Asim, Edell Awarded Mann Stearns Award for Scholarly Travel

Distinguished Professor Jabari Asim has long been interested in the life and writings of Frederick Douglass.

This summer, he’ll travel to Washington, D.C. to visit sites connected to the abolitionist and orator to help inform North Star, a book of poetry that he’s writing about Douglass, through support from the  Norman and Irma Mann Stearns Distinguished Faculty Award.

“I’m grateful and excited,” Asim said. “Grateful to receive this generous grant, and excited to immerse myself in the rich legacy of Frederick Douglass. If all goes well, my efforts will result in poems that readers will find worthy of their attention.”

The $3,000 award, established by the late Dr. Norman Stearns and Irma Mann Stearns ’67, honors at least one full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty member annually, “in recognition of outstanding scholarly or creative achievement.” The funds may be used to augment an existing project or to develop a new one, preferably with travel.

This year, there were two recipients. Assistant Professor of Performing Arts Dana Edell received the Mann Stearns Award for her project “Reimagining Our Histories: Using Performance to Address Racism in Wilmington, Delaware.”

“With the funding and support from this award,” Edell said, “I will be able to travel to my hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, for my fifth summer directing the Anti-Racism Theater (ART) Project, a unique, free program for local teenage girls and gender expansive teens to work together and use theater to collaboratively write and perform an original play that directly addresses the history and current state of racism and segregation in Delaware.”

As part of the project, Edell and the teens will interview an intergenerational mix of Delawareans about their experiences around racism in the state, she said. The troupe will then devise and perform a show inspired by the interviews and include a call to action with the audience for which they’ll collectively strategize the issues illuminated in the piece.

Mann Stearns applications are reviewed by the Faculty Development and Research Council (FDRC), which makes final recommendations to the Provost for funding.