Ashley Ip and Yashita Kandhari, A History of Asians and Asian Studies at Davidson
This article chronicles the work produced by a Stories (Yet) to be Told grant project, “A History of Asians and Asian Studies at Davidson.” This project records the untold stories of Asians at Davidson through oral history. Through this, we can understand the various ways in which Asian students, faculty, and staff have been a part of Davidson’s history.
Jaylen Thompson, The Consumption of Rap Music at a Predominantly White Institution
On a national scale, Black people in America continue to face interpersonal and systematic acts of racism. Meanwhile, rap music, a genre rooted in Black culture and history, has emerged as the most popular genre in the United States. To investigate the disconnect between the treatment of black people and the escalating popularity of rap music, this study focuses on the function and memory of rap music at Davidson College. Davidson is a small, highly selective liberal arts college located just north of Charlotte, North Carolina that has a predominantly white undergraduate student body. Rap music is prevalent on Davidson’s campus, especially in the college’s party scene. Site observation conducted at Davidson’s Martin Court apartments, a popular party scene on campus, and one-on-one interviews with students reveal how students use rap music as a tool to satisfy their personal, social, affective, and cognitive needs. Students use rap to form and affirm their identities, to entertain themselves, to navigate interpersonal interactions, to manage their mood, and to learn. Furthermore, this study finds that only eight of the eighteen participants demonstrate an understanding rap’s cultural significance and history. Increased education about both the historical beauty and oppression that created and molded rap into the genre it is today will dismantle the preexisting stereotypes and historical memory associated with Black people and rap music.
Professor Rose Stremlau, Inclusive Histories of Davidson College
This opinion piece written by Professor Rose Stremlau, a faculty member in Davidson’s History and Gender and Sexuality Studies departments, focuses on her work re-examining Davidson College’s history through the Inclusive Histories archive. This essay details the importance of “trying to understand the past from the margins in” and reconsidering the way Davidson presents its history.
Ross Hickman, “I’m Still Here”: Black Women and the Politics of Belonging at Davidson College in the 1970s
Given the knowledge that Davidson College has historically been a school almost exclusively for White and male students, navigating life at Davidson as some of the first Black female students to fully matriculate in the 1970s was difficult, bewildering, and formative for Denise Renee Blackwell and Olivia Ware. For Blackwell and Ware, focusing on their marginalized status was neither a practical nor possible option at a school with so few Black students and professors. But Blackwell and Ware fashioned their own kinds of resilience, consciousness, and belonging—in ways that may not be as legible through the contemporary hermeneutics of race and gender. Despite its challenges, attending and belonging at Davidson College was a matter of insistence—one that Blackwell and Ware, as well as many other Black women, have kept insisting to this day.
Ella Nagy-Benson, From Luxuries to Necessities: Davidson’s Laundry Facility Turned Resource Center
This paper explores the history of a building on Davidson College’s campus that currently houses the Lula Bell’s Resource Center, an organization that aims to address socioeconomic disparities between students on campus. From 1925 until 2015, however, the building functioned as a laundry facility for students. I examine why and how the changes in the building’s function occurred and ultimately uncover the ways in which this building has played a role in Davidson College’s fraught history with race and racism.