The
Center for the Study of Local Knowledge has initiated a series of
investigations on and related to the theme of local knowledge. Each
of these studies feature an interdisciplinary group of academic
and lay scholars dedicated to developing new and innovative research
designs and methods. In addition, these projects illuminate new
and novel ways in which conceptions of local knowledge can critically
inform and enhance research and teaching.
Research
Theme
Local Knowledge and Constructions of Gender, Race, and Nation |
Project:
Mapping Monticello's Diaspora
Description:
The
Monticello plantation and surrounding communities in Central Virginia
provide a unique interpretive space on which to map discourses of
gender and race in the construction of citizenship and national
belonging. Monticello's history, from the eighteenth century to
the present, represents a number of "overlapping diasporas:"
the extension of plantation slave societies in the eighteenth-century
Atlantic World; the intellectual universe of Thomas Jefferson, author
of Notes on the State of Virginia; the lived experience of
enslaved Africans and their descendants; and, today a contested
site of memory - for some, a shrine to America's democratic ideals,
for others a symbol of America's most humbling failures.
Project:
Mapping Local Knowledge: Danville, Virginia 1945-1975
Description:
This
collaborative project will collect and examine oral histories of
residents of the City of Danville, Virginia in order to begin to
comprehend how residents understood citizenship and community over
space and time. The main research thrust will focus on the social,
political, and cultural dynamics of the Holbrook-Ross neighborhood,
a segregated African-American neighborhood that developed in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. This project promises to shed
light on the nature of residents' connections to and interactions
with local, state, and national places, people, and ideas. Through
the collection and analysis of oral histories, we may come to better
understand constructions of gender, race, and nation as well as
how meaning is constructed and ascribed to "sites of memory."
Research
Theme
Constructions of Local Knowledge |
Project:
Research
Theme
Production, Reproduction, and Representations of Local Knowledge
|
Project:
Research
Theme
Local Knowledge and Cultures of Globalization |
Project:
Research
Theme
Economic, Political, and Intellectual Challenges of Local
Knowledge |
Project:
Local Knowledge and Public Health
Description:
In collaboration
with the Center for Global Health and the Center for Improving Minority
Health, the Center for the Study of Local Knowledge will launch
a series of investigations examining historical and contemporary
relationships between local knowledge and public health. This project
is particularly interested in the implications of local knowledge,
as articulated in and through medical discourses, in constructions
of gender, ethnic, and racial identities and the impact on public
health policy.
Research
Theme
Local Knowledge and Public Policy |
Project:
Local Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights
Description:
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