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ETHN 1650F Mapping Violence Spring 2020 Brown University Course Syllabus

Professor Monica Muñoz Martinez Professor Jim McGrath

TA Edwin Rodriguez

Note: This copy of the Mapping Violence syllabus begins with the original course syllabus and schedule and concludes with a section documenting revised course readings and expectations created in the wake of COVID-19. Some personal information / boilerplate information specific ​ ​ to Brown has been removed from this public-facing version of the syllabus. Some links to ​ ​ readings have been replaced with more publicly-accessible links to texts or relevant contexts when available.

Original Syllabus (before COVID-19)

Course Description Mapping Violence is a research project that aims to expose interconnected histories of violence, ​ the legacies of colonization, slavery, and genocide that intersect in Texas in the early twentieth century. Although often segregated in academic studies, these histories coalesced geographically and temporally. Students in this course will learn interdisciplinary methods combining ethnic studies, history, public humanities and the digital humanities to rethink the limits of archival research, historical narrative, and methods for presenting findings to public audiences. This research intensive seminar will allow students to develop historical research skills and to contribute original research to the Mapping Violence project. ​ ​

Overall Objectives: The overall goals for this course are for students to:

-Develop an analytical understanding of the history of racial violence in Texas in the early twentieth century

-Develop critical reading skills for evaluating different kinds of historical and cultural sources, their arguments, and their use of evidence

-Develop archival research methods and skills for critically analyzing historical documents including newspapers, census records, court documents, diplomatic records.

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-Learn to write analytical essays drawing on archival documents and develop skills for presenting their findings to public audiences.

-Learn public humanities and digital humanities methods for presenting academic findings to the public

Credit Hours: Over the 13 weeks of this course, students will spend 3.5 hours in class each week, or about 46 hours total. Class time includes 2.5 hours in seminar and 1 hour in a research lab. Although specific out of class time investments may vary for individual students, a reasonable estimate to support this course’s learning outcomes is 156 hours total, or on average, 12 hours weekly over a 13 week term. Out-of-class preparation will regularly include about seven hours per week of reading (92 hours total). In addition to this ongoing preparation time, students are expected to allocate 55 hours over the course of the term to research and writing assignments.

Course Readings: To develop the historical and methodological training for the course students will be working through a hefty reading load. Some readings are more challenging than others, but seminar discussions will provide opportunity for more detailed analyses and individual questions.

COURSE ASSIGNMENTS:

SHORT RESPONSE ASSIGNMENTS (10%): Students are required to write short weekly ​ responses to the readings. These short writing assignments will vary throughout the semester are designed to help facilitate informed discussions and reading comprehension. These short assignments will also provide a space for students to discuss research challenges and strategies in the second half of the semester. Further instructions for short-responses will be given in class.

RESEARCH CASE STUDY REPORTS (40%): Students will select three cases of racial ​ violence included in the Mapping Violence database and search archival records to compile a research report on what is known about the case. Students will compile an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources, create a chronology of events (timeline) related to the selected case, write short biographies of the person targeted with violence, any known aggressors, and any known witnesses or surviving family members, and compile a research statement on what information is outstanding and what if any competing interpretations of the event exist. Students will complete these projects by drafting an approximately 350 word narrative of the event

DIGITAL PROTOTYPE (20%): Students will develop a proof of concept or prototype for a ​ proposed digital narrative related to the case study that they have researched and analyzed. Building on the research and storytelling work completed for the essay, the digital narrative should consider uses of archival media, demonstrate forms or interaction possible in digital 3 contexts, and acknowledge where and how digital media is viewed and disseminated in twenty-first-century contexts

REFLECTIONS ON RECOVERING HISTORIES OF VIOLENCE (10%): Students will write one ​ short essay reflecting on the methodological challenges of recovering histories of racial violence and the narrative challenges of writing these histories. Students will draw on themes from course readings and conversations to evaluate their own contributions and to consider histories that continue to be obscured or erased.

STUDENT PRESENTATIONS (20%): Students will present on their research, essays, and ​ digital narratives.

Accommodations for Students: Any student with a documented disability is welcome to ​ contact me as early in the semester as possible so that we may arrange reasonable accommodations. As part of this process, please be in touch with Student and Employee Accessibility Services by calling 401-863-9588 or online. Please notify us as quickly as possible ​ ​ if the material being presented in class is not accessible (e.g., instructional videos need captioning, pdfs are not readable for proper alternative text conversion, etc.).

