Guest Chair's Corner: Connie Frey Spurlock, PhD
In 2018, I was asked to be part of a team to develop a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Campus Center at SIUE. In January 2020, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) named SIUE a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Center site. One of my responsibilities as a TRHT team member is the E-Stories Project, an infrastructure for sharing and documenting the experiences of community members through digital storytelling. By highlighting the lived experiences of East St. Louisans and SIUE students, staff and faculty who call East St. Louis home, our hope is to present a more positive image of the city and raise awareness about the effects of structural racism on the city. Sociology seniors are well-suited for this kind of project given their understanding of equity, diversity and social justice, so I contacted Sandra Weissinger, Ph D, associate professor in the SIUE Department of Sociology, who was teaching the fall senior assignment course to see if she would be interested in collaborating with the project. She was and embedded E-Stories into the class.
I am also the director of the SIUE Successful Communities Collaborative. As such, I am always thinking about how to approach an issue from a collaborative and trans-disciplinary framework. In other words, I seek ways to include multiple academic disciplines as well as experts from outside the University, experts who have knowledge informed not necessarily by formal education but by life experience, elder wisdom and ancestral teachings. Connecting a second discipline to the E-Stories Project was easy because Kathryn Bentley, associate professor in the SIUE Department of Theater and Dance and TRHT team member, was excited about the E-Stories Project and is, among other things, creative director for SIUE’s Black Theater Workshop (BTW). Connecting with a partner outside of the University was equally easy for the folks at I Am East St. Louis, The Magazine have been telling the stories of East St. Louis residents since 2016 to present a positive image of the city. Communications Director Antwoinette Ayers is our point of contact at the magazine.
After much planning over the summer, Prof. Weissinger’s sociology students and Prof. Bentley’s BTW students collaborated to collect oral histories from the first cohort of E-Storytellers in Fall 2020. Ms. Ayers worked closely with the class, advising them both as a technical expert and an East St. Louis resident. My role was to support students by connecting them to East St. Louis residents and developing the necessary technical supports with Seth Walker, sociology minor and URCA assistant.
This semester students have been busy working with the data (oral histories) collected in the fall. An early result is the SIUE Black Theater Workshop’s 2021 production, a series of recorded performances inspired by E-stories. An interdisciplinary team of URCA assistants are using 21st century digital skills to preserve, honor and share the stories with the world through website development and social media outreach. Ms. Ayers continues to mentor and advise students engaged in the project. Be sure to watch the SIUE Department of Sociology's FaceBook, Instagram and Twitter pages for links to follow when they are available.
Connie Frey Spurlock, PhD
Associate Professor, SIUE Department of Sociology
Director, Successful Communities Collaborative
