Roland Williams, Chair and Professor, English
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Raised in a Philadelphia rowhouse on Race Street, I am a CLA Professor who serves as the chair of the English department, where I teach courses on African American literature and American culture. I am the author of African American Autobiography and the Quest for Freedom in addition to Black Male Frames. Smooth Operating and Other Social Acts is my latest study which uncovers a knack for improvisation brought to life among African Americans by the birth of Black bondage in 1661. The latter book, beginning with a story about my son-of-a-slave grandfather’s resilience and resourcefulness, furnishes proof that African Americans have preserved their dignity and elevated their status by staying all eyes with an ear to the ground and the teeth to wing it, in effect practicing a brand of dissembling illustrated by Black characters in novels like The Conjure Woman (1899), Kindred (1979), and The Good Lord Bird (2013).
Overall, my research affirms that African Americans have conjured up swift means by which to surmount waves of trouble faced by them from the start of slavery in a land sold on liberty. During graduate school at Penn, I gathered evidence from reading slave narratives that African Americans akin to Br'er Rabbit in the Tar Baby tale have needed all their wits to avoid ruin since the enslavement of Blacks turned color into a status symbol. Then, it became my mission to spread the news. Read more here .
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FEATURED PUBLICATION
Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City
January 25, 2022
~Kevin Loughran (Assistant Professor, Sociology)
A new kind of city park has emerged in the early twenty-first century. Postindustrial parks transform the derelict remnants of an urban past into distinctive public spaces that meld repurposed infrastructure, wild-looking green space, and landscape architecture. For their proponents, they present an opportunity to turn disused areas into neighborhood anchors, with a host of environmental and community benefits. Yet there are clear economic motives as well―successful parks have helped generate billions of dollars of city tax revenues and real estate development.
Kevin Loughran explores the High Line in New York, the Bloomingdale Trail/606 in Chicago, and Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston to offer a critical perspective on the rise of the postindustrial park. He reveals how elites deploy the popularity and seemingly benign nature of parks to achieve their cultural, political, and economic goals. As urban economies have become restructured around finance, real estate, tourism, and cultural consumption, parks serve as civic shields for elite-oriented investment. Tracing changing ideas about cities and nature and underscoring the centrality of race and class, Loughran argues that postindustrial parks aestheticize past disinvestment while serving as green engines of gentrification.
A wide-ranging investigation of the political, cultural, and economic forces shaping park development, Parks for Profit reveals the social inequalities at the heart of today’s new urban landscape.
Watch the author discuss this book here.
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AWARD OF THE MONTH
Why do so few justice-involved individuals petition to have their criminal records expunged? Nyron Crawford, Assistant Professor of Political Science, explores this question with his recently awarded Russell Sage Foundation grant entitled, “Strike from the Record: Administrative Burden in Expungement of Criminal Records." While clearance/sealing policies are designed to help provide relief from the collateral consequences of an arrest or conviction, many do not proceed through the process. This is significant because record clearance is related to gains in employment and wages among justice-involved individuals and helps reduce re-offending. Yet take-up by those eligible for expungement remains low. This RSF-funded project investigates the ways in which different types of administrative burdens affect policy participation in this program, particularly among Black men. Although there is debate about the wisdom and consequences of clearing or sealing criminal records, few have evaluated the burdens of the policy’s design, its implementation gaps, or how either affects petitioning for relief.
"The problems defined in this project affect people I know and love; the economic mobility and other opportunities of so many like them are limited because of a criminal record. As a result, this work is a shift to problem-based, solution-oriented research, a kind committed to serving two goals: 1. advancing the wellbeing of communities and families and 2. advancing race equity in policymaking."
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