Dr. Wendi Manuel-Scott will be joining the School of Integrative Studies for the fall 2017 semester. A popular professor on campus, she is best known for her inspiring speeches and energetic personality, making her the perfect addition to an already incredible faculty team in the school. She is currently an Associate Professor and Director of the African and African American Studies program.
Dr. Manuel-Scott was recently recognized by President Cabrera for the 2017 Alcalde Family Medal for Excellence in Diversity & and Inclusion. A core strength of George Mason University is its commitment to creating to an inclusive and diverse community. Mason is dedicated to protecting the rights of its community members to seek truth and express their views. The Alcalde Medal is presented to a faculty member who has made extraordinary contributions to advancing diversity and inclusion within the Mason community and beyond.
Wendi Manuel-Scott was born in Chicago but grew up in the suburbs of Texas, North Carolina, Michigan, and Georgia. She graduated from the College of Charleston where she received a BA in History and then received her Ph.D. from Howard University in History. She is the Director of African and African American Studies and an Associate Professor of History and Art History at Mason. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses that explore race, gender, the African American experience, and the history of black women in the Atlantic World. Professor Manuel-Scott’s research has always been guided by her interest in black resistance and agency from a diasporic and gendered perspective. Her earlier publications examine Jamaican farm workers employed as seasonal contract laborers in the United States during the Second World War and explore issues of labor control, resistance and identity. More recently, Wendi Manuel-Scott has turned to local history projects. She was awarded a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities grant to curate an exhibition titled “Separate and Unequal in Buckingham County: An Exhibition on Segregation and Desegregation in Virginia” and a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to complete an online exhibition, “One Hundred Years of African American Life and Leadership in Falls Church, Virginia.” She also helped to research and curate a permanent exhibit in Loudoun County Virginia documenting the history of the Leesburg Frederick Douglass School and struggles of the African American community in Loudoun County for an equal education. As a result of her research on the Leesburg Frederick Douglass School project, she co-authored a chapter, "More Than Just a School: Interpreting the legacy of the Frederick Douglass Elementary School" in Interpreting African American History and Culture at Museums and Historic Sites.
May 01, 2017
