University of Richmond Professor Awarded National Fellowship To Enhance Course on Black Family Life

Photo above courtesy of Logan & Co. 

UNIVERSITY OF RICHMOND — Deborwah Faulk, assistant professor of sociology and Africana studies at the University of Richmond, has been awarded a 2023–24 Innovations in Pedagogy and Teaching Fellowship by The HistoryMakers.

Fellowship recipients receive a $7,500 award and the opportunity to demonstrate how faculty can creatively incorporate The HistoryMakers archive — the largest video oral history archive of the Black experience in the country — into their classroom.

The personal narratives captured by The HistoryMakers will be used in Faulk’s course “Sociology of Black Families,” offered for the first time at the University of Richmond this fall. The course will explore the concept of Black families using an interdisciplinary approach, including Black/Africana studies, sociology, psychology, and African American history and literature.

“My goal is to help students disrupt their ideas about how we define families and to confront their biases about Black families specifically,” says Faulk. “Historically, scholarship has neglected the voices of Black people, their communities, and their cultures. We will use the HistoryMakers archive to evidence the agency of Black people and their relationship to family, providing visual media to complement literature on Black life and family. Students will leave the course with the language and skills to imaginatively communicate the nuances of Black family life.”

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