{"id":9947,"date":"2022-06-01T21:02:17","date_gmt":"2022-06-01T21:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2022\/06\/09\/mayx-snapshot-seeking-abraham\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:48:37","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T19:48:37","slug":"mayx-snapshot-seeking-abraham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/mayx-snapshot-seeking-abraham\/","title":{"rendered":"MayX Snapshot: Seeking Abraham and finding Furman\u2019s hidden histories"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, we\u2019re highlighting courses from May Experience<\/a><\/u> \u2013 a chance for students to explore topics beyond the typical academic year.<\/em><\/p>\n

COURSE:<\/strong> Multimodal Interpretive Strategy: Seeking Abraham
\nINSTRUCTORS:<\/strong> Brandon Inabinet, professor of communication studies<\/a>; and Alyson Farzad-Phillips, assistant professor of communication studies<\/a><\/strong>
\nDESCRIPTION:<\/strong> This course trained students in counter-memory activism on Furman\u2019s campus. Students learned the Seeking Abraham tour, which shows hidden legacies of race and racism in the campus landscape.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It does not take place overseas, but one MayX course does introduce its students to a land that may suddenly seem foreign to them: their own campus.<\/p>\n

The Seeking Abraham tour can make people feel like they\u2019re seeing Furman for the first time, said Brandon Inabinet, who teaches the Multimodal Interpretive Strategy course along with Alyson Farzad-Phillips. The tour visits several campus landmarks, with a guide narrating their \u201chidden histories\u201d by relating historical facts and anecdotes that reveal their problematic undertones. The tour traces the university\u2019s growth from its pre-Civil War founding through its recent reckoning with its racial legacy and connections to slavery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had so many eye-opening moments throughout these past weeks,\u201d said student Alexandra Bussom \u201924. \u201cBefore the class, I thought I had decent background knowledge on campus, but over the last three weeks, I have gained an awareness of how the experiences of African Americans have impacted the university to the present day.”<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we bring to light untold public memories or histories, or when we find new ways of articulating under-told stories, we provide our institutions with an opportunity to check these narratives against what they say their values and goals are,\u201d said Farzad-Phillips. \u201cOnce we know better, we have the opportunity to be or do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

Inspired by Abraham, a former slave of James C. Furman (the university\u2019s first president), the \u201cSeeking Abraham\u201d project investigates Furman University\u2019s historical connections with slavery.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re asking: How is the history of African Americans and their story important?\u201d Inabinet added.<\/p>\n

The Seeking Abraham tour grew out of Furman\u2019s Task Force on Slavery and Justice<\/a>, which was formed in 2017 to recognize the roles enslaved people played in the school\u2019s founding and growth. Among many other recommendations, the task force\u2019s \u201cSeeking Abraham<\/a>\u201d report suggested renaming or adding signage to several campus sites to acknowledge the contributions of people of color. Inabinet created the Seeking Abraham walking tour to visit seven of those campus sites.<\/p>\n

The first stop is the Cherrydale Alumni House<\/a>, a plantation home and the workplace of the report\u2019s namesake, former slave Abraham Sims, a family servant of James C. Furman, the school\u2019s first president. The tour proceeds to sites including Joseph Vaughn Plaza<\/a>, honoring the university\u2019s first Black undergraduate; and the Furman Bell Tower<\/a>, which holds the original bell (relocated from the\u00a0old downtown campus<\/a>) rung by enslaved and formerly enslaved people.<\/p>\n

An online tour was posted in 2017<\/a>, and Inabinet started leading tours in person in 2021.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve given them to sociology and communication courses, incoming prospective students, scholarship recipients and diversity workshops,\u201d Inabinet said. \u201cSo far it\u2019s just been word of mouth, and I\u2019m the only person leading them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students will be deputized as tour guides as new requests come in. The class also looked for innovative possibilities to enhance the Seeking Abraham story, including smartphone apps and iPads. A filmed version of the tour is in the works.<\/p>\n

Although some of history\u2019s lessons may be painful, it\u2019s important that the Seeking Abraham tour also pay tribute to positive African American experiences at Furman, said Inabinet.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoseph Vaughn\u2019s story<\/a> is mostly a celebratory story. Clark Murphy<\/a> was an important figure in the Greenville Woman\u2019s College history,\u201d he said. \u201cAs we got into some of the deeper layers of that past, they were witnessing positive accounts of contributions to Furman they hadn\u2019t heard about.\u201d<\/p>\n

The instructors hope that those stories have inspired the students to continue the Seeking Abraham mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone I know who has been on the tour has been encouraged to not only see Furman and its past differently, but to also use that knowledge to bring about more radically equitable environments and experiences at the university,\u201d said Farzad-Phillips.<\/p>\n

Grayson Taylor \u201925 said she is ready to put her MayX experience to work. \u201cI left this course with the tools to make change and progress Furman towards grappling with its complex past,\u201d she said. \u201cIt definitely changed my perspective on Furman, but in a sense of growing activism and enacting goals to help improve our institution even more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Support the May Experience at Furman with a donation now.<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/h3>\n
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This week, we\u2019re highlighting courses from May Experience \u2013 a chance for students to explore topics beyond the typical academic year. COURSE: Multimodal Interpretive Strategy: Seeking Abraham INSTRUCTORS: Brandon Inabinet, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,70,54,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-diversity-equity-and-inclusion","category-may-experience","category-top-four-news-2nd-story"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9947\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}