NOTE ABOUT THE COURSE SCHEDULE AND READINGS: Currently, readings are assigned ​ to provide a historical and theoretical foundation for student research projects and labs are organized to help students develop interdisciplinary research and writing skills. In order to support student workflow, the instructors may make changes to readings, workshops, assignments, or to deadlines. Students will be expected to listen to in-class announcements and to check Canvas for updates about course readings and research labs.

Week 1 January 22

Introduction to Mapping Violence, Professors Martinez and McGrath and Edwin ​ ​ Rodriguez

In-class Reading: ​ Kidada Williams, “Regarding the Aftermath of Lynching.” Journal of American History, Dec 2014. doi: ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ 10.1093/jahist/jau683

Student Response Papers Due: Paragraph outlining skills overview, course goals, & research ​ interest

Week 2 January 29 Writing Texas (In class guest: Michelle Garcia, Writing Texas) ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

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Readings: Michelle Garcia, “Rewriting the West” Guernica, August 2019. ​ ​ https://michellegarciainc.com/2019/08/27/rewriting-the-west-series-guernica/

Michelle Garcia, “The Border: Three Part Series.” The Baffler, July 2018. ​ ​ https://michellegarciainc.com/2019/08/27/the-borderthree-part-series-the-baffler/

Monica Muñoz Martinez, “Mapping Segregated Histories of Racial Violence.” American ​ ​ ​ Quarterly, Vol 70, No 3, Sept 2018, p 657 – 663. ​ Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Prologue) ​ ​ ​

Week 3 February 5 Methods for Recovering Histories of Racial Violence

Ida B. Wells, The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes on Lynching in the ​ United States. 1895. (Preface; Chs. 1-2 and 4) ​ ​ ​

William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb. Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence Against Mexicans in The ​ United States, 1848-1928. 2013. (Introduction, Chs. 2-3). ​ ​

Equal Justice Initiative. Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror. 2017 ed. ​ ​ (p. 1-61)

In-class reading: NAACP, Thirty Years of Lynching in The United States, 1889-1918. 1919. ​ ​ ​ ​ (Foreword and “Summation of the Facts” pgs. 1-10).

Mapping Inequality. 2016-present (contributors listed here) ​ ​ ​

Research Lab: Searching Newspapers and Secondary Sources

Week 4 February 12 Legacies of Colonization and Slavery in Texas & Case Study Readings

Sadiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts.” Small Axe, June 2008. ​ ​ ​ ​

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Monica Muñoz Martinez, Congressional Testimony, Oversight of the Trump Administration’s ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Border Policies and the Relationship Between Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric and Domestic Terrorism. ​ September 2019.

Ranjani Chakraborty, “The Mass Graves of Tulsa.” Vox. 2019. ​ ​ ​ ​

Research Lab: Analyzing Primary Sources (students bring in newspaper articles) and developing event chronologies

Week 5 February 19 Legacies of Colonization and Slavery in the United States

Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice, “Report of the Brown University ​ Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice.” 2006. ​

Susan Smulyan, “Les Vues d’Amérique du Nord.” John Nicholas Brown Center for Public ​ ​ Humanities and Cultural Heritage. February 2020. The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, “Restorative Justice” and “Royal Cyril Brooks.” ​ ​ ​

Recommended: Equal Justice Initiative, Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave Trade. 2019. ​ ​

Research Lab: Searching Census Records, Death Certificates, and other digital repositories

Week 6 February 26 Spatial History and Mapping

Richard White, “What Is Spatial History?” Working paper, Spatial History Lab, February 2010. ​ ​

Vincent Brown, “Mapping a Slave Revolt: Visualizing Spatial History through the Archives of ​ Slavery.” Social Text, no. 125 (2015): 134–41. ​ ​ ​

Andrea Roberts and Mohammad Javad Biazar. “Black Placemaking in Texas: Sonic and Social ​ Histories of Newton and Jasper County Freedom Colonies.” Current Research in Digital History. ​ ​ ​ Vol. 2 (2019)

Angel David Nieves, Kim Gallon, David Kim, Scott Nesbit, Bryan Carter, and Jessica Marie Johnson. “Black Spatial Humanities: Theories, Methods, and Praxis in Digital Humanities.” ​ Digital Humanities Conference 2017. 6

Research lab: Writing Histories of Violence (in 350 Words)

