By D. Thompson
The University System of Maryland (USM) has awarded a prestigious Wilson H. Elkins Professorship to Dr. Karen Cook-Bell, associate professor and chair of the Department of History and Government. The professorship supports USM professors and researchers who demonstrate exemplary ability to inspire students and whose professional work and scholarly endeavors make a positive impact at their institutions.
Dr. Cook-Bell received a $75,000 award to establish the W.E.B. DuBois Center for the Study of Black Experience to encourage and disseminate research about African American and African diaspora. She said the center was named for DuBois because he represents a model of engaged interdisciplinary and internationally-minded scholar-activism.
The center will focus on developing innovative research projects that enhance the learning of students, faculty, and staff across the USM and the general public. Prompted by issues of race emerging in the national political discussion, the DuBois Center will be deeply aligned with humanities scholarship and a topic of national historic significance: enslavement and freedom in the United States.
“We want the Center to be known for its evidence-based research first and foremost,“ said Dr. Cook-Bell. “What’s absolutely imperative is that HBCU students in Africana Studies-related and interdisciplinary programs are integrally involved with the research projects and other programs that will be created at the DuBois Center.
Emphasis will be placed on the relevancy of Africana Studies to contemporary life, particularly focusing on the experiences of communities of African descent in the Americas and fostering international perspectives on Maryland’s HBCU campuses in an era of increasing globalization and intercultural contacts. The center will also engage in collaborative initiatives wherever possible with other academic centers, foundations and institutes on USM campuses.
Research at the DuBois Center will build on expertise of BSU history and government faculty to include topics related to slavery and freedom, Black politics, Black internationalism, philosophies of liberation, race and philosophy and African government and politics. The center will also address contemporary issues related to social justice movements and critical race theory.
Cook-Bell’s Elkins Professorship is for two years. She expects to complete program planning, identify research and be prepared to open the Center for fall semester of 2024.
Her areas of specialization include slavery and the slave trade, the Civil War and Reconstruction and women’s history. She is the author of Claiming Freedom: Race, Kinship, and Land in Nineteenth Century Georgia (University of South Carolina Press, 2018), which won the Georgia Board of Regents Excellence in Research Award; and Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Her latest book, Running from Bondage, was a finalist for the Pauli Murray Book Prize for the Best Book in African American Intellectual History from the African American Intellectual History Society.
The Wilson H. Elkins Professorship honors the late Wilson H. Elkins, who led the University of Maryland flagship campus to new levels of distinction as its president from 1954 to 1978.
