Planning Committee

Matthew Countryman is Associate Professor of History and American Culture and Faculty Director of Arts of Citizenship. He has a strong interest in public scholarship and has worked in collaboration with the WASHTENAW County African-American Cultural and Historical Museum to research and exhibit local history relating to the Underground Railroad.

The child of civil rights activists, Countryman was raised in Philadelphia. His recent book, Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia, analyzes the history of civil rights activism in Philadelphia from the years after WW III through the 1960’s. Winner of the Liberty Legacy Foundation’s award for the best book on civil rights in 2006, Up South synthesizes histories of political ideology, grassroots organizing, and formal politics in Philadelphia.

Countryman brings a strong commitment to developing Arts of Citizenship as a program that supports faculty efforts to develop collaborative research projects with community partners and engage their students in these collaborations.

Aimee Cox received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan and is a postdoctoral fellow with the Center for the Education of Women. In her research she is concerned with how people’s perception of their social identity and status impacts how they move and function in the world. Aimee has conducted ethnographic work with homeless and high-risk young people in southwest Detroit, Cincinnati, Chicago and Brooklyn, NY, and is currently working with a group of young people in Detroit on an arts based social action project called BlackLight (www.blacklightonline.blogspotcom). As a postdoctoral fellow with CEW, she has also conducted qualitative research on the structural and climate issues women of color faculty encounter at the University of Michigan.  In the fall of 2008, Aimee will be joining the African American and African Diaspora Studies faculty at Rutgers-Newark.

Margaret Dewar is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning. She is also the faculty director of the Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning. Her research is in economic development, urban environmental planning, and urban land use. Her current projects are concerned with remaking cities following abandonment, strengthening deteriorated neighborhoods, and planning across the Great Lakes region. Her projects deal with how planners can address issues facing troubled industries, declining regions, cities with high rates of poverty, and low-income neighborhoods. Margaret Dewar teaches courses where students studying for the Master of Urban Planning work with community partners to produce plans that advance the agendas of those partners, principally in Detroit and Flint. She earned her Ph.D. in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Master of City Planning from Harvard University.

Sara Dunbar received her bachelor's degree in Psychology and Spanish from the University of Michigan. She will be graduating in April, 2008 from the masters degree program in Health Behavior and Health Education from the University of Michigan's School of Public Health. She is interested in women's health issues, and currently works on several studies of posttraumatic stress and the childbearing year at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender. She also works as a research assistant at the Center for the Education of Women. 

Patricia Gurin is the Nancy Cantor Distinguished University Professor, Emerita, of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan.  She directs the research of the Program on Intergroup Relations, a nationally recognized program that uses intergroup dialogues to foster cultural competence among students.  Currently, she directs a ten-university evaluation of intergroup dialogues  -- a field study with random assignment of students to dialogues and to a wait-list control group.  She was an expert witness in the affirmative action cases decided by the Supreme Court in 2003.  A social psychologist, she works on social identity and its relationship to intergroup relations and political participation. During her tenure at the University of Michigan, she chaired the Department of Psychology and served as Interim Dean of the College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts.   She has written numerous books, chapters, and articles, including Black Consciousness, Identity, and Achievement, Hope and Independence:  Blacks Responses to Electoral and Party Politics, and Women, Politics, and Change.

Kamilah Henderson is Program Manager of Arts of Citizenship at the University of Michigan where she is responsible for managing the faculty grants program, providing program and policy recommendations and co-planning capacity-building programs for faculty, students and community partners. Kamilah has served as grant reviewer for Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs, was a 2007 graduate of
ArtServe Michigan's Leadership Academy, is on the Washtenaw County Cultural Plan Task Force, and is an Americans for the Arts Emerging Leader of Color Joyce Foundation Grant Recipient. On fellowship, she
earned an M.F.A. in Dance Performance and Community Engagement at The Ohio State University.

Susan Kaufmann is the Associate Director for Advocacy at the University of Michigan Center for the Education of Women, where she has worked since 1990.  In that role, she leads collaborative efforts to make change within and beyond the university and conducts research on issues of immediate importance to the women of Michigan.  Previously, Susan Kaufmann led the Center’s counseling services, programs, and leadership development activities for over a decade.  Before coming to the Center, she was the first associate director of the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, the director of the Washtenaw County Assault Crisis Center, the women’s advocate in the University of Michigan Office of Affirmative Action, and an advocate for nursing home residents at Citizens for Better Care in Detroit. In 2004, Gov. Granholm appointed Susan Kaufmann to the Washtenaw County Human Services Board, on which she continues to serve.  Between 1995 and 2004, she chaired the Ann Arbor Mayor’s Task Force on Violence Against Women and the Washtenaw County Coalition on Gender Violence. Her recent publications include Michigan Women in the High-Tech Knowledge Economy, The Potential Impact of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative on Employment, Education and Contracting, The Gender Impact of the Proposed Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, and Michigan: A “Smart State” for Women?: Women and Higher Education.