Week 7 March 4 Memorials and Monuments

Equal Justice Initiative. Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror. 2017 ed. ​ ​ (p. 62-76)

Rebecca Carter, “Valued Lives in Violent Places: Black Urban Place making at a Civil Rights ​ Memorial in New Orleans.” City and Society (2014) 26: 239–261. ​ ​ ​

Edward Linenthal, “Violence and the American Landscape: The Challenge of Public History.” ​ OAH Magazine of History 16, no. 2 (2002). ​

Steven Lubar, "Leave the Durham Memorial on the Ground.” Medium, August 15, 2017. ​ ​

Michael Barajas, "Where the Bodies are Buried." Texas Observer. July 15, 2019. ​ ​ ​ ​

Excerpts from Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia, eds. Paul Farber and Ken ​ ​ Lum. 2019.

Research Lab: Writing Histories of Violence (Peer Review - students draft 350 word narrative and share with peer groups in lab.)

**Due March 6 Research Reports

Week 8 March 11 Digital Storytelling

Alexa Mills, “A Lynching Kept Out of Sight.” The Washington Post. September 2, 2016. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Jim McGrath “The Tour as Technology: Digital Approaches to Location-Based ​ Storytelling.” Preservation Education and Research. Volume 10. 2018.121-3 ​ ​ ​

The Colored Conventions Project (info on project team here), 2012-present ​ ​ ​ Rebecca Nagle, This Land. 2019. (listen to at least the first two episodes) ​ ​

Various contributors, The 1619 Project, New York Times, 2019 ​ ​ ​ ​

André Wheeler, “Ten Years of Black Twitter”. The Guardian, 2019. ​ ​ ​

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Recommended: David Sleight, “ProPublica’s Year in (Mostly) Visual Journalism.” January 2019. ​ ​

Laura Jane Standley and Eric McQuade, “The 50 Best Podcasts of 2019”. The Atlantic, ​ ​ ​ ​ December 2019.

Research Lab: Case #2 Working Groups **Due March 17 Revised Research Reports

NOTE: Our March 11 course was held virtually due to health concerns related to the spread of COVID-19. Classes were canceled the week of 3/18 and the syllabus was heavily revised from this point on. Please see the “After COVID-19” Section below for details on revised readings and course expectations. What follows immediately below is a record of our original intentions with the remainder of the course.

Week 9 March 18 Visual Images and Storytelling

Leigh Raiford, “Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory.” History and Theory ​ ​ ​ (Dec 2009): 112-129.

Ken Gonzales-Day, Lynching in the West, 1850-1935. 2006. (Selections) ​ ​

Digital Schomburg: Images of African Americans from the Early 19th Century (New York Public ​ Library)

“Picturing Newark” and “Arrivals.” Newest Americans. 2015-present ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

Research Lab: Peer Research Presentations

Week 10 March 25 Spring Break – No Class

Week 11 April 1 Archival Contexts: Trip to John Hay Library Guest Collaborator: Heather Cole, Hay Library ​

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Research Lab: Drafting Digital Prototypes

Week 12 April 8 Data and Histories of Racial Violence

Jessica Marie Johnson, “Markup Bodies: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] Studies at the ​ Digital Crossroads.” Social Text (2018) ​ ​ ​

Lauren Klein. “The Image of Absence: Archival Silence, Data Visualization, and James ​ Hemings.” American Literature (2013) ​ ​ ​

Andrew Kahn and Jamelle Bouie. “The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes.” Slate (2015) ​ ​ ​ ​

Various Authors (details here), Torn Apart / Separados. 2018 (look at Vols 1 and 2) ​ ​ ​ ​

Various Authors (details on author tab on site), The Feminist Data Manifest-no. 2019 ​ ​

Various Contributors (details here), Mukurtu. 2007-present. ​ ​ ​ ​

Research Lab: Reimagining Your Work As Data

Week 13 April 15 Extended Lab Session: Digital Prototype and Final Presentation Development Research Lab moved to main class time this week

Week 14 April 22

Public Humanities and Racial Violence

“Hate Crime Expert: Crimes Spike Around Trump’s Election and Rhetoric” (MSNBC’s The Beat ​ ​ with Ari. August 6, 2019. ​

Monica Martinez, “How The Highwaymen Whitewashes Frank Hamer and the Texas Rangers” ​ ​ ​ The Washington Post. March 31, 2019. ​

Andrew Shapter, Porvenir, Texas. 2019 ​ ​

“Ocoe Massacre” (Wikipedia; Various; 2013-present) ​

Zora Neale Hurston. “The Ocoee Riot.” (1938?) Florida Slave Narratives (Digital Archive) ​ ​

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“Historical Marker Has Been Placed Honoring Lynching Victim July Perry.” Orange County ​ Government Press Release. 2019.

