The Comparative Race, Society and Transformation Group was a Priority Area Research group funded by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research at Tufts. Building on the ongoing work of the Center for the Humanities at Tufts, and the newly-established Department of Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora, the CRST’s work encompasses both academic interdisciplinary research projects such as the Comparative Global Humanities initiative, as well as outwardly-focused conversations, such as the Boston African American Freedom Trail project.
Projects Funded by the CRST
Faculty Public Research Mini Grants (2020-2021)
Translating Race Lab (2021-2022)
Weekly Writing Community (2018-2020)
The Challenge
As we shift the humanistic lens of study from traditional disciplines to one of comparative global humanities, new global histories allow us to consider connection, exchange, and interdependency in ways that unsettle discretely bounded territories, recast received historical periods, and reconsider formerly studied “areas.” By focusing on cultural exchange, interpretation, and translation, the study of global humanities brings out ideas that have played deeply influential roles in the making of art, thought, culture, religion, and society, in the past and in the present, locally and across nations. Moreover, while the training and expertise in reading, interpretation, and analysis of culture and representation of our humanities approaches are essential for innovation across many disciplines, they form also the critical foundations for educating our students to be linguistic, cultural, and historical “translators” in the fullest sense of the term.
Solutions and Innovations
The goal of the CSRT group was to continue to create a model of global intellectual collaboration that will renew humanities research, innovate curricula, and ultimately, generate a model of academic study that can shape a new era for Tufts and for the next generation of humanists. Building on the ongoing work of the Center for the Humanities at Tufts, and the Department of Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora, this work encompasses both academic interdisciplinary research projects such as the Comparative Global Humanities initiative, as well as outwardly-focused conversations, such as the Boston African American Freedom Trail project. The CRST's Mellon Sawyer Seminar in Comparative Global Humanities provided a space of intellectual engagement for faculty to shape the kind of interdisciplinary research that is at the center of such innovative scholarship, much as an upcoming Mellon Sawyer Seminar titled Defamiliarizing the Family: Genealogy and Kinship as Critical Method will continue to do. Building on this model, our programming has encouraged those conversations around new research that offer group members a context that stimulates new research approaches and methodologies towards enriching both their individual research aims, and the global conversation.
Research Team
Leadership Team
Kendra Field
Kris Manjapra*
Lily Mengesha
Kamran Rastegar*
Working Group
Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe
Amahl Bishara
Kerri Greenidge
Charles Inouye
Khary Jones
Kareem Khubchandadi
Sarah Luna
Diana Martinez
Noe Montez
Adlai Murdoch
Annie Pfeifer
Adriana Zavala
*Project Co-Director
Postdoctoral Fellows
These postdoctoral fellows have been funded by the CRST group and have furthered the mission and scholarship of this project.
Hossein Ayazi (2018-2019)
Jackson Davidow, Translating Race Lab Fellow (2021-2022)
Olivia Michiko Gagnon, Culture, History and Translation Fellow (2019-2020)
Anny Gaul, Culture, History and Translation Fellow (2019-2020)
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes, Translating Race Lab Fellow (2021-2022)
