A Collaborative Initiative at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Engaged City is a collaboration between the Center for the Humanities, the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity, and the Office for Socially Engaged Practice at Washington University in St. Louis.
The story of St. Louis often is told through the language of division. North versus south. City versus county. The legacy of segregation and the stubborn persistence of the Delmar Divide.
Over the last decade, The Divided City, an urban humanities initiative at Washington University in St. Louis, has sponsored dozens of classes, seminars and research projects grappling with those difficult histories and their contemporary effects.
This fall, building on that work, WashU will launch a new initiative: The Engaged City. Funded by a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, with additional support from the Office of the Provost, the Engaged City aims to highlight St. Louis’ cultural resources — and to reframe how the city sees, understands and talks about itself.
“The Engaged City is about paying homage to St. Louis,” said Tila Neguse, senior associate director of WashU’s Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2) and one of four principal investigators for The Engaged City. “We want to focus on what bring us together rather than what tears us apart.
