The Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience is celebrating its second decade as an interdisciplinary academic program at Rutgers-Newark that serves the greater Newark metropolitan region by reaching into the community at large with lectures, symposia, film, performances, exhibitions, and other programs that enhance public understanding of urban life, the social construction of difference, race relations, local history, urban youth culture, and education.

Through its numerous programmatic partnerships, the Institute provides essential context for the good work of public institutions, among them the Newark Public Schools, The Newark Public Library, The Newark Museum, The New Jersey Performing Arts Center, Boys and Girls Club of Newark, WBGO, Public Radio in Newark, New Jersey Network, the New Jersey Historical Society, the American Jewish Committee, the National Park Service, and the New Jersey State Police. Such partnerships bridge the collegiate/community divide, fostering mutual learning and productive public service.

The Institute is a co-sponsor, with the New Jersey Historical Commission, of the annual Marion Thompson Wright Lecture Series. The conference has drawn thousands of citizens to Rutgers-Newark in observance of Black History Month in New Jersey since 1981, when it was co-founded by Institute director, Dr. Clement Price and Giles R. Wright, the inaugural director of the Afro-American History Program at the New Jersey Historical Commission. This free lecture series is a community based ritual in public scholarship that brings to the university some of the nation's foremost scholars and humanists conversant with African-American and African history and culture. It has become one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious events of its kind.

Other Institute program highlights include:

Memory and Newark, July 1967. On November 9, 1997, the Institute mounted its first major public program, "Memory and Newark, July 1967," an experimental half-day program that reexamined the 1967 riots in Newark through the prisms of individual and ethnic community memory and history.

City Children and Their Cultures City Children is a community-based lecture and symposia series that explore the influence of post-industrial urban life on children. Under its rubric, the Institute has brought some the nation’s foremost scholars on children to Newark, including Beverly Hall, Daphne Muse, Elijah Anderson, Christian Warren and Carl Nightingale, among others, to discuss in a public setting a wide range of child centered topics with parents, teachers, social workers, health care providers and children. A more recent initiative in April, 2005, Watching Carefully, aimed to increase media literacy among young people, with a series of programs focused on television and its role as a marketer and definer of cultural norms, for children at the Newark Boys and Girls Club.

The Gustav Heningburg Civic Fellows Program recently examined the question, "Why Newark Matters" in a series of colloquia developed to establish partnerships between Newark's civic leaders and distinguished scholars at Rutgers. The Institute created the Heningburg Civic Fellows program as a resource for Newark's civic leaders who are deeply involved in the city's revitalization. The second class of Fellows explored new ways to address some of the civic challenges and opportunities that face the city and to expand the University's involvement in the city's renewal. In the fall of 2008, a charrette was mounted with civic and community leaders which focused on identifying workable strategies to transform a specific case study–Hank Aaron Field in the central ward of Newark–that could become a model for the re-design and transformation of numerous other public spaces in the City of Newark. The program, which has received funding support from the Independence Community Foundation and the Victoria Foundation, honors Gustav Heningburg, one of the most influential and inspiring civic leaders in Newark.

Teachers As Scholars. Since 2004, the Institute has mounted several sessions of Teachers as Scholars, a collaboration between the Institute and the Newark Public Schools, with funding support from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities. TAS brings Newark K-12 teachers to the Newark campus for a series of two-day seminars in the humanities, social sciences and the arts. Rutgers-Newark is the first Rutgers campus, and only the second university in New Jersey -- along with Princeton -- participating in the national Teachers as Scholars program

U.S. History Saturday Academy. Begun in the fall of 2006, The Saturday Academy is a tuition-free six-week session for Newark-area high school students offered in the Fall and Spring, funded by, and in partnership with, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Students can take one or two of five different classes offered. Each class introduces participants to primary sources, historical analysis, group discussion format, and other important topics in the study of history. Interested students can participate in the program free of charge. The program has been successfully implemented in many other schools across the country.

Teachers As Historians. As a partner in the U.S. Department of Education's "Teaching American History" grant awarded to the Newark Public School District, the Institute is providing a professional development program for Newark public school teachers beginning in the fall of 2008. "Teachers As Historians" offers classes to 75 teachers in the fall and spring semesters on the Rutgers-Newark campus over the next 3 years taught by Rutgers faculty members. The program also brings a visiting Rutgers historian to the New Jersey Historical Society's Summer Institute for 3 days each year, to focus on the skills of conducting historical research with a Newark emphasis.

The Geraldine R. Dodge Post-Doctoral Fellowship (weblink) The Institute has administered this Fellowship program, supported by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, since 1997. Each Dodge Fellow is a recently minted Ph.D. in the humanities or social sciences. Over the two-year span, the Fellow creates a project that embellishes civic culture for the citizens of Newark, enabling him/her to become more conversant with new knowledge.

Reflections on the Summer of 1967: The 40th Anniversary of the Newark Riots (weblink) Beginning in April 2007 through November 2007, and with funding support from the Prudential Foundation, PSE&G and the Verizon Foundation, the Institute presented a series of public programs commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Newark riots.

Ethnic Dance Performance Series Since 2005, the Institute has mounted a successful annual performance series at Bradley Hall Theater - the only regular dance program on the Rutgers-Newark Campus - featuring ethnic dance forms from many different cultures. Concerts have explored Middle Eastern Dance, Asian Indian Dance, Dances from Africa and the African Diaspora and most recently, Afro-Brazilian Dance, to standing-room only audiences at the theater.

In 2004, at the behest of the New Jersey State Attorney General, the Institute mounted several cultural awareness sessions for all 2,700 members of the New Jersey State Police.

The Institute is one of several strategic initiatives designed to further Rutgers University’s mission of educational excellence, leading edge research, and service to the community. The Institute staff includes:

The Institute is located at 175 University Avenue, 337 Conklin Hall on the Rutgers-Newark Campus. Tel. 973-353-1871