Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2024
Texas Southern University is proud to announce that Trushna Parekh, Associate Professor of Geography, has been awarded a 2024 ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowship and Grant Program provides flexible support that attends to the research, teaching, and service commitments at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This year, the program will support 20 HBCU faculty scholars pursuing exceptional research projects in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.
Selected from a pool of more than 150 applications, Parekh has been recognized as one of eight fellows who will receive up to $50,000 each supporting long-term engagement with a significant research project. All awardees will also have access to networking and scholarly programming that aligns with their academic goals and institutional contexts. Each award includes an additional grant of $2,500 to the awardee’s home institution to support humanities programming or infrastructure.
"It is an honor to be among the inaugural eight faculty receiving this fellowship. The award contributes a great opportunity for innovative research to advance the mission of our institution and provides national recognition of the quality of our research in the humanities and social sciences at Texas Southern University."
Parekh’s research takes a place-based approach to examine how Mary's...Naturally, a key historic gay bar in Houston, continues to remain viable in community memory despite its closure due to gentrification. Mary’s operated from 1969 through 2009, making it one of the longest-serving gay bars in Houston. The building previously occupied by Mary’s, located in the gentrified Montrose District, is now the site of a coffee shop. Throughout the time it was open, the bar served as a grounding place for community building and political activism. When no funeral homes in the city were accepting the bodies of those afflicted with AIDS, the “outback” area of Mary’s became a space where countless memorial services were held during the AIDS crisis, and the ashes of numerous individuals were spread or buried on site. Although Mary’s has been closed for years, community remembrances continue to foreground the importance of this site. These community remembrances work against the erasures of gentrification as a counter-veiling force to materialist/capitalist constructions of space. This project works with communities of memory to conduct oral histories of Mary's patrons and draws on existing community archives to create digital histories of Mary's for the public, educators, and students.
“We are thrilled to award these outstanding scholars the inaugural ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowships and Grants,” said ACLS President Joy Connolly. “Historically Black Colleges and Universities are a vital part of American higher education, with a long history of rich contributions to public knowledge and our nation’s social and political health. ACLS celebrates the commitment and brilliance of these awardees and applauds their institutions for fostering excellence in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.”
ACLS developed the HBCU Faculty Fellowship and Grant Program collaboratively with HBCU faculty and academic leaders though a series of on-campus workshops and discussions and virtual focus groups. Learn more about the ACLS HBCU Faculty Fellowship and Grant Program and sign up to stay updated about the program.
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