At the Yonkers Public Library, Dr. Kishauna Soljour, a Sarah Lawrence College Public Humanities Fellow and faculty member, created the African American Oral History project that sought to tell and archive stories from the community, including an interview with Art of Teaching alumnus Dennis Richmond, Jr., who has traced the history of his family to the antebellum north and south.
While archiving and cataloguing these oral histories as well as a connected lecture series for public use, Soljour's teaching also extends to the future. Over several weeks in the fall 2020 semester, she taught interested youth from Yonkers the intricacies of sound engineering, which experts use to create podcasts, radio programming, and other forms of audio storytelling—documenting the past while also empowering the next generation to use their voices to tell their stories.
In spring 2021, Soljour taught a course to Sarah Lawrence students entitled, The City of Yonkers: Histories of Change, Continuity and Community, which explored Yonkers’ story and how its peaks and valleys are intertwined with America’s history and policy decisions. For conference projects, her students created podcasts focused on specific components of Yonkers and its history, from politics to education—connecting students’ interests and academic concentrations with the course’s real-world subject matter.
In the fall 2021 semester, Soljour, in partnership with the Yonkers Public Library, curated Rooted: A Community Archive Project. Featuring the work of artists Evan Bishop, Katori Walker, Haifa Bint-Kadi, and Sola Olosunde, the exhibit consists of multiple works in a range of media organized around themes of collaboration and storytelling. It includes quilts, sculpture, photography, and paintings. There are couches for comfortable seating, books related to art, and a soundtrack with multiple interviews, music, and sound. The exhibit presents a multi-layered story about identity, community, and history within Yonkers and greater New York State.
Rooted is on display in the Esther Raushenbush Library until December 17, 2021.
Download the Rooted exhibition companion eBook (PDF)
Kishauna Soljour joined Sarah Lawrence College as a Public Humanities Fellow and member of the history faculty in 2020. Dr. Soljour has a special interest in the history of the modern African diaspora in the West, oral history, NGO and nonprofit management, and transnational history, as well as the history of social movements and race. She is the author of Beyond the Banlieue: French Postcolonial Migration & the Politics of a Sub-Saharan Identity; manuscript awarded The Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award in Humanities and Fine Arts. She holds a BA, MA, MPhil, and PhD from Syracuse University.