LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT: We acknowledge that the Williams Building at Florida State University is located on land that is the ancestral and traditional territory of the Apalachee Nation, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida, the Independent Traditional Seminole Nation, and the Seminole Tribe of Florida. We pay respect to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to their descendants, to the generations yet unborn, and to all Indigenous people. We recognize that this land remains scarred by the histories and ongoing legacies of settler colonial violence, dispossession, and removal. In spite of all of this, and with tremendous resilience, these Indigenous nations have remained deeply connected to this territory, to their families, to their communities, and to their cultural ways of life. We recognize the ongoing relationships of care that these Indigenous Nations maintain with this land and extend our gratitude as we live and work as humble and respectful guests upon their territory. We encourage you to learn about and amplify the contemporary work of the Indigenous nations whose land you are on and to endeavor to support Indigenous sovereignty in all the ways that you can.

FSU's land acknowledgment statement.

 

2020 Department Statement Against Institutional Racism and Racist Violence

The Department of English of FSU stands in solidarity with all those engaged in the fight against systemic and institutionalized racism. The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Daunte Wright—as well as the deaths of countless named and unnamed others—testify to the ongoing violence committed against Black people in our communities. The deeply entrenched historical roots of this violence along with those more casual acts of racism that perpetuate racial injustice must be denounced and resisted.

We also express our outrage at the murder of eight individuals in Atlanta, six of whom were of Asian descent and seven of whom were women. That attack was part of a much larger, documented surge in anti-Asian discrimination and hate crimes against Asian Americans since the declaration of the global COVID-19 pandemic. The murders also belong to a longer history in the United States of discriminating against and stereotyping Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander communities. We urge the FSU community to call out and confront violence against women and all forms of racism and xenophobia, including racist claims that scapegoat particular groups or countries for the global pandemic.

We recognize that issuing this statement is in no way a substitute for the necessary and sustained work of dismantling and combating systemic and institutionalized racism; that we must continue to examine our own practices and complicities in the injustices we condemn, and that we must be active rather than passive participants in this fight. As teachers, scholars, and staff members we hereby declare our commitment to this work and to providing a place of learning, of safety, solidarity, and inclusion.

This site represents one part of the English department's efforts to foster and implement anti-racist practices in our classrooms, workplace, and the community at large. A collaborative space where members can access and share resources, the site relies on community members' contributions in the form of documents, links, pedagogical resources, multimedia files, announcements, and other relevant items.

English Department Statement In Response To Campus Racism and Hate Crimes, October 7, 2021

Our Black students have, at great personal risk, brought to light a danger that affects our entire campus. It is imperative that we act on student concerns. The week of September 27 we, in the Department of English, were advised by the Black Student Union about a pervasive culture of anti-Black violence at FSU. KKK signage appeared on and around campus. Anti-Blackness, historically and currently, is never an isolated phenomenon. It is intertwined with other forms of hate and discrimination. Our Jewish students have also been recently targeted.

We are rhetoricians, literary critics, and creative writers. We witnessed the police and the administration's haste to minimize this outrageous violence by calling it "a prank." This was no "prank." To name it as such, and to name other acts of violence isolated "incidents," dismisses the gravity of the situation and suggests that racism is not a "credible threat" to our community. We will not downplay the impact of any hate crime by referring to it as an "incident" or "prank." Racism ought not be diminished through language. Violence, renamed, is violence still.

We believe our Black students when they say that racist slurs, harassment, and attacks are a regular occurrence. We believe our Black students when they say that fraternities use "sleeping with a Black woman" as a form of sexual conquest. We believe our Black students when they say that they are not okay. We believe our Black, Jewish, LGBTQIA+ students, and other students of color when they say that they do not feel safe. We do not tolerate racism or discrimination against any minoritized community.

We also support our Black faculty and staff alongside our Black students. We acknowledge that our colleagues have been profiled and harassed, and we have, at times, not known what to do or say. We realize that when we do nothing and say nothing, when we act like everything is fine, when we proceed with business-as-usual, we neglect to intervene in systemic racism and fail our community. We are stopping that pattern now.

The Department of English recognizes that statements of solidarity do not of themselves make change. We therefore call on our administration to lead every member of the FSU community in implementing concrete measures to combat systemic and institutional racism on campus.