Description

Florida State University will launch a project on the Black experience of religion and public health in the American South, centering particularly on the voices and experiences of Black women. The project is named for a Tennessee washerwoman who organized formerly enslaved people in churches across the South at the turn of the 20th century, seeking to build mutual aid societies. Establishing a learning community of scholars and health practitioners who will partner to document untold histories of resilience, The Callie House Project will develop a “living archive”—a curated website for public engagement, research, and teaching. The archive will collect original digitized historical documents on race, religion, and public health in the South, oral histories with Black southern religious and health practitioners, and new public history narratives written using these materials. The project will also produce teaching tools for use in academic and public settings, and guides for creatively engaging living archive materials in both new research and public engagement activities.