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Friends! This weekend is the Atlanta Pen Show and half “the Desk” will be in attendance. Ana will be her delightful pink-haired self at the Vanness tables, and Jesi will be ink-whispering for Dromgooles. If you’re in the area, this really is a don’t miss show. And stop by and say hi – Ana and Jesi would love to meet you!
This is last year’s Atlanta video (2022)!
For those of us who are having a serious case of FOMO, there is a wonderful way to virtually visit the show. On Friday afternoon, sometime between 3 and 4pm EST, Mike Matteson from Inkdependence will broadcast live on YouTube from the show, and take you on a tour of the vendor market. He’ll chat with vendors, see some friendly faces along the way and generally make you feel ALMOST like you’re really there. And if you can’t make it live, the broadcasts are recorded so you can peruse them at your leisure. It’s a great way to get a feel for a pen show, see new merch from vendors you love, and more! While it will never take the place of actually getting to attend a show, it’s a fun experience and Mike does a great job. (and I may have succumbed to a little online shopping in the past… allegedly).
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Clark Atlanta University has announced the relaunching and renaming of the Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy. The entity will now be known as the W.E.B. DuBois Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy.
“Dr. DuBois was an eminent scholar who spent much of his career at Atlanta University conducting cutting-edge research on the social and political conditions of Black people in the South,” said George T. French Jr., president of Clark Atlanta University. “It is only fitting that this policy center bears his name.”
The DuBois Policy Center will focus on three areas: the American South, the Global South, and university initiatives. The center will revive the Status of Black Atlanta and the Georgia Legislative Review, for which it was known for decades. Moreover, it will also commit to expanding its research into the African diaspora.
Joseph L. Jones, an associate professor of political science, has been named executive director of the center.“I am happy to continue in the tradition of Dr. DuBois to conduct serious research that leads to real policy solutions for Black people here and abroad,” said Dr. Jones.
Dr. Jones joined the faculty at Clark Atlanta University in 2021. He is the former president of Arkansas Baptist College. Professor Jones is a graduate of Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he majored in political science. He holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science from Clark Atlanta University.
Elizabeth Armstrong-Mensah, clinical associate professor in the School of Public Health at Georgia State University in Atlanta, has been honored with the 2023 Early Career Teaching Excellence Award from the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health. The honor is given to one faculty member each year from among the 138 member institutions in the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health. The award recognizes faculty for outstanding teaching and mentoring of students in public health research, teaching, and practice.
“My passion for teaching and mentoring is rooted in the fact that I want every student I teach or mentor to excel,” Dr. Armstrong-Mensah said. “When I was a student in college, I benefited immensely from faculty who were passionate about the courses they taught. Their approach helped me excel in my studies. When I became a faculty member, I remembered how I had been taught and decided to pay it forward.”
Through the Undergraduate and Graduate Research and Publications Club, Dr. Armstrong-Mensah works with students to develop research that addresses a range of public health challenges. To date, more than 100 students have participated in the club, with more than 50 students publishing peer-reviewed research publications that advance knowledge as part of their club engagement experience.
“Dr. Armstrong-Mensah is dedicated to ensuring that students have learning experiences — both inside the classroom and out — that prepare them to make a difference in the health of communities,” said School of Public Health Dean Rodney Lyn. “I am thrilled that she has been recognized with this significant honor.”
Dr. Armstrong-Mensah joined the faculty at Georgia State University in 2017 after working for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and teaching at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. She holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a master’s degree in international affairs from the University of Ghana. She earned a Ph.D. in international affairs and development from Clark Atlanta University.
Here is this week’s news of grants or gifts to historically Black colleges and universities or for programs of particular interest to African Americans in higher education.
Clemson University in South Carolina received a $3,445,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the creation of a Black Heritage Trail on campus and in the cities of Seneca and Clemson. The Black Heritage Trail will feature walking trails that connect heritage sites with interactive signs, artwork, and digital content that share the stories of local Black history and South Carolina historical markers at significant historic sites. The Black Heritage Trail project on the Clemson campus will be led by Rhondda Thomas, the Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature and the faculty director of the Call My Name research project, which for more than 15 years has researched and shared the stories of Black people throughout Clemson University history through books, tours, exhibits and more. Professor Thomas holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Georgia, a master’s degree in literature from the University of New Hampshire, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland.
Historically Black North Carolina Central University received a $1.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to train teachers to work with special-needs children. Thirty-two teacher candidates will earn a teaching license in a special education-adapted or general curriculum, as well as training to improve the outcomes of students who have high-intensity needs in the classroom. High-intensity needs include a complex array of disabilities, including significant cognitive, physical or sensory disabilities, significant autism, or significant emotional or learning disabilities, including dyslexia. This population also includes students with disabilities that require intensive, individualized interventions.
