University of Georgia doctoral student and research assistant Damaris Dunn presents to English department teacher Jennifer Tesler’s senior Multicultural Literature class on Oct. 20 as it related to students’ research projects. Dunn explained her research on the concept of Black joy to Tesler’s and English department teacher Erin Horton’s classes. “I’ve been working with young people for a really long time, so I have a sense of what works and what doesn’t work,” Dunn said. “I respect young people and I think that’s what came across today. That this is (the students’) space, and I’m a guest, and I want to learn from you just as much as I can offer you something as well.” Photo by Lucas Donnelly
UGA research assistant Damaris Dunn spoke with CCHS senior Multicultural Literature classes about fostering Black joy as a part of students’ research on homeplaces.
Damaris Dunn, a University of Georgia doctoral student and research assistant in the Department of Educational Theory and Practice, visited Clarke Central High School English department teachers Jennifer Telser’s and Erin Horton’s senior Multicultural Literature classes on Oct. 20 to speak about her research in Black joy.
Dunn was one of many speakers that engaged with Tesler’s senior English classes as a part of her students’ individual research on an Athens figure or community and their homeplace, with a focus on flexible research processes and anchored in the essay ‘Homeplace: A Site of Resistance’ by bell hooks. Other speakers included local artist Broderick Flanigan and former CCHS principal and author Maxine Easom.
The idea for the project was first sparked by discussions of the Harlem Renaissance. Tesler’s classes read literature about Harlem, New York — where Dunn is originally from — such as Langston Hughes’ poetry and ‘The Poet X’ by Elizabeth Acevedo.
“(Dunn) is friends with (Acevedo), and so that’s one of the conversations that she was able to have with the kids with the students. ‘The Poet X’ is set in Harlem, and Ms. Dunn has worked and has grown up in Harlem, and so that was another connection,” Tesler said.
Tesler’s interest in homeplaces shifted more locally through discussions with English department co-chair David Ragsdale and Burney Harris High School alumna Barbara Archibald. Ragsdale connected Tesler to the Linnentown community through his organization of a panel discussion at CCHS in February 2020, and Archibald introduced her to CCHS alumnus Michael Thurmond’s biographical account of the Clarke County School District’s desegregation in “A Story Untold”.
“The students’ work was based on researching an important landmark that was vibrant during the Harlem Renaissance, and a person that was attached to (a) place (that) was important to them (or) had an emotional connection,” Tesler said. “We’re going to do the same thing here in Athens. We’re going to look at important historical figures, and how they were attached to places.”
Dunn’s aforementioned area of study, Black joy, focuses attention on transforming the environments of young Black people in order to make room for more joy.
“I think about Black joy as a site of world-making. What that means is that joy in spaces where people are not traditionally afforded, or whose stories are kind of akin to pain and suffering, that joy is the life force — the thing that allows Black people in particular to keep going,” Dunn said. “That might look like a student in the hallway laughing and joking around and listening to music, because that’s the transition from class to class, and not being scolded for that, right, but recognizing that we need space to play and be.”
“I think about Black joy as a site of world-making. What that means is that joy in spaces where people are not traditionally afforded, or whose stories are kind of akin to pain and suffering, that joy is the life force — the thing that allows Black people in particular to keep going.”
— Damaris Dunn,
UGA doctoral student and research assistant
Dunn uses her own experiences with sites of Black joy in Harlem as a basis for her research, in addition
to outside research on other work in the field. “From personal experience working as a high school teacher, to working as a community school director in New York City and creating spaces for Black girls to be, (I witnessed) those spaces as sites of joy,” Dunn said.
Dunn’s research inspired CCHS senior Nyvia Brown to explore similar work in the future. “(Dunn is) a Black girl, she plays basketball, I felt that. And the fact that she wants to learn even deeper about her Black history and Black women, I felt that that was something that I would like to do, too,” Brown said.
In Dunn’s seminar, she aimed to create an open and safe environment in Tesler’s classes for student discussions about Black joy.
“I’ve been working with young people for a really long time, so I have a sense of what works and what doesn’t work,” Dunn said. “I respect young people and I think that’s what came across (in my seminar).
That this is (the students’) space, and I’m a guest, and I want to learn from you just as much as I can offer you something, as well.”
