Nishani Frazier

Visiting Fellow

Duration of Stay: 22 June – 22 July 2022

The Leibniz ScienceCampus Europe and America in the Modern World is delighted to welcome Prof. Dr. Nishani Frazier to Regensburg as a visiting fellow from June 22 to July 22 2022. She is Associate Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Kansas. Her areas of research include African American History, including freedom, resistance and social movements; gentrification; oral history and historical methods; and digital history and black digital humanities. Before taking up her post at Kansas, she was Associate Curator of African American History and Archives at Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS), Assistant to the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Archives at the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and personal assistant for Dr. John Hope Franklin, before and during his tenure as chair of President Bill Clinton's advisory board on "One America". She was also professor at the Miami University, Ohio.

Her most recent book publication is Harambee City: The Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the Rise of Black Power Populism (University of Arkansas Press, 2017), was released with an accompanying website also titled Harambee City. She is has published extensively in academic journals and edited volumes, as well as on scholarly blogs, while also producing digital history projects showcasing her oral history studies on black urban history, resistance and social movements, including Voices of the Displaced: The Fight Over Sound and Space Gentrification. For more on Nishani Frazier and her publication record click here.

Black histories of gentrification will be the focus of her lecture in the CITAS and ScienceCampus lecture series on Monday, 27 June, at 18:15 in H19 at UR. In her talk, “The Sounds of Blackness: How Gentrification Silences and Displaces Belonging”, she will look at how gentrification in Durham, NC, impacted black community members and how memory preservation plays a role in resisting and transforming processes. Such ‘memory resistance’ serves a key role in creating senses of home, spatial regimes and social borders. This talk will focus on black voices about home as cornerstones for instilling life and belonging into place.

While in Regensburg, Nishani will also part of a meet-and-greet event on 29 June at 18:00 organized by REAF and held at CITAS (SG.214, UR). Here you will have an opportunity to learn more about Kansas University and Nishani’s work, getting to know her in a more informal atmosphere. She is also open to offering a workshop with graduate students and doctoral researchers, as well as learning more about NGOs, activist groups, and other civil society activities in and around Regensburg. She will give a masterclass on 13 July, drawing on her experience in developing digital humanities projects.

Photo: Nishani Frazier