Prof. Fiona Vernal-Wright from history will be offering URBN 4990-006 this spring in Storrs.
Prof. Vernal-Wright will be offering an internship that is customizable for the students. A team of students under her supervision will work towards the common goal of researching the history of housing access and discrimination in the greater Hartford area from the 1940s. Students will read widely for a month in the literature around African American, West Indian and Puerto Rican migration to the regions, around the rise and fall of public housing and the history of Fair Housing Act and other civil rights interventions. Students will end their readings with Matthew Desmond’s Evicted.
Students will delve into different areas of the research–photo collections, newspaper articles from various archival collection at HPL and Dodd, and the state library. Students will meet as a team to digest the research and to begin crafting a 20-22 panel exhibition that will premiere at the Thomas J. Dodd center in April and run through the summer. The hope is that the exhibit might travel throughout the state and that another team can iterate a curriculum guide for teachers.
Students should be encouraged to contact Prof. Vernal-Wright with any questions or for a permission number.