Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity, WUSTL

CRE² Executive Director, Dr. Dwight A. McBride , responds to the recent Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences.

Read his response:

The Question Haunting the Vanderbilt/Wash U Report (opinion) A new report criticizes a turn toward politicized scholarship in the humanities. But could it be that a more diverse academy is asking different questions?

The second edition of Black Feminist Sociology, co-edited by CRE² faculty affiliate Associate Professor Zakiya Luna, is now available for purchase: https://www.routledge.com/Black-Feminist-Sociology-Perspectives-and-Praxis/Luna-Pirtle-Kelekay/p/book/9781041016120

Grounded in a Black feminist sociological lens, this updated volume brings together chapters that are critical, personal, political, and oriented toward social justice. Contributors reflect on the intellectual foundations and future directions of Black feminist sociology, exploring questions of research, self-reflexivity, knowledge production, and the possibilities—and challenges—of doing Black feminist work within and beyond the academy. It is an essential resource for current and future generations of scholars engaging questions of race, gender, power, and social change.

CRE² is excited to welcome Associate Professor Christopher Lucas as a Spring 2027 faculty fellow!

He develops and applies computational methods to the study of political media, with a focus on text, audio, and video. His current research centers on police body-worn camera footage. Working with collaborators, he is building a novel corpus of annotated bodycam video and developing machine learning models to automatically classify key events within that footage.

Learn more about our Spring 2027 faculty fellows: https://cre2.wustl.edu/research/funding-opportunities/faculty-fellowships/

Upcoming Fall 2026 Courses: Take a look at some of the race, and ethnicity related courses that will be taught by CRE² faculty affiliates.

In "Race, Reproduction, and Justice," Associate Professor Zakiya Luna will explore reproduction as not only biological, but also political, social, and economic. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, students will examine how race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability shape reproductive possibilities, resistance, and justice in the U.S. and beyond.

CRE² is excited to welcome Assistant Professor Nadirah Farah Foley as a Spring 2027 faculty fellow.

Her research examines how people experience and make sense of class, race, place, and inequality, especially educational inequalities. In her current work, she focuses on suburban communities, which are home to an increasing share of the population, rising racial and ethnic diversity, and rising inequality.

Learn more about our Spring 2027 faculty fellows: https://cre2.wustl.edu/research/funding-opportunities/faculty-fellowships/

CRE²’s “Perspectives in Public Leadership: A Mayoral Conversation” event is featured in the Center for the Humanities article, “Power, Politics and Pressure: Race and City Leadership.”

Written by WashU student and Kling Undergraduate Honors Fellow Lauren Perkins, the article reflects on the conversation between former St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones and current and former mayors from across the country, exploring the realities of Black political leadership in American cities.

From questions of representation and structural inequality to the pressures placed on Black elected officials, the article considers both the possibilities and limitations of political leadership in creating meaningful change.

Read the full article here: https://humanities.washu.edu/news/lauren-perkins-power-politics-and-pressure-race-and-city-leadership

Join CRE²'s inaugural Postdoctoral Fellow Sophia Monegro and fellow scholars Ruth Pión and Elise A Mitchell for the Spanish Paleography Summer Program: Transcribing the Cimarronas Slavery Archive.

As part of the broader From Ayiti to St. Louis initiative, this collaborative program connects archival research, Atlantic African diaspora history, and digital humanities through the work of the Cimarronas project, a digital archive dedicated to recovering and amplifying the histories of Black and Indigenous women in colonial Ayiti-Quisqueya.

Washington University students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to register and engage with this unique opportunity to learn from leading scholars while contributing to ongoing efforts to expand access to histories of slavery, resistance, and the African diaspora.

Register now: https://form.jotform.com/261465395093060

CRE² is excited to welcome Assistant Professor Nathan Dize as a Spring 2027 faculty fellow.

His research is situated at the crossroads of French Caribbean literary and intellectual history, cultural studies, translation studies, and the digital humanities. He explores how literature enables Haitian writers to practice intimate and collective rites of mourning across time and space, including in the wake of dictatorship, migration, and earthquakes. He also explores how Black translators of Francophone African and Caribbean literature crafted translations that challenged academic disciplines as well as literary canons and markets.

CRE² is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Matthew Hayes as CRE²’s next Associate Director for Research and Scholarship.

Dr. Hayes is Associate Professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis, where his research, teaching, and service are deeply grounded in the study of race, politics, and inequality. His scholarship — spanning descriptive representation, racial and ethnic politics, political psychology, and legislative behavior — has appeared in leading journals including the American Political Science Review, the British Journal of Political Science, and the Journal of Politics, and spans topics from the symbolic and substantive dimensions of Black political representation to the role of vocal pitch in congressional speech.

Congratulations to CRE² graduate fellow Naomi Kim on being named a 2026 Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow.

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship is the nation’s largest and most prestigious fellowship for PhD candidates in the humanities and social sciences whose work engages questions of ethics, religion, morality, and values. Since 1981, the fellowship has supported more than 1,400 doctoral scholars across the country.

Kim’s dissertation, Salvation By the Book: Race, Religion, and Reading Practices in Asian American Literature, examines how Christianity shapes the ways Korean American writers understand history, trauma, and community.
https://newcombefoundation.org/news/press-release-2026-charlotte-w-newcombe-doctoral-dissertation-fellows-named/