Mercer Times

The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) has been awarded a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation's Higher Learning program. This funding will support "Undocumented. Black. Citizen.", a three-year collaborative and multi-disciplinary project focused on creating educational resources about citizenship, belonging, migration, and Blackness. The project emphasizes the experiences of Black undocumented immigrants in Trenton, New Jersey, and beyond.

Marla Jaksch, professor and chair of TCNJ’s Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, leads the initiative. She aims to unite community members, scholars, artists, and activists in Trenton through lectures, dialogues, classes, and a summer freedom school. Jaksch stated that the project "will look at Trenton as a site of globalized border crossings through the people and stories that inhabit it."

The initiative is described as "glocal," beginning with local contexts to consider global perspectives while bridging TCNJ with its surrounding communities. Jaksch noted the project's goal to "build connections between TCNJ, Princeton, and Trenton communities and organizations."

Jaksch collaborates with co-principal investigators Lorgia García Peña from Princeton University's Effron Center for Latinx Studies and African American Studies Department and Medhin Paolos from Princeton's Lewis Center for the Arts.

A significant component involves developing a cross-institution course for TCNJ and Princeton University students focused on community archiving methods.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is recognized as the nation's largest supporter of arts and humanities since 1969. The foundation supports initiatives fostering human understanding through arts by promoting critical thinking within enriched communities.