Curriculum Development Grant Awardees

2012-2013 Grantees

Kwame Dixon: “Jazz and Human Rights as Cultural Democracy” consists of a thematic seminar, live jazz concert and two courses,  “Civil Rights in the Age of Jazz,” taught by Dixon, and “Masters of American Black Music,” taught by Steinbeck. The project’s goal is to contextualize the history of jazz music and musicians as part of the overall struggle for human rights and democracy in the United States and across the globe. Students will examine how jazz musicians have theorized jazz and its connection to social context and place, and focus on the active voice of jazz musicians and their musical narratives that focus on issues of justice, democracy and human rights. Students will read about the history of U.S. civil rights and Afro-social movements through the lens of jazz. Guest speakers will include activists, scholars and musicians who will share their experiences of how jazz music and musicians influenced social movements during the 1950s and ’60s. There will be at least one jazz concert open to the public at the Community Folk Art Center.

Mary Kish: “The Near West Side – A Fresh Set of Eyes” will include documenting perspectives of young people in the Near West Side and sparking conversation among children, students and those working on revitalization efforts. As the Near West Side experiences rejuvenation and renewal, students from the Child and Family Study Department will help children who reside in the neighborhood to create images that resonate and reveal what it means to grow up in the Near West Side, what is important in their lives and how they experience changes in the neighborhood. These images will capture the sights and stories of the young residents and reflect their identification of place in this dynamic urban setting. The SU students will receive independent study credit for their work.

Renee Franklin Hill: “Library and Information Services to Students with Disabilities” will provide strategies to enhance the efforts of school librarians to develop programs and services, provide adequate facilities and select appropriate resources and technologies to meet the needs of K-12 students with disabilities. The course will augment student education by incorporating experiential learning that involves teams of SU students collaborating virtually with school librarians, classroom teachers and classes of students with disabilities from six Syracuse city schools. The collaborations will result in the K-12 students writing, illustrating and publishing a class book and hosting a Web-based book release party. Students from any major, including those working toward school library certification, are invited to enroll.

Jonathan Massey: “Upstate Modern: Housing” will engage students in the current national conversation sparked by the foreclosure crisis that raises new and important questions about the history of housing and public policy. Examining housing in the United States from the New Deal to the Clinton presidency through readings and discussions, students will learn about housing as a site of contestation over land, money and power. Workshops with city residents will teach students how to generate knowledge by engaging community members in a reciprocal dialogue to guide and share research. By creating a community history of a Syracuse housing project, the course will contribute to academic knowledge, public history and policy debates.

Sydney Hutchinson and Luis Castañeda: “Buscando América: Salsa and the Latin/American City” will explore salsa, a popular dance and musical form born out of the context of urban displacement and alienation, which has been defined by changes in the modern Latin American city, including its extensions into the barrios of Latino immigrants around the world. How can the interrelation between musical sound, dance movements and urban space be better understood, so as to gain a fuller understanding of salsa’s territorial implications? Students in the seminar will combine a close analysis of salsa music and dance with readings in urban, architectural and spatial theory; participate in artistic workshops and conversations on pressing local issues with members of the Latino community in Syracuse; and take a weekend trip to salsa sites in New York City. Students will also undertake community-based research projects that confront the multiple variations of salsa music and dance with other cultural forms (visual, spatial or literary) from the Americas.

2011-2012 Grantees

Robin Riley: “LGBT Archive”

Vincent Lloyd: “Religion and Community” explores the complicated conjunction of religion and community, focusing particularly on religiously-inflected forms of community that contribute to democratic life, through multidisciplinary readings, as well as hands-on experience with local community engagement initiatives.

2010-2011 Grantees

Marilyn Plavocos Arnone: “Digital iCreation in the Context of Community” (Awarded second year of funding. See 2009-2010 Grantees section, below, for description.)

Marjorie DeVault and Michael Schwartz: “Social Action Research: Campaign for Access” and “Disability Rights Clinic” (Awarded second year of funding. See 2009-2010 Grantees section, below, for description.)

Marion Wilson: “Social Sculpture: 601 Tully” (Awarded second year of funding. See 2009-2010 Grantees section, below, for description.)