Coppin State University, the historically Black educational institution in Baltimore, received a $3.9 million grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration that will be used to fund a collaborative broadband internet pilot program that will improve connectivity and access for economically disadvantaged and underserved communities in Baltimore. Coppin State University students will be recruited to become Digital Navigators who will help low-income community members locate affordable broadband services and devices. They will also assist community members with learning to use broadband-enabled technology to foster greater digital inclusion. Nearly 30 percent of households in West Baltimore are without a computer. In addition, roughly 46 percent of households are without a broadband subscription.
The Toro Company is joining with the Atlanta University Center Consortium and its dual degree engineering program to expand opportunities for Black students to pursue careers in engineering. The Toro Company, headquartered in Bloomington, Minnesota, has committed $375,000 to fund scholarships for engineering students from Atlanta University Center Consortium member institutions. The grant includes financial assistance for tuition and indirect costs associated with student scholarships. In addition to scholarships, the company will provide paid internship opportunities for students in the dual degree engineering program to gain deeper experiences across its many businesses.
Our favorites this week included the truth behind the term “burnout,” an incisive analysis of rap scapegoating, flowers for an aging icon, the beauty of noticing hidden wildlife, and an engaging look at history’s forgotten children. We hope you enjoy them as much as we did.
Bench Ansfield | Jewish Currents | January 3, 2023 | 3,358 words
I might have recommended this essay based on the excellent headline alone, but in fact the substance is the star of the show. Like many millennials, I have adopted the term “burnout” into my vocabulary as a way of describing the feeling of working too hard, juggling too much, and feeling depleted by the grinding expectations of late-stage capitalism. After reading this piece, I’ll be endeavoring to use the word differently. As historian Bench Ansfield shows, the true origins of burnout as a concept have been obscured over time. Burnout isn’t a reference to a candle burning at both ends until there’s nothing left, but to the shells of buildings left by a wave of arson that ravaged Black and brown neighborhoods in New York City in the ’70s. Much of the damage was caused by landlords looking for insurance payouts. “If we excavate burnout’s infrastructural unconscious — its origins in the material conditions of conflagration — we might discover a term with an unlikely potential for subversive meaning,” Ansfield writes. “An artifact of an incendiary history, burnout can vividly name the disposability of targeted populations under racial capitalism — a dynamic that, over time, has ensnared ever-wider swaths of the workforce.” If this were the premise of a college class, I’d sign up in a heartbeat. —SD
Justin A. Davis | Scalawag | February 9, 2023 | 4,089 words
Put aside the chewy headline for a moment. Also put away whatever you know or don’t know about Young Thug, one of Atlanta’s most influential rap luminaries for a decade, and the epicenter of a sprawling and questionable criminal investigation into his YSL crew. What you’ll find is a shrewd, fascinating analysis that combines a music obsessive’s encyclopedic genre knowledge and a Southerner’s geographical intimacy, refracted through a lens of accessible (a crucial modifier!) political theory. It ably unpacks the hydra-headed beast of gentrification and economics and policing, as faced by the young Black man who’s currently the Fulton County DA’s public enemy number one. “As working-class and poor Black Atlantans fight against displacement and fall back on everyday survival tactics,” Justin A. Davis writes, “they’re joining a decades-long struggle over who exactly the city’s for. So is YSL.” This sort of piece is exceedingly rare, not because of its form but because it demands an outlet that understands and nurtures its particular Venn diagram. Credit to Scalawag, and of course to Davis, for creating something this urgent. Required reading — not just for Thugga fans or Atlantans, but for anyone seeking to understand the world outside their own. —PR
Wright Thompson | ESPN | February 8, 2022 | 12,111 words
“No. 16 is no longer what it once was. Joe Montana now must be something else.” I haven’t kept up with American football in at least 20 years, but that didn’t stop me from devouring Wright Thompson’s astonishing profile of former 49er quarterback Joe Montana. I grew up watching the Niners (Ronnie Lott 4eva) and have fond memories of attending games at Candlestick as a child. But you certainly don’t need to be a Niner fan, a football fan, or even be into sports at all to appreciate this beautifully written and revealing piece. Thompson paints a portrait of a complicated man and an aging athlete — one of the greatest of all time — and what it’s like to watch someone else take over that throne. —CLR
Lucy Jones | Emergence Magazine | February 2, 2023 | 5,179 words
The forest path near us is a never-ending source of delight. I love being the first to see animal tracks in the snow. I look forward to the first yellow lady slippers that appear as if by magic near the marshy section, not to mention all the leaves and flowers as they sprout, and the myriad fungi that cling to the trees. Lucy Jones shares this wonder in nature (at slime molds in particular!) in Emergence Magazine. There she finds equal parts beauty, mystery, and wonder — a coveted yet all-too-elusive feeling nowadays — as she scans the forest for varieties that she’s just now starting to notice. “My eyes were starting to learn slime mold,” she writes. “My ways of seeing were altering, thanks to my new friends who were showing me what to look for. What was once invisible was quickly becoming apparent. It challenged my sense of perception. How little and how limited was my vision! How vast was the unknown world.”—KS
April Nowell | Aeon | February 13, 2023 | 4,400 words
April Nowell opens this piece with a delightful story about a Palaeolithic family taking their kids and dogs to a cave to do some mud painting, which feels like the modern-day equivalent of exhausted parents taking their offspring to McDonald’s and handing them a coloring book. I was instantly entranced. Such stories are rare, partly because evidence of children (with their small, fragile bones) is tricky for archaeologists to locate, but also because of assumptions that children were insignificant to the narrative. Nowell explains how, with the help of new archaeological approaches, this is changing, and the children of the Ice Age are getting a voice. I am ready to listen, so bring on these tales of family excursions and novices struggling to learn the craft of tool sculpting (as Nowell explains, “each unskilled hit would leave material traces of their futile and increasingly frustrated attempts at flake removal”). A Palaeolithic archaeologist and professor of anthropology, Nowell is an expert in this topic, but her vivid writing and human-based approach makes her fascinating field accessible to all. —CW
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It’s devilishly difficult to pick apart the tangled knot of policing, gentrification, and economics that besieged so many Black communities — but Justin A. Davis does so with agility and insight in this analysis of the deeply flawed criminal investigation against rapper Young Thug unfolding in Georgia.
