If we haven’t had a chance to meet yet, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Julia Carroll and I am the second research fellow for the Reckoning with the Racial History of Amherst College project. February marks the beginning of my fifth full month in this role.
Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, I’m a first-gen college grad who wound up in Massachusetts thanks to a love of (obsession with?) learning, and this led me to pursue graduate studies at UMass Amherst then Boston University. I am an interdisciplinarian by training, working at the intersection of History, Religious Studies, English, and American Studies. Questions that drive my own intellectual pursuits have to do with the dynamics between race/racism and space/place, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about the interplay between these things.
As the researcher for this project, I am tasked with chasing questions related to Amherst’s racial history. If you aren’t familiar with the history of the Reckoning project, the Steering Committee for a Racial History of Amherst College was established in late 2020 following the release of a comprehensive Anti-Racism plan formed under the direction of then-president Biddy Martin. The aim then, much as now, was to investigate the College’s ties to institutionalized enslavement; in other words, to get a sense of the college’s founding and funding sources. Over the subsequent two years, much research was conducted (largely remotely) by Amherst’s own Mike Kelly, head of Archives & Special Collections, as well as an array of undergraduate researchers, including Edmund Kennedy (‘23), Claire Dunbar (‘21), Cy Nguyen (’21), and Anna Smith (‘22). Their collective efforts, when combined with the conceptual framework emphasized by Professor Lisa Brooks – that is, the importance of centering the land when working to understand colonial legacies – has laid the foundation for this project and set the tone for researchers who followed in their wake.
In fall 2022, the project hired its first research fellow, historian Mike Jirik. During his year-long tenure, he synthesized information related to the earliest donors to the college then presented his findings at a panel discussion. I began my two-year tenure picking up where Mike left off and, in addition to spending ample time acquainting myself with the College’s history more broadly, have so far been exploring the source of monies donated in the 1840s. Additionally, I’ve spent some time revisiting notable donors from the previous century, namely the Parsons family who contributed the first tract of land upon which the Octagon now sits.
As President Elliott outlined at the start of this academic year, those of us doing work related to the Reckoning project have been charged with “advancing and coordinating campus initiatives to research and commemorate the history of Amherst College, particularly the Black and Indigenous histories of the College and the land that the College occupies,” so that is what I aim to do. While I’ve only been here a short time, my research so far has given me plenty of blog fodder, so keep an eye out for new posts this semester.
It is an honor to have the opportunity to put my skills as a historian and researcher to work in such a meaningful way. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about the project and/or becoming directly involved with it to email me or swing by my office on A-level in Frost Library, room A13.
Office Hours, Spring 2024: Tues-Thurs, 10am-11:30am