Brian LonswayKathleen Brandt, and Jonnell Allen: “Syracuse Eats: Designing the Urban Food System” (Awarded second year of funding. See 2009-2010 Grantees section, below, for description.)

2009-2010 Grantees

John Burdick and Steve Parks: “Strategizing with Syracuse: Engaging Community Through Collaborative Action Research” trains five teams of undergraduate researchers in collaborative action research and places them in projects with community-based partners.Download syllabus.

Marjorie DeVault and Michael Schwartz: “Social Action Research: Campaign for Access” and “Disability Rights Clinic” engage students in research and outreach activities concerned with the legal, social, and organizational foundations of access to health care for the deaf community. Download syllabus.

Marilyn Plavocos Arnone: “Digital iCreation in the Context of Community” asks students to meet information needs of under-funded Syracuse-based community organizations by taking on real “information gaps” and producing digital media designed to resolve these gaps.Download syllabus.

Brian Lonsway, Kathleen Brandt,  and Jonnell Allen: “Syracuse Eats: Designing the Urban Food System” engages serious problems including lack of access to healthy, affordable food choices in many neighborhoods; the loss of regional food infrastructure; and the environmental consequences of an increasingly global system of food production and distribution.Download syllabus.

Anda French: “Spatial ConTXTs: Mobile Technologies as a New Medium for Spatial and Art Practices” studies the use of text messaging in downtown Syracuse and develops projects, based on the 160 character limit of the text message, to encourage public engagement. Download syllabus.

Marion Wilson: “Social Sculpture: 601 Tully” involves students in community-based, collaborative, and interdisciplinary design-build work through engagement in the design and construction of a sustainable storefront and art and literacy community center on the Near Westside of Syracuse. Download syllabus.

Lauren Unbekant: “Masks, Movement, and Giant Puppets” provides an overview of ways that performance contributes to urban revitalization. Download syllabus.

Adam Brown: “Interactive Projection Installation” fosters the idea that a traditional space can be transformed through the use of projected digital media. Download syllabus.

2008-2009 Grantees

Kristiina Montero: “Local Literacies, Global Visions” studies oral history research methods and narrative inquiry in educational contexts, and has college students document the life narratives of refugee students who are learning English as a second language. Download syllabus.

Barbara Tagg: “Practicum in Children’s Choir” involves Central New York music educators, internationally recognized musicians, SU students, and the Syracuse Children’s Choir. Download syllabus.

Alison Mountz, Margaret Himley, and Andrew London: “Queering Syracuse” implements pedagogical exercises that engage SU students as participant-observers in Syracuse communities to explore queer spaces, compile and share representations of daily urban living, and imagine the city and its residents as dynamic processes, sites, and populations. Download syllabus.

James Haywood Rolling, Jr.: “Rethinking Art Education Picture eBook Series” invites students from K-12 public schools and community classrooms to develop theme-based fine arts picture book products about their lives, communities, and social concerns in the form of published electronic books. Download syllabus.

Kendall Phillips, Joanna Spitzner, and Bradley Hudson: “Rhetorics of Public Memory: Syracuse’s 15th Ward” focuses on memories related to a Syracuse city neighborhood, adjacent to the University, which was destroyed by urban renewal in the early 1960s. Download syllabus.

Steve Davis: “South Side Community Coalition Monthly Newspaper” works with the South Side Community Coalition to produce The Stand, a monthly newspaper and companion online publication covering the 13205 Syracuse ZIP code. Download syllabus.

Murali Venkatesh: “Technology as Public Good” focus on information technology in order to enhance broad-based citizen participation in technology design, access, and use. Download syllabus.

Joan Bryant: “Black Syracuse: Organizing and Interpreting ‘Hidden’ Research Collections” organizes and interprets “hidden” African American research collections in the Syracuse region in order to heighten the public awareness of the African American community”s cultural, entrepreneurial, political, religious, and social roots in Syracuse. Download syllabus.

William Kelleher: “The Ethnography of the University: Studying Scholarship in Action” introduces undergraduate students to ethnographic methodologies, institutional analysis, and the research publication process through the development of ethnographic studies of Scholarship in Action, which educate the researchers about the university and contribute to the production of knowledge that will enable reflection and further the creativity of the work studied.Download syllabus.