Dr. Charles Blockson
Curator Emeritus. Dr. Blockson is the curator emeritus of the extensive collection of African, African-American, and African-Caribbean books, journals, photographs, letters, and manuscripts that he donated to Temple University. He is a prominent historical scholar, known for his ground breaking work on the depicting the history of the Underground Railroad and the African American experience in Philadelphia and beyond. His role in this program will be to integrate the continuing program to mark historical locations with the virtual tools that we create on Second Life and through our web portal. He will also play an active role in working to expand audiences for the project through his lecture and educational outreach activities directly connected to the Blockson Collection facility. Finally, Dr. Blockson will provide assistance in implementing our plans to seek additional funding for this program, building on his relationships with foundations that have provided prior support for the historic marker program.
Dr. Thadious Davis
Paragraph. CPh.D. in English and Professor of Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Games of Property: Law, Race, Gender, and Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Nella Larsen, Novelist of the Harlem Renaissance and Faulkner’s “Negro”: Art and the Southern Context, and the editor of numerous reference texts, including the Penguin Classic editions of Nella Larsen’s Passing and Quicksand and the co-edited Satire or Evasion: Black Perspectives on Huckleberry Finn. She serves as co-editor of the Gender and American Culture Series. Invested in contemporary archival work, she has been a fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Huntington Library in California where she held the R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Fellowship. Dr. Davis will participate in workshops to create content that will be included in the virtual reality and web portal.
Dr. Gloria Wade Gayles
Ph.D. in American Studies, is the Faculty Mentor for the Independent Scholars
Program at Spelman College. She was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Meadville- Lombard Theological School of the University of Chicago. Her publications include numerous articles in national journals and six books. Her most recent publications are In Praise of Teachers and Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks. Currently, she is conducting research on a critical study of the community as savior in selected African American novels. She is founding director of the SIS Oral History Project. Her role in this project will be to provide guidance on the inclusion of oral histories and other user volunteered content in the Second Life and web portal interfaces. She will also contribute to the development of a training program for supporting audiences in those activities.
Caroline Guigar
M.A. in Urban Studies, is a full time Project Coordinator and Web/Geographic Information Technology Specialist for the Information Technology and Society Research Group. She will draw on current ITEST program management experience to integrate this program component with the broader implementation strategy underway. She will also coordinate recruitment of participants and undergraduate staff, training of staff, coordination with curriculum development specialist and community fellow to implement program activities, and management of administrative databases.
Dr. Joyce Joyce
Ph.D. in English and Professor of English at Temple University. Dr. Joyce is a 1995 American Book Award for Literary Criticism for her collection of essays Warriors, Conjurers, and Priests: Defining African-centered Literary Criticism. Joyce A. Joyce is also the author of Richard Wright’s Art of Trage dy, Ijala: Sonia Sanchez and the African Poetic Tradition, and Black Studies as Human Studies: Critical Essays and Interviews. She has also published articles on Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Arthur P. Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, E. Ethelbert Miller, Gil Scott-Heron, and Sonia Sanchez. Dr. Joyce will conduct oral histories with key individuals in the African American experience of Philadelphia and related to Philadelphia. The interviews will be podcast and integrated into both the project virtual reality and web portal. She also serves as the project co-principal investigator.
Dr. Michele Masucci
Ph.D. in Geography, Director of the Information Technology and Society Research Group of Temple University and Associate Professor of Geography, will serve as the project director. Her research is focused on digital inclusion, geographic information systems, and the societal dimensions of information technologies with respect to health, education, and environmental quality. Her role in the project will be to oversee the implementation of all phases of the work plan, including guiding the development of the virtual reality and web portal, coordinating services between all collaborators, coordinating evaluation activities, and disseminating outcomes. She will serve as the project principal investigator.
Dr. Lorena Munoz
Ph.D. in Geography and Assistant Professor at Westfield College in Massachusetts, is an
Evaluation Specialist who specializes in culturally relevant evaluation techniques; she will develop the formative and summative evaluation, including developing a logic model for the project, creating an assessment plan, instruments, and databases related to planning and implementing the project, and that evaluates the overall impacts of the project towards intended goals.
Dr. David Organ
Ph.D. in Geography, will direct the development of the online archive that is represented in
Second Life and the web portal, drawing on his extensive experience conducting archival research for the restoration and interpretation of African American historical sites and settlements. His work on the historical geography and preservation of the Allensworth, California settlement has been recognized nationally and played a key role in its preservation and development as a prominent black heritage site.
Dr. Diane Turner
Dr. Turner holds a Ph.D. in history and serves as the Curator of the Blockson Collection. From 2002-2006, she was the curator of collections and exhibitions for the African-American Museum in Philadelphia. During her tenure there, the museum acquired many significant materials ranging from Charles Johnson prints to First African Baptist burial artifacts. It was awarded grants to conserve and preserve the collection, including a project to digitize the civil rights photos of the museum's Jack T. Franklin Photographic Collection. Her role in this project will be to work on the development and implementation of a Second Life virtual reality and to coordinate access to that resource through creating a dedicated kiosk that will be made available in the Blockson Library.
