DMV Jazz, National Arts and Humanities Month, and Humanities Days @ Montgomery College!

Posted on September 17, 2018 by Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director

Dr. Regennia N. Williams, founder and director of the RASHAD, Center, Inc., is shown here in a September 13, 2018 photograph that was taken outside Cleveland State University’s Regennia N. Williams Campus Activities Board Office.   Dr. Williams is a CSU alumna.

October is National Arts and Humanities Month, and you are cordially invited to join me for celebrations in Maryland and Ohio!  I plan to highlight a different project each week, so please follow the RASHAD Center’s blog for more announcements.

If your schedule permits, please plan to attend “DMV Jazz: Building Bridges Between Arts and Humanities Communities throughout the Mid-Atlantic,” my presentation for the 6th Annual Humanities Days @ Montgomery College, on Monday, October 22, 2018, 9:00 a.m., in Commons 211.  This program will take place on the Takoma Park / Silver Spring campus, and the address is 7600 Takoma Avenue, Takoma Park, MD 20912.

As information on the Montgomery College website suggests, “Humanities Days @ Montgomery College (October 22-26, 2018) is our annual Collegewide celebration of the humanities. Each year the College hosts 40+ separate events across our three campuses including films, lectures, workshops, student-led open mic sessions, and performances.  These events can help students and other participants to see how the Humanities add value and perspective to lives and to their studies. All Humanities Days events are free and open to the public on a space available basis.”  Please click here for directions and a campus map.

The program description follows.  Thank you! –Dr. Regennia N. Williams.

  • Description:  Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Instructor in the Lifelong Learning Institute and Part-Time Faculty Associate at Montgomery College, discusses her forthcoming co-authored book, Washington, DC, Jazz.   This illustrated lecture will include excerpts from oral histories and other audio-video materials related to her research on Maryland-based artists as well as those from Washington and Virginia.
  •  Biographical Sketch:  Dr. Regennia N. Williams is an instructor in the Lifelong Learning Institute and a Part-Time Faculty Associate at Montgomery College. She also serves as the Museum Scholar at the Edward E. Parker Museum of Art.   A native of Cleveland, Ohio, from 1993-2015 Williams served as a faculty member in the Department of History at Cleveland State University, where she established “Praying Grounds: African American Faith Communities, A Documentary and Oral History Project,” The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs, and the Initiative for the Study of Religion and Spirituality in the History of Africa and the Diaspora (RASHAD).  In 2016, she moved to Maryland and established the RASHAD Center, Inc., a non-profit educational organization.  A Fulbright alumna (Nigeria 2010), she participated in the summer 2018 Montgomery College in Macau China professional development and teaching program.  In July 2018, she was approved for a summer 2019 Fulbright Specialist Project at South Africa’s University of the Free State.  Other international research, teaching, and performing arts activities have taken her to Canada, France, and Austria.  Her current research focuses on the history of jazz and the legacy of the Black Arts Movement in the museum world.
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About Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director

Dr. Regennia N. Williams is the Founder and Executive Director of The RASHAD Center, Inc., a Maryland-based non-profit educational corporation. Williams holds a PhD in Social History and Policy from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. A native Clevelander and a four-time alumna of Cleveland State University, information on RASHAD's “Praying Grounds, African American Faith Communities: A Documentary and Oral History” project is now available online at www.ClevelandMemory.org/pray/, a site that is maintained by CSU's Library Special Collections, home of the Praying Grounds manuscript collections. Praying Grounds was the primary inspiration for the launching of the Initiative for the Study of Religion and Spirituality in the History of Africa and the Diaspora (RASHAD) at CSU, and links to RASHAD's scholarly journal and newsletter are also available on the Praying Grounds site. On April 28, 2020, the RASHAD Center, Inc. became a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. In 2010, Dr. Williams was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, where she taught history and directed a RASHAD-related oral history project that focused on the role of religion in recent Nigerian social history. Other research-related travels have taken her to Canada, China, France, South Africa, and Austria. In 2013, she conceived and produced “Come Sunday @ 70: The Place of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Jazz in World History and Culture, c. 1943-2013,” a project that included scholarly presentations and performing arts activities. From September 1993 until May 2015, she was a faculty member in the Department of History at Cleveland State University. She served as a Fulbright Specialist at South Africa's University of the Free State in the summer of 2019, and completed a short-term faculty residency at Howard University in the fall of 2019. She is based in Cleveland, Ohio. As a public scholar, her current research projects focus on African American history and culture, especially as it relates to music, religion, and spirituality. She is a member of the Oral History Association, the Western Reserve Historical Society, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
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