Various Contributors (details here), Chicago 1919 ​ ​ ​

Various Committee Members (details here), Tulsa 2021 ​ ​ ​

Research Lab: Public Engagement, Dialogue, and Dissemination ​

Week 15 Reading Week

Student Presentations

Final Deadlines April 27: Digital Prototypes April 29: Student Presentations May 6: Reflection Essays

After COVID-19

As stated above, COVID-19 began to directly impact our course around March 11, when we decided to hold a virtual version of the class in the interest of student and faculty health. Courses we canceled the week of 3/18 and then the campus went on spring break; this segment of time gave us two weeks to prep for our transition to online learning. While our March 11 class was a live videoconference session (via Zoom), we quickly realized (and confirmed with students via informal surveys) that asynchronous learning would have to be the approach taken to our course, due to a range of factors: time zones, access to space and technology, ethical concerns, etc. Below you will find a record of course work after COVID-19. We adjusted and revised these plans, scaled back the number of final assignments and their lengths, and worked with individual students to adjust expectations and acknowledge various challenges. In the interest of long-term preservation, I’ve pasted lightly-edited versions of prompts posted to our course Canvas site. Students were asked to complete “Discussion Board” posts or submit written work in other work at times, and they also viewed short mini-lectures recorded by McGrath and Rodriguez.

Week of March 30 Data and Histories of Racial Violence

Read Jessica Marie Johnson’s “Markup Lives: Black [Life] Studies and Slavery [Death] ​ Studies at the Digital Crossroads” (Social Text 36.4; 2018) and Jennifer Giuliano and ​ ​ ​ Carolyn Heitman’s “Difficult Heritage and the Complexities of Indigenous Data” (Journal ​ ​ ​ 10 of Cultural Analytics; August 13, 2019). Feel free to raise your own questions and follow ​ your own reading responses, but we know some folks like specific prompts, so here are a few questions you may consider. How can scholars adhere to Johnson's desire to "infuse the drive for data with a corresponding concern with and for the humanity and souls of the people involved" (69)? What might it look like to emphasize what Guliano and Heitman call "an Indigenous-centric data culture" (9)? How do the projects you've viewed seem to adhere to the concerns about data and representation mentioned in these readings (or introduce new questions / concerns)? What do their forms of curation and visualization reveal, obscure, distort, amplify?

Look at at least two of the projects linked below (or find your own projects of interest) and consider incorporating some thoughts on them into your written responses:

-Torn Apart / Separados ​ -Mukurtu ​ -”The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes” ​ -The Feminist Data Manifest-No ​ -Pursuing Justice ​ -”Map of White Supremacy Mob Violence” ​ -Monroe Work Today ​ -Every Three Minutes ​ -Mapping Police Violence ​

Week of April 6

Peer Review Work (Case Studies)

Week of April 13

Visual Images and Storytelling (Readings, Prompts, and Mini-Lecture by Edwin Rodriguez)

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Leigh Raiford, “Photography and the Practices of Critical Black Memory.”History and ​ ​ ​ Theory(Dec 2009): 112-129. ​ Kelli Lyon-Johnson. “Acts of War, Acts of Memory: ‘Dead-Body Politics’ In US Latina ​ Novels of the Salvadoran Civil War.” Latino Studies 3, 205-225 (2005). ​ ​ ​ And view:

Digital Schomburg: Images of African Americans from the Early 19thCentury ​ ​ El Salvador Photography Collection

Feel free to raise your own questions and follow your own reading responses, but we know some folks like specific prompts, so here are a few questions you may consider:

1. What is/are your experience(s) with photography? 2. What role should photography have in creating history/histories of violence? 3. How can we think of photography as a method of both capturing and telling histories? 4. What is “critical Black memory”? 5. What is “dead-body politics” and what connections can we draw with photography? 6. How and where does memory fit into this conversation? What about remembering and forgetting?

