In Dialogue with Professor Amani Morrison

Lidya Woldeyesus

I am a student research assistant with the Global Cities Initiative and I have the honor of supporting Principal Investigator, Dr. Amani Morrison for the Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Creative Placemaking, Black Restorative Ecologies, and Black Spatial Futures.”  Professor Morrison, thank you for being with us today! Can you share some reflections on your journey to Georgetown and how you became interested in cities in the first place?

 

Prof. Amani Morrison
I first made cities the focus of my research in graduate school. I was in African American & African Diaspora studies and I kept coming back to the literature of the Great Migration. This led to my own research project exploring the kitchenettes in Chicago. I was interested in housing that was disproportionately associated with Black populations and how that housing showed up in policy and civic discourse.

 

LW
What inspired the seminar’s vision and how did it take shape?

 

AM
The Mellon Sawyer Seminar is formulated as a temporary research center to fund lines of inquiry that would be hard to pursue otherwise. The focus is on Black places, geographies, practices and ways of knowing these spaces, places, and ecologies. These conversations are happening in the field, so I wanted to bring them to Georgetown and DC, the heart of so much cultural placemaking and an in-flux Chocolate City. 

 

LW
Why are these themes important to explore now? 

 

AM
One big question of the seminar is around foreclosures, denials, and destruction of Black spaces— from urban places to individual Black homes and businesses. We see the dismantling of infrastructure built over the past decades before our eyes. It’s easy to fall into despair or want to reinvent the wheel. Due to the intersections of marginalization and dispossession that Black folks face, we expend more energy just to get to the same places as others— much less protect and steward those things for the next generation.

 

There is an emerging thread of scholarship related to Black relationships to land and nature. How the Earth has what we need already, yet histories of slavery, especially plantation slavery, created a distance between Black folks and land. So the ways that Black folks are returning to the South, to land—that’s not just inspiring. It’s practical knowledge. 

 

LW
The seminar blended Black studies, English, spatial justice, urban planning, law, and ecological restoration. How did that shape the conversations and outcomes?

 

AM
We had events across campus and off campus that brought different folks into the room. We had events with environmental law and policy scholars, sociologists, artists, historians, and community members, too. That helped open us up from disciplinary silos. You can’t live in your jargony disciplinary world when doing interdisciplinary work. You have to find common ground. 

 

LW
What were some of your most memorable events, moments or insights?

 

AM
One memorable moment was visiting Farmer Gale’s Deep Roots Farm in Upper Marlboro, MD. That trip was the kernel of the grant idea. Urban farming is impactful, but this region—DC, Maryland, Virginia—was once defined by the plentifulness of its land, and I wanted us to be able to experience that abundance up close. Hearing our Georgetown shuttle bus driver say, “I think I was supposed to work today because my family in the islands had land, and I've wanted to do this,” was powerful. People who didn’t even know they belonged in the room were impacted by the questions we were thinking about.

 

We also had a powerful conversation in the GU art galleries alongside Kara Walker’s exhibition, discussing fugitivity and insurgent Black ecologies of the Great Dismal Swamp, which is the area we’re in. We kept a localized, regional focus. Those aren’t conversations I’d seen at Georgetown before. Even as a temporary grant, it felt meaningful to bring them here.

 

LW
As this multi-year seminar concludes, what lasting impact do you hope it will have? What new questions do you have?

 

AM
We’ve done so much in a few years. So now I ask: what does it look like to maintain this momentum? We had folks from Baltimore, Howard University, University of Maryland, William & Mary. What does it look like to steward the seeds planted, not just intellectually, but in terms of community? Especially in the absence of a geography department, what does it look like to create space for serious, rigorous inquiry? My hope is people take what they gained here as a departure point.

 

LW
Thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation. For those interested, many of our events were recorded and can be accessed on the project website.