Graduate Student Jamya Robinson Receives the Black Excellence Graduate Student Award

Sociology graduate student Jamya Robinson was awarded the Black Excellence Graduate Student Award by Notre Dame Student Government in collaboration with the Notre Dame Black Student Association. This award is intended to honor the outstanding Black community members on campus.

The nomination letter reads as follows:

"Jamya is a third-year Sociology Phd student. She is an excellent scholar, mentee, and leader. Jamya’s research focuses on the collective memory of Black resistance to anti-Blackness. Specifically, her Master’s thesis project incorporates cultural sociology and Black studies perspectives to analyze how school textbooks depict the Civil Rights Movement as respectable while marginalizing other movements like the Black Power Movement. She is also interested in studying the work of Ida B. Wells and her (generally overlooked) contributions to cultural sociology and social movement scholarship. I have been proud as her mentor to see her work develop over her time here and to see her present both these projects at the Association of Black Sociologists’ 2022 and 2023 Annual Meetings. Jamya has also served as a board member of the ND Black Graduate Student Union where she helped organized events that brought together Black graduate students for fellowship and community building. Overall, Jamya is Black and Excellent as she continuously grows in herself and her work, while always remembering to ask about how sociology affects and treats Black people. She is undoubtedly deserving of recognition."