Dr. Chelsea Rogers receives MLK Jr. Humanitarian Award
This year’s recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian award is Dr. Chelsea Rogers. “It’s such an honor not only to serve as a professor of English at Charleston Southern but also to receive an award in recognition of Martin Luther King Jr., someone who fought for the idea of peace and unity and the ending of discrimination,” in Rogers’ words.
It is especially rewarding, she said, to earn such recognition through her vocation of teaching; being nominated by a student in particular “means the world” to Rogers and affirms her devotion to teaching and cultivating an environment that helps students “become better readers and writers but also maybe better people as well.”
Her research interests in African American studies chiefly revolve around representations of identity, including boyhood, trauma, race, and community, especially involving African American youth representation in Children’s and Young Adult Literature. With emphases on “the Black experience in America” and “the Black experience in Children’s literature and how it’s represented,” Rogers strives to help her students interact with an immensely diverse body of works that highlight all perspectives, particularly around the representation of race and the discussions that arise from such interactions: for example, “what it means to be a protagonist and if you have to address race – what does it mean if you don’t talk about it, what is lost and what is gained.”
These themes and interests extend through many different textual styles, from plays to graphic novels, as well as between genres, from fiction and nonfiction to fantasy and science fiction. With consideration and grace for students always, her classroom is meant to be a space where students feel heard and seen. She strives to provide them “with perspectives where they might find themselves in a text.” Befitting of a winner of the MLK Humanitarian award, Rogers’ overall goal for students is to make them think. “My goal is to help them see that other people exist in this world that aren’t like themselves and to see the similarities in people that they may not think they have,” said Rogers.
For Rogers, this award represents an important part of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. that she strives to follow in life, research, and vocation: “He tried to bring people together; I would only hope to live up to that type of life to leave a legacy behind where I brought people together rather than showing them how different they are and tearing them apart.”
Rogers will be honored at the Black History Intercollegiate Consortium’s MLK Jr. remembrance in February. The event, delayed for weather, brings together students from Charleston Southern University, College of Charleston, Medical University of South Carolina, The Citadel, and Trident Technical College, and will be held this year on MUSC’s campus.