In a city that’s been shaped by redlining, white flight, and crisscrossing transportation lines, Atlanta’s Black neighborhoods form a complex network of cultural transmission. This cultural network has led to the huge aesthetic diversity that’s defined Atlanta hip-hop, especially in the past decade. And it’s a huge contrast to the way these same neighborhoods are often politically isolated: deprived of city funding, resources, and infrastructure. Beneath these two trends—cultural diffusion and political isolation—there’s YSL’s Atlanta, a place built by the Black working class and urban poor in the shadow of state abandonment. This is a place built on the sensibilities of contemporary trap, where the everyday war stories of Bush-era Jeezy and T.I. have mixed with more than a decade’s worth of experiments in production and vocal style.
Robert D. Bullard, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University in Houston, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. The award honors outstanding leaders (both academics and practitioners) who have made significant contributions to the advancement of sustainability in higher education over their lifetimes. Dr. Bullard is the fifth recipient of this award.
“It is indeed a great honor to be named winner of the AASHE Lifetime Achievement Award,” Dr. Bullard said. “I accept this award on behalf of and in recognition of the many individuals and organizations I’ve worked in partnership with over the past four decades — who sacrificed, struggled, and persevered in pursuit of dismantling and eradicating injustice wherever and whenever we saw it.”
From 2011 to 2016, Dr. Bullard was dean of the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University. Prior to coming to TSU he was the founding director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University.
Dr. Bullard is the author or co-author of many books including Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality (Westview Press, 1990) and The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African American Communities (New York University Press, 2012).
Dr. Bullard is a graduate of Alabama A&M University. He earned a master’s degree at Atlanta University and a Ph.D. in sociology from Iowa State University.
Ingrid Thompson-Sellers is the new president of Atlanta Metropolitan State College (AMSC) in Georgia. She took office on February 1.
The college enrolls just over 1,600 students, according to the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education. African Americans make up 85 percent of the student body.
In 2017, Dr. Thompson-Sellers was appointed president of South Georgia State College in Douglas. Previously, she was a professor of business information systems at Georgia State University in Atlanta and had served as senior associate dean at the university. Earlier she taught at Georgia Perimeter College in Decatur and at what is now Iona University in New Rochelle, New York.
“AMSC’s strong academic mission and student-focused degree programs are a testament to its legacy of making higher education accessible to more Georgians,” Dr. Thompson-Sellers said. “I look forward to helping my new campus family continue blazing those new trails and thank my South Georgia State College family for their hard work and amazing support of the college and its students.”
Professor Thompson-Sellers holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. She earned a master’s degree in telecommunications from Iona University and a doctoral degree in instructional technology from Georgia State University.
The board of regents of the University System of Georgia has appointed Georj Lewis as president of Clayton State University in Morrow, Georgia. Since 2019, Dr. Clayton has been president of Atlanta Metropolitan State College (AMSC).
“Clayton State University helps metro Atlanta thrive with top-ranked programs including nursing and by being the best support for students as they improve social mobility and advance their dreams and careers,” Dr. Lewis said. “It’s an honor to join with Laker Nation’s faculty and staff to help cement its reputation as one of the best state universities in Georgia. I’m also incredibly grateful for the students, faculty, and staff of AMSC. It’s been an honor to be a part of their journey toward success.”
Clayton State University enrolls just over 6,000 undergraduate students and nearly 700 graduate students, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education. Women are 72 percent and Blacks are 64 percent of the undergraduate student body.
Prior to being named president of Atlanta Metropolitan State College, Dr. Lewis was vice president of student affairs at Georgia Southern University. Earlier, he was vice chancellor for student affairs at Indiana University Northwest and vice president for student affairs at Armstrong State University which was merged into Georgia Southern University.
Dr. Lewis holds a bachelor’s degree in business and accounting and a master’s degree in counseling/student personnel, both from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. He earned a doctorate in educational leadership from Georgia Southern University.
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