Become a  Fellow

The Consortium of Studies in Race, Migration, and Sexuality is pleased to announce our theme, “Our Moment of Danger: Studying Race, Migration and Sexuality in the 21st Century Academy,” for the Undergraduate Fellows program for the 2021-22 academic year. The Fellowship is a two-term sequential investigation of the lessons and legacies of the work of George Lipsitz, Professor of Black Studies and Sociology, whose book, American Studies in a Moment of Danger celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. In his book, Lipsitz shows how people have made sense of themselves and discovered collective, resistive power in moments of crisis through performance.  He argues that  this potential resides in us, as academics, who have the ability and obligation to confront an “indecent social order” that has routinely appeared on our collective horizons over the last century.  During peak moments of cruelty and inequality—particularly the Great Depression, the Vietnam War era, the Right-wing cultural backlash of the 1980s—artists, activists, and academics mustered creativity that fought the oppressive forces threatening our workplace, our nation, our world.  His book and career have been a beacon for those who want to combat “institutionalized pessimism” that invites us to turn inward or against one another rather than to build collectives that elevate our scholarship and the potential for transformation.   Now twenty-years old, American Studies in a Moment of Danger still inspires a brand of interdisciplinary studies that we in Race, Migration, and Sexuality think is critical and useful for our own time. 

As we emerge from the pandemic and a divisive electoral season, we find ourselves, once again, immersed in a new moment of danger that Lipsitz warns is always lurking among us.  The social fabric of today seems equally if not more frayed than the periods he studied in his foundational book—the 1930s, 1960s, and 1980s.  Each one of these decades had their challenges but the question of the role popular culture plays in responding to these challenges is consistent over these decades and remains fundamental to the present.  What must we do as individuals and an institution to build a more equitable and representative profession so that this work will flourish?

For the 2021-2022 academic year, Dartmouth’s Race, Migration, and Sexuality will embrace the challenges raised by Lipsitz twenty years ago by inviting scholars to series of events and workshops that will ask the following questions:  What are the dangers that threaten us in our own time?  How do these dangers compare to previous generations?  What can we learn from those who have responded to these dangers, inside and beyond academia?  Has Dartmouth facilitated an adequate and effective response to these dangers, and how does it ensure that all voices and perspectives are heard and respected?