The Course
Introduction to RCD (RCD 50) is one of the foundation courses for Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University. This course is frequently co-taught by a rotating set of two core department faculty members. In Fall 2022, Intro to RCD was taught by Courtney Sato and Sarah Fong. Professors Sato and Fong envisioned the course as one that would offer students a survey of a selection of keywords that inform the department’s research and teaching agenda. As cultural studies scholar Raymond Williams suggested in his seminal text, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Society and Culture, the job of a keywords project is to interrogate the varied meanings of key concepts, rather than to offer static definitions. As a course, Intro to RCD invited students to consider the contingent, contested, and varied meanings of concepts that they might encounter in the study of race, colonialism, and diaspora.
Each week of the semester highlighted a particular concept, including: race, colonialism, diaspora, indigeneity, feminism, empire, militarism, community, racial capitalism, incarceration, abolition, nations, borders, citizenship, and futurity. Acknowledging that the keywords they elected to include in their syllabus would inevitably provide only a partial view of the field, Professors Sato and Fong envisioned a project that would allow students to name and study concepts that mattered to them.
The Project
Over the course of the semester, the students in RCD 50 worked collectively to create a digital resource that explores the contingent, contested, and often contradictory valences of some of the keywords relevant to our field. The goal of this project is to create a comprehensive overview of each word and an accompanying repository of resources including scholarly texts; audio, visual, and multimedia artistic works; and primary source materials. The project prioritized collaborative learning practices as students collectively determined the priorities of the project and worked in small groups to design their keyword pages.
This public-facing digital collection will be linked to Tufts University’s Tisch Library website as a research guide accessible to Tufts students and faculty, as well as the broader public. As a publicly-accessible project, the collection seeks to support research and teaching that addresses issues of race, colonialism, and social justice in complex and nuanced ways.
This project was generously supported by a 2022-2023 Tufts University Deans of Arts & Sciences’ Start at the Source Grant; the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora; and Tisch Library. We are especially appreciative of Tufts Research Librarian for the Humanities, Micah Saxton, and course assistant, Wenxuan Xue, for their continual assistance throughout the project’s development.