“Most of us are afraid of what we see when we look backwards.”

Kiese Laymon

In this Research Workshop with Dr Keira Williams, Mitchell Institute Fellow: Religion, Arts and Peacebuilding and Sabbatical Fellow 2024-25, we will discuss some of the methodological challenges of her current book project, which focuses on a Ku Klux Klan attack on a Black nightclub in South Carolina in 1950.

Keira is not just writing it out of academic interest.  Her mother’s family is from the area she is writing about, and at least one of her white ancestors played a role in these events.  This book is also a kind of reckoning, and in addition to the very personal problem of potential ancestral complicity, she is grappling with how to explore this story of Black self-determination without centering the kinds of white folks who have historically been the ones who decided which stories get told, who tells them, and how.

For this Workshop, participants are asked to read a bit of her writing in advance, with an eye toward discussing the following questions:

• What is the appropriate role of the academic in exploring past oppressions committed by their ancestors?
• What are the ethical considerations involved in doing this kind of work?
• What are its implications?

Keira is especially interested in discussing these issues with other scholars who have done autoethnography or personal academic writing themselves, those who are considering doing so in future work, and those who have expertise in critical thinking about methodologies, but anyone who wants to work through these questions is welcome!