Deborah Willis, one of the nation's leading historians of African American
photography and curator of African American culture, will visit Syracuse University
on April 8 to talk about the importance of preserving the history of African American
communities in Syracuse through a photography archive.
Willis will speak on "Reflections in Black" at 4 p.m. in Maxwell Auditorium. The
presentation, sponsored by the Syracuse University South Side Initiative, Light
Work, U.Encounter, the Onondaga Historical Association and the Community Black
History Preservation Project, is free and open to the public. Parking will be available
in the Irving Garage.
Willis will talk about the value of photographs in documenting history, and how they
can be woven into the Community Black History Preservation Project currently
underway in Syracuse. The project, developed last year by the South Side Initiative
Office, iSchool Professor of Practice Kenneth Lavender and
African American Studies
Associate Professor Joan Bryant, is aimed at collecting and preserving the history of
black people in Syracuse. Bryant is currently working on developing an oral history
collection and will offer two workshops in April. Bryant will conduct an oral history
fair on Wednesday, April 1, from 5:30-7 p.m. at the Dunbar Center, 1453 S. State St.,
Syracuse. She will present a second workshop on how to use the Internet to research
family history at Mercy Works, 1221 S. Salina St., on Wednesday, April 15, at 5:30
p.m. Both workshops are sponsored by the South Side Initiative in partnership with
SU's Department of African American Studies. Those interested in attending the
workshops can register by calling 443-1916.
Willis is University Professor and chair of the photography and imaging department
at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and holds an affiliated
appointment with the university's Africana Studies Program. She was a 2005
Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, a 2000 MacArthur Fellow and the 1996
recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Award.
Her work was exhibited in SU's Light Work Gallery in 2003-04.
The South Side Initiative is a partnership between the Southside Community
Coalition and SU's Faculty for Community Engagement, a group of professors
committed to participatory research that benefits the City of Syracuse. The goal of
the initiative-which is part of the University's commitment to Scholarship in
Action?-is to restore, revitalize and rejuvenate Syracuse's South Side
neighborhood.
