CHR Fellow, Professor Yevette Richards, Awarded NEH Fellowship

CHR Fellow, Professor Yevette Richards, Awarded NEH Fellowship

We are thrilled to announce that former CHR fellow, Professor Yevette Richards, has been awarded a prestigious and highly competitive fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Professor Richards' project, “The Intimacy of Racial Violence in Northern Louisiana: Tracing Terror through Family Networks,” which she worked on as a CHR fellow in Spring 2022, examines Black and white family interactions across generations and parishes as a framework for understanding not only the interconnectivity of violent eruptions but also the interpersonal oppression Blacks faced who lived near and worked within the family networks of their tormentors. In identifying the members of white family networks, which included legal authorities, the study exposes the high level of collusion that sustained a system of racial terror. A major goal of her study is to break the silences imposed on Black survivor families and witnesses by creating new narratives from the records of the dead and the memories of the living. "

"The time spent with my fellowship cohort," Professor Richards says of her time as a CHR fellow "discussing our research projects and other literature, such as that of Saidiya Hartman, was invaluable for the further conceptualization of my book project on powerful kinship networks connected to racist violence in north Louisiana. These exchanges helped me not only with the articulation of histories in which Black voices have been suppressed but also the reconceptualization of my book chapters, which served as a critical component of my successful NEH fellowship application. Having the generous feedback of my cohort as well as time away from teaching to concentrate on my writing was a remarkable gift."

Professor Richards is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Art History and in African and African American Studies.