Allegheny College’s Courtney Walton Will Connect Literature to Local Underground Railroad History Thanks to Prestigious National Grant

Assistant Professor of English and Black Studies Courtney Walton, Ph.D., received a Periclean Faculty Leader grant to support the integration of archival research and community engagement in her African American Literature/Black Studies course.

Funded by Project Pericles - a national consortium of colleges and universities that center participatory citizenship and social responsibility in their educational programs - Walton is one of only ten academics across the nation to earn such a grant in this round.

I am really thankful and excited for the opportunity to show students how literature and culture intersect," Walton said. "By directly engaging with local African American history through a civic learning project, students will gain a deeper understanding of the pivotal role of enslavement and trace legacies of the past to the present.

The $3,000 grant will enable Walton to extend learning opportunities outside of the classroom and into the Gibson House, a local Underground Railroad site in Mercer County. Students will conduct research on the site in tandem with their coursework - which includes Antebellum slave narratives, postbellum speeches and fiction, and Harlem Renaissance poetry and essays - to eventually produce an interactive map detailing crucial Underground Railroad locations in Northwestern Pennsylvania.

The Periclean Faculty Leadership Program empowers college faculty within Project Pericles' consortium to connect academic learning with real-world challenges and catalyze civic involvement. Academics who were previously selected for the program go on to mentor colleagues by sharing pedagogical approaches that inspired students to see themselves as change-makers in their local communities and beyond.

"The faculty and staff leading this work rarely lack ideas," said Sanda Balaban, Executive Director of Project Pericles. "They lack time, money, and the institutional support to make good ideas stick. We designed this grant program to fund both: powerful community-engaged civic learning courses and the policies, partnerships, and people to fuel them and to keep them going after the grant ends."

Research at Allegheny