BGHRA @ NJCU

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In late Summer 2022, I became co-PI on the Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium (DEFCon) Mellon Grant at New Jersey City University (NJCU). The DEFCon Grant, co-secured by Dr. Sonya Donaldson in 2021, aims to build digital ethnic studies/digital humanities capacity at under-resourced, regional public minority-serving, Hispanic-serving institutions, and/or Historically Black Colleges and Universities; it is a multi-campus grant. NJCU’s DEFCon supports NJCU faculty to pursue research or teaching enhancement in digital ethnic studies and the grant allows us to design a curriculum that meets 21st century student interests in the digital world. NJCU’s DEFCon also maintains that learning happens best when it is in collaboration with folks outside the institutional walls through Community Engaged Learning. To accomplish this, we select Artists in Residence and Community Partners to mentor our students through workshops and research collaboration.

I was excited to formally support the Black German Heritage and Research Association (BGHRA) as our chosen Community Partner. I hired Sheyla Prieto, a graduating senior Women’s and Gender Studies/History co-major, to assist with BGHRA’s digital video archive. To prepare for encountering the archive, Sheyla and I began the semester reading about archival ethics because Sheyla plans to pursue a graduate degree in either History or Library Science with a focus in Archives. Next, we read works on Black German Transnational Adoption as suggested by Drs. Rosemarie Peña and Sonya Donaldson. Then, we watched select videos from BGHRA’s playlist on the subject. We attended BGHRA’s 2023 conference too! Sheyla and I met with Drs. Peña and Donaldson a few times to ask questions about the material and fill in our knowledge gaps. Drs. Peña and Donaldson were patient professors who taught us a lot about transnational adoption, dekinning and rekinning, dual heritage identity, and World War II Black German history.

I took two things from this Community Partner experience: content knowledge and archival skills. My own family history threads through WWII as my paternal Polish Catholic grandparents were forced into a German labour camp during the war. They became refugees who resettled in Canada with my toddler dad in tow. While my knowledge of my family’s journey is minimal, sadly, I did not know anything about Black German transnational adoption heading into this project. As someone who studies the intersections between reproduction and race, I learned a lot about the transnational adoptee experience and dual heritage identity formation. I came to appreciate the tireless work Dr. Peña has done to document Black German history, which emphasizes conversation between academic researchers and those with lived experience – a truly rich learning opportunity! Not only did I come away with new content knowledge, but I also honed my archival skills. Tasked with creating keywords for the digital video archive had Sheyla and I pondering: what makes for a good search term to a general audience? How do keywords operate archivally, intellectually, and discursively? How do you choose three top keywords out of many that apply? I will go into future semesters better equipped to teach NJCU students not only how to conduct an oral history interview, but how to archive and catalogue oral histories for preservation. Thank you to the BGHRA for this exceptional opportunity. I look forward to building on this partnership next year!