Applications are now open for a Buchanan Library Fellowship. This fellowship will accept 2 undergraduates, and will run summer through fall (June through December, 2024). Applications can be submitted here: https://redcap.link/ApplyBLF and are due May 13th, 2024.
Please contact Melissa Mallon with any questions.
The experience of a Black student at Peabody College is often described as isolating. However, the contributions of Black Peabody – the Black students, faculty, and staff who lived, learned, and worked on the land that is home to Peabody College – are a valuable and integral part of Peabody’s history. It is imperative to center their stories and celebrate their contributions and accomplishments; the Black Peabody Museum aims to do just that. The Black Peabody Museum will render Black Peabody visible to the College and the larger University community by centering the experiences, contributions, and accomplishment of Black Peabody students, faculty, staff. The Museum will be executed in two phases. Each phase will produce a physical museum-style installation. The first installation will tell the story of Black Peabody from Roger Williams University to the merger of George Peabody College for Teachers. The second installation will cover Black Peabody post-merger with Vanderbilt University. Additionally, the second installation will serve as dream space for the Black Peabody and the larger campus to co-create a vision of what Black Peabody will look like in 50 years. These installations will include text, photo, video, and interactive exhibits like museums in the Nashville area. The physical exhibits will be digitized to ensure perpetuity of the content.
We received a Sesquicentennial Grant through Vanderbilt to begin work on this project. We currently have an interdisciplinary and collaborative team that includes students, faculty, staff, and alumni from the Peabody community, as well as representatives from the Cohen Fine Arts Gallery and the broader Nashville community – and would like two Buchanan Library Fellows to further support the project. Buchanan Library Fellows on this team will review University archival materials and Nashville community archives; conduct interviews with Black Peabody faculty, students, staff, and alumni, as well as Nashville historians, to construct the stories of Black Peabody; and gain valuable project design and management skills. Student will also build digital content based on the research and work on the creation of interactive digital exhibits. The faculty/staff mentors will support students in the research process and review the story design and exhibit construction. In addition, the research team will have the opportunity to share reflections during weekly team meetings.
The deliverables for this project are the installations themselves. These installations will include text, photo, video, and interactive exhibits. The first deliverables will be ready for presentation in November 2024, with the second set of deliverables will be ready for presentation in July 2025. For each phase of the project, we plan to create both physical and electronic museum guides. In addition, upon completion of each phase of the project, we will host a “Grand Opening” of the exhibit to maximize visibility to the Peabody and Vanderbilt communities, as well as to the wider alumni network and Nashville community. The history of Black Peabody has not been told. As Vanderbilt reflects on its sesquicentennial anniversary, Black Peabody’s experiences, contributions, and accomplishments should be included.
Mentors: Hasina Mohyuddin, Valencia Clement, Eliza Blades, Tiffeni Fontno