The Andrew W. Mellon Digital Humanities Fellows at the University of Rochester are pleased to invite you to attend our first DigiTalk of the Spring 2022 semester. The session will feature a conversation with Shane Wiegand, teacher at the Rush-Henrietta Central School District, Co-Lead of the Antiracist Curriculum Project, a board member of City Roots Community Land Trust, and adjunct faculty at the URMC School of Medicine and Dentistry.
In this presentation, historian, teacher, and activist Shane Wiegand presents research examining how past federal and local policies segregated the city of Rochester, built wealth for its white citizens, and disenfranchised people of color. He also presents how local civil rights leaders and many others fought back. In discussing these two sides of Rochester’s civil rights struggles, he connects these past policies to the disparity and inequality in Rochester today, and he invites us to learn from and apply the activism of Rochester’s past to its present. To heighten awareness of this underrepresented history and facilitate its use in the classroom, he will showcase the interactive website he is building to host antiracist curriculum, including an interactive map highlighting racial covenants, exclusionary zoning, and sites of historic civil rights events throughout the city. This website owes much to his collaborative efforts with the Rochester Voices Project, faculty at UR and RIT, and the University of Richmond’s American Panorama Project. A discussion and Q&A will follow.
Shane Wiegand is a fourth-grade teacher at the Rush-Henrietta Central School District, Co-Lead of the Antiracist Curriculum Project hosted by the PathStone Foundation, a board member of City Roots Community Land Trust and Connected Communities, and an adjunct faculty member of the URMC School of Medicine and Dentistry. For his work with PathStone, he was named one of Rochester Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 in 2021, a group annually recognized for their exemplary leadership and contributions to the Rochester community. He and his wife live in the Beechwood neighborhood of Rochester.