Week of April 20 Public Humanities, Racial Violence, and Restorative Justice

This week we planned to think about public humanities work on topics of racial violence and restorative justice. We’ve been looking at materials that are arguably forms of “public humanities” over the course of the semester: Michelle Garcia’s journalistic endeavors, the pamphlets of Ida B. Wells and the NAACP, the work of Monument Lab ​ and The 1619 Project, and some of the digital initiatives we’ve encountered (among ​ ​ other materials) all variously consider a range of publics beyond those traditionally imagined by academic audiences. And it’s worth noting that “public humanities” is a term that primarily has currency and value to academic practitioners and audiences, university administrators, grant-funding organizations, and other folks and institutions that are part of (or within the orbit of) an interdisciplinary-but-still-comparatively-small-and-cloistered set of practitioners. I’ll 12 provide some larger context on the emergence of public humanities as a framing in my mini-lecture this week.

Let’s start by looking at how Monica has taken up the work of public humanities in mainstream U.S. national media outlets. Watch this August 6, 2019 appearance on ​ ​ MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber” (or read the transcript here) and read this March ​ ​ 2019 Washington Post Perspective piece, “How The Highwaymen Whitewashes Frank ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Hamer and The Texas Rangers”

Read “The Battle to Rewrite Texas History” (Christopher Hooks; Texas Monthly, ​ ​ ​ ​ October 2019) and listen to “The ‘Forgotten’ History of Anti-Latino Violence in the U.S.” ​ (Here and Now; November 2019; eight minute audio segment and if you have difficulties ​ ​ streaming, please just read some of the excerpts on the page).

I’d also encourage you to look at the links in the “Reviews” section of the university ​ press page for The Injustice Never Leaves You. In the descriptions of links alone you ​ ​ ​ can see the ways this material is resituated for a range of publics (and the efforts Monica has taken to talk about this work across a range of contexts; not everyone’s “Reviews” page looks like this one, tbh). We had planned to include a recent PBS documentary, Porvenir, that includes interview segments with Monica, as part of this ​ ​ week’s work; due to current circumstances, we don’t have a file or direct link to share with you. You can see a trailer here though. ​ ​ We had initially planned to bring the public humanities work happening around the “Porvenir Massacre” into conversation with work happening around other major incidents of racial violence: Chicago’s 1919 “Race Riots” the 1920 “Ocoee Massacre”, and the 1921 “Tulsa Race Massacre.” This is a lot of content to cover in a single course week under normal semester conditions. In his mini-lecture this week Jim will focus specifically on the ideas of publics, forms of public engagement, and uses of media in work happening around these events. We’re particularly interested in having you think about a wide range of approaches and efforts, and if you have additional projects and approaches you’d like to share with the class in your posts this week, please do in your Discussion Board posts.

Here are some links that, time and technology permitting, you may want to take a look at in the context of Jim’s mini-lecture. In lieu of providing too many links, let me just share some related to Ocoee if folks viewing the lecture are interested in further reading (these are optional and by no means required):

-Zora Neale Hurston’s writing on “The Ocoee riot” (“1937?” according to metadata ​ ​ records) 13

-”Historical marker has been placed honoring lynching victim July Perry” (Orange ​ ​ County government press release; 2019)

- a Wikipedia article on the “Ocoee massacre” (when looking at Wikipedia, I’m often ​ ​ interested in the edit histories and what they document, as well as what is and is not ​ ​ cited / ongoing debates about citation)

Feel free to raise your own questions and follow your own reading responses, but we know some folks like specific prompts, so here are a few questions you may consider:

-Have you had particular experiences with discussing material related to this class (or similar work informed to various extents by academic approaches and methodologies) to various publics? These could be large (writing in public or for specific publics) or small (talking with friends, relatives, strangers). What have been the challenges, the opportunities, the spaces where further work, or reflection, or revised approaches might be needed?

-How have you seen folks invested in public-facing work on histories of racial violence negotiate the complexities of doing this work (resonating with particular audiences, acknowledging gaps, limits, and racist dimensions of archival materials and contexts, thinking of this work in relation to academic research and as part of longer and still-unfolding efforts rather than comprehensive)?

-What might the challenges of doing public humanities work about racial violence within particular media / rhetorical contexts (cable news, documentaries, Wikipedia articles) further reveal about the potential or limitations of established / popular approaches to using these forms of media and rhetorical strategies? What might some alternative approaches or productive interventions and subversions be within or against these contexts?

Week of April 27

Drafting of Reflection Essays

Final Work Submitted During Finals Week