Senior Faculty Fellows
Enobong (Anna) Branch
Professor of Sociology, Rutgers–New Brunswick and Senior Vice President for Equity at Rutgers
Research and teaching interests: Labor, work, and the historical roots and contemporary underpinnings of racial and gender inequality
Selected Publications: Author of Opportunity Denied: Limiting Black Women to Devalued Work (2011) and coauthor of Black in America: The Paradox of the Color Line (2020)
ISGRJ Project: Black Bodies, Black Health: Imagining a Just Racial Future. A one-year research project, supported by a $725,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that brings together cross-disciplinary groups of experts to explore structural racism in service of creating equitable health outcomes.
Belinda Edmondson
Professor and Chair of English, Professor of African American and African Studies, Affiliate member of American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Rutgers–Newark
Research and Teaching Interests: Caribbean literature; African diaspora literatures; African diaspora cultural studies; gender studies; migration in literature and film
Selected Publications: Author of several books on Caribbean literature, including Creole Noise: Early Caribbean Dialect Literature and Performance (forthcoming, Oxford University Press)
ISGRJ Project: The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar: Natives and Nativists, Migrants, and Immigrants in an American City. A 24-month seminar series that examines the past, present, and future of Newark, aimed at exploring processes of immigration, urbanization, and racialization in the United States and beyond.
Keith Michael Green
Associate Professor of English and Director of the Africana Studies Program, Rutgers–Camden
- Research and Teaching Interests: African American literature, Afro-Cuban culture, 19th-century American literature, autobiography, narratives of black captivity, speculative fiction and disability studies
- Selected Publications: Bound to Respect: Antebellum Narratives of Black Imprisonment, Servitude, and Bondage: 1816–1861 (University of Alabama Press, 2015, recipient of the Elizabeth Agee Prize for “outstanding scholarship in the field of American literary studies”) and co-editor with Sarada Balagopalan and Cati Coe of Diverse Unfreedoms: The Afterlives and Transformations of Post-Transatlantic Bondages (Routledge, 2019)
- ISGRJ Project: Research on Black Transnationalism & Amistad Conversations, a series of cross-campus conversations assessing the viability of formalizing a Rutgers University affiliation with the historic Amistad Commission, whose efforts under Stephanie J. Harris will ensure the teaching of Black history in New Jersey schools
Stacy Hawkins
Vice Dean and Professor of Law, Rutgers Law School
Research and Teaching Interests: Intersection of law and diversity, employment law and diversity, higher education and diversity, constitutional law, and employment law
Selected Publications: Published in the Fordham Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, the Michigan Journal of Race and Law, UCLA Law Review Discourse, and the Columbia Journal of Race and Law, among others
ISGRJ Project: An applied research project exploring whether the beneficial features and pedagogical model associated with Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) can be successfully replicated by a historically white institution (HWI) in a manner that leads to improved academic achievement for Black and other targeted high-risk students attending HWIs.
Jamie Lew
Associate Professor of Sociology, Global Urban Studies/Urban Systems, Rutgers–Newark
Research and Teaching Interests: Sociology of education, immigration, international migration, and race and ethnicity, exploring intersections of immigration and race particularly in relation to education for migrant youths in urban space
Selected Publications: Asian Americans in Class:Charting the Achievement Gap Among Korean American Youth (Teachers College Press, 2006); Asian American Children and Poverty: Multicultural Education Context (Banks, J., Encyclopedia of Diversity in Education, SAGE publications, 2013), among others
ISGRJ Project: An exploration of how urban refugee families and children negotiate their sense of belonging and placemaking in cities in the U.S. and abroad.
Luis Rivera
Associate Professor of Psychology, Director of the Rutgers Implicit Social Cognition (RISC) Lab, Rutgers–Newark
Research and Teaching Interests: Implicit social cognitive processes underlying stereotyped attitudes and their shaping of the self, identity, and health of stigmatized individuals
Selected Publications: The detrimental effect of affirming masculinity on judgments of gay men (2018); Incarceration and health of sexual and gender minority persons (American Journal of Public Health, 108(8), 994-999, 2018), among others
ISGRJ Project: An investigation of whether white individuals express implicit and explicit biases to down-regulate collective guilt and protect their group image. Findings from this project will have implications for how to improve racial justice education and, in turn, reduce implicit and explicit biases.
Salamishah Tillet
Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing, Founding Director of New Arts Justice Initiative, Rutgers–Newark
2021 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, 2020 Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction fellowship, and contributing critic at large for The New York Times
Research and Teaching Interests: African American studies, 20th- and 21st-century African American literature, slavery within post-Civil Rights America, racial democracy, African diaspora arts film, popular music, cultural studies, and feminist theory
Selected Publications: Author of several books including In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece (Abrams Press, 2021); Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination (Duke University Press, 2012); and All The Rage: Mississippi Goddam and The World Nina Simone Made (forthcoming).
ISGRJ Project: In February 2022, Rutgers–Newark will host Black Portraiture[s] VII: Play & Performance, a three-day conference that convenes scholars, artists, and activists. As part of the conference, the New Arts Justice Initiative will host exhibitions that centralize Black Girlhood, including a show at the Paul Robeson Gallery in Express Newark that meditates on themes of Black Girlhood through the eyes of Black women/girl photographers.
