Folger Salon with Ruth C. Pión, Evelyn Reidy, and Andrew Aaron Valdez

2025-26 Artistic Research Fellow

HISTORICAL MAROONAGE: Decolonizing space, memory, and heritage

Historical Maroonage addresses the silencing of the Black experience in the Dominican Republic, where Eurocentrism and racism plague spaces of memory and the historical narratives that inform them. Through a publicly engaged approach the project seeks to ensure that the voices of marginalized communities are heard and that their history is incorporated into the narrative fabric of the country and the region. This digital and public humanities project aims to amplify AfrohistoriaRD’s liberatory practice, which disrupts dominant narratives, investigates silenced histories, encourages critical thinking, and fosters imagination by creating new ways to examine our past.

2025-26 Artistic Research Fellow

More Weight, or, I Saw Goody Proctor at the Gift Shop: A new play

The infamous court proceedings and subsequent executions of 1692-1623 in Salem, Massachusetts—colloquially known as the Salem Witch Trials—have long captured the public imagination in the United States and beyond. The oft sensationalized and frequently misunderstood events have inspired a significant canon of literary and dramatic works, not to mention a tourism industry that, for better or worse, buoys modern-day Salem’s economy. In a sea of books, plays, museums, scare attractions, kitschy waxworks, and “haunted Salem” tours, it is easy to lose sight of the stories of the twenty-five people who died—either by disease or execution—out of the over two hundred accused during a series of trials that tore a community apart and exposed many of the ugly prejudices that undergirded the American colonial project.

2025-26 Artistic Research Fellow

From Seed to Resurgence: Xinatchli’s Creative Role in Coahuiltecan Retribalization

From Seed to Resurgence is a multidisciplinary project that will result in a new play integrating songs and historical narratives sourced from the Folger Institute collections. This work contributes to scholarly efforts aimed at reclaiming the cultural heritage of the Coahuiltecan people, Indigenous to Northern Mexico and South Texas, whose history and language have been extensively erased by colonization. Inspired by the Nahuatl word Xinatchli—symbolizing seed germination—the project seeks to revive and honor the erased cultural narratives of the Nahuatl and Coahuila peoples.