AFAM Grad Student Spotlights: BRAVE Mini-Grant Awards!

Gathered by: Chera Jo Watts

Last year marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave, an anthology that solidified Black Women's Studies as a field of inquiry centering the voices, experiences, and intellectual contributions of Black women. The book was co-edited by UGA emeritus professor, Dr. Patricia Bell-Scott.

In honor of this important anniversary, the Institute for Women’s Studies and the Institute for African American Studies proudly sponsored a reading group to revisit (and for some of us, visit for the first time) selections from this revolutionizing text and other recent work highlighting its impact. In October 2022, over thirty faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students, and community members participated in this group, which culminated in an afternoon of food and discussion held at the Miller Learning Center on UGA’s campus.

Following this generative meeting, UGA students had the opportunity to apply for mini-grants in response to the BRAVE reading group. Ranging from $100-$250 per award, these mini-grants allowed for creative responses to the book. The Institute for African American Studies extends congratulations to the following graduate certificate students selected for these awards: Chanara Andrews-Bickers, Sha’Mira Covington, Sophia Flemming, and Chera Jo Watts.

Awarded students will discuss their work at the Women’s Studies Student Symposium scheduled in the afternoon on Friday, February 24, 2023. All are welcome to join, and prospective attendees should reach out to the Institute for Women’s Studies regarding symposium scheduling information. We invite you to keep reading for information about each of these students and their BRAVE mini-grant projects!

Congratulations to Chanara Andrews-Bickers on her forthcoming roundtable, “But Some of Us are Sad: Exploring Sisterhood as Salvation in Graduate Education,” featuring a multifaceted discussion regarding sisterhood and communal support as we navigate graduate school (and beyond). A graduate of Spelman College (B.A. English, 2019) with a concentration in Black Cultural Studies, Chanara Andrews-Bickers is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in the English Department. As Assistant Director of the UGA Writing Center and instructor of Multicultural Literature and First-Year Writing courses, Chanara honors the lives and experiences of diverse groups of students, supporting them as they combine the conventions of writing with their own unique perspectives and approaches. Chanara's broad research interests include self-scrutiny and self-exploration within contemporary African Diasporic Literature and Culture. She is specifically concerned with how Black women writers of the South engage in these processes to develop individual or collective ethics while creating, maintaining, and nurturing their communities. Chanara is the recipient of the Humanities Without Walls Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, the R. Baxter Miller Award in African American and Multicultural Literature, and the Lee Roy B. Giles Encouragement Award in the Institute for African American Studies.

Also, we congratulate Sha’Mira Covington, Sophia Flemming, and Chera Jo Watts. These graduate certificate students will give presentations as panelists for the “Student Responses to But Some of Us Are Brave,” session. Sophia Flemming’s project consists of a rhetorical auto-ethnography. Sophia is a 2nd-year doctoral student in Communication Studies with an emphasis on rhetorical studies. In general, Flemming studies African American or Black rhetorics--specifically Black feminist and Womanist rhetorics from the 18^th until the 21^st centuries. Her research focuses on what topics Black women communicate about, why they communicate the way they do, when they communicate about their experiences and epistemologies, who Black women will and must interact and engage with in their communications, and most importantly, how they communicate interpersonally and in public situations or spaces. Right now, Flemming’s primary work is about Ida B. Wells-Barnett—a late 19^th-early 20^th century activist who wrote about the atrocities of lynching and campaigned for the eradication of it as well as shining a light on other racial and gender social injustices that Black people endured. Flemming earned an M.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Georgia, where she focused on Ida B. Wells' pamphlets and completed a Graduate Certificate from UGA's Institute of Women's Studies.  She also holds a B.A. in English Literature and a minor in Women's Studies from Georgia College & State University, where she spent time doing graduate work in Literature on Black Feminist Thought and Black Women Writers.

Finally, Sha’Mira Covington and Chera Jo Watts are currently co-facilitating a Rest is Resistance book club as a direct response to But Some of Us Are Brave. Meetings for the book club began in January and will continue until the beginning of March. During the symposium, they will report on the progress of their book club thus far and connect it with themes from the BRAVE book club. Sha'Mira is a PhD candidate in the Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Interiors and the Institute for African American Studies. Her research explores fashion and dress as cultural, historical, social, and political processes involved in and affected by histories of colonial domination, anti-colonial resistance, and processes of decolonization. She is currently working on an exhibit installation with the Fashion for Good Museum in Amsterdam entitled Curative: Healing the Fashion-Industrial Complex through Cotton History. Watts is a first-year doctoral student in the Religion Department and Institute for African American Studies. She is a mother, writer, yoga practitioner, gardener, and first-generation college student. Watts completed her M.A. in Religion and a graduate certificate in African American Studies at UGA in May 2022. She also holds a B.S. in Psychology from UGA (2010). Her current research interests broadly include decolonizing teaching and learning pedagogies, especially those inspired by Womanist-Buddhist and Black Buddhist thought, practice, and modes of being in the world. She is currently working on a paper for the upcoming bell hooks symposium at the bell hooks center at Berea College where she reflects upon living out a love ethic as an active, ongoing practice reinforced by hooks’s Black Buddhist and Black Feminist identities. The Rest is Resistancebook club offers Watts and Covington the opportunity to invite reflections for themselves, their students, and others from a duo-ethnographic approach and serves to facilitate this active, ongoing, decolonizing practice.

Again, we hope that you will join us for these generative presentations on Friday, February 24, 2023. If you are interested in learning more about our programs in the Institute for African American Studies, we encourage you to reach out to our general email address: afam@uga.edu. Prospective undergraduate major or minor students should email our academic advisor, Jessa Couch, (couchj@uga.edu) to schedule a meeting to discuss their interests. Prospective graduate certificate students should email our Associate Director, Dr. Lesley Feracho, (lferacho@uga.edu) to schedule a meeting to discuss their interests and potential program of study. Do reach out, and let us know how we can support you!