, Chinese Debt, an examination of the history, culture and economics of contract. Bruce-Jones is also writing a book on the history of indentureship.
“Although debt has existed as a concept for thousands of years, it was never used to racialize until the 19th century, when Asian people were often brought under false pretenses to America to work on plantations because racial slavery it was over,” Goffe said. “It is a hidden chapter in the history of labor and capital in America.”
Under a $2 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, Goffe is leading two collaborative projects.
Kitchen Marronage is a virtual test kitchen dedicated to helping people understand global ways of eating, land sovereignty for farmers, food, public health and culinary stories, “an inclusive way for people to consider deeper stories colonial production of food plantations,” said Goffe.
The Kitchen Marronage Lab features chef Celestial Peach (British community organizer and chef Jenny Lau) and resident terror specialist Patricia Powell (an American novelist). Two doctoral students, Aree Worawongwasu (University of Hawaii) and Arianna James (University of Pennsylvania), are chefs as part of the Afro-Asia Group’s virtual test kitchen, which began in 2019 and is supported by Cornell . FGSS and African Studies. They are building and producing an archive of food demonstrations and curating an exhibition for 2024 at the Tiger Strikes Asteroid gallery in New York City.
Digital Junkanoo is a curatorial and design studio researching carnival cultures, such as those in Brazil, Trinidad and New York, and exploring rituals of African origin. “We have two artist-in-residences each year, art and technology residencies that go to people living in regions severely affected by the climate crisis,” Goffe said.
The two inaugural Digital Junkanoo artists are Nadia Huggins from St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Abigail Hadeed from Trinidad and Tobago. The region has been affected by volcanic eruptions and the increasing severity of hurricanes. With Tatyana Tandanpolie, who is the managing editor of Digital Junkanoo and a former student of Goffe’s, the studio will curate the art exhibition on the urgency of the climate crisis and how the carnival season is a space of intergenerational healing.
A portion of the Mellon grant is designated to support graduate students financially, intellectually, and professionally.
“It makes sense given how dire the situation has been with the academic job market in the humanities and to ask what our responsibility is to these students in terms of gainful employment,” Goffe said. “How can we model for future students that we have much to learn from them as co-creators and collaborators and elevate the work to a wider audience through public humanities and digital humanities? We need to stimulate collaboration in the humanities with more funding.”
In spring 2021, Goffe taught a Mellon Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism and the Humanities seminar in collaboration with the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, which she calls “an inspiring space to experiment” . So is the Cornell Migration Summer Institute, part of the Mellon Just Futures grant led by Shannon Gleeson and others at Cornell.
The Mellon-supported research and collaboration is related to Goffe’s “After Eden” book project. Set to be published in 2024 with Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton, this trade book focuses on the natural, racial and colonial histories of the Caribbean. “The racial crisis and the climate crisis are one and the same. One cannot be resolved without the other,” said Goffe.
Kate Blackwood is a writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.
