Geoff Ward

Geoff K. Ward

Professor of African and African American Studies
Director, WashU & Slavery Project,
Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2)
Faculty Affiliate in Sociology and American Culture Studies
(On sabbatical Spring '25)
PHD, Sociology, University of Michigan
BA, Sociology, Hampton University
research interests:
  • Legacies of Racial Violence
  • Representative Social Control
  • Youth Justice
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    contact info:

    mailing address:

    • Washington University
    • Campus Box 1109-0137-02
    • One Brookings Drive
    • St. Louis, MO 63130-4899
    image of book cover

    Geoff Ward’s scholarship examines the haunting legacies of historical racial violence and implications for redress.

    Geoff Ward is Professor of African and African American Studies and faculty affiliate in the Department of Sociology and American Culture Studies Program at Washington University in St. Louis. He is director of the WashU & Slavery Project, a university initiative in partnership with the global consortium of Universities Studying Slavery. Professor Ward's scholarship has broadly focused on the intersection of race, crime and justice and has won support from institutions including the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, the Ford Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. In addition to numerous research articles and essays, he is the author of The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2012), an award-winning book on the contested history and haunting remnants of Jim Crow juvenile justice. His current research examines histories and legacies of racialized violence and their reparative implications, including the role of anti-racist "memory work" in transitional justice processes. 

    Rooted in the black sociological tradition, Professor Ward has been committed to an engaged academic practice, combining traditional scholarship with organizing and creative work including archive development, exhibition curation, podcasting, and digital projects to engage broader audiences, support innovation in teaching, and facilitate the visibility, use and impact of research. He has served on the national advisory board for Monument Lab’s National Monument Audit, and is a member of the Mayor's Commemorative Landscape Taskforce in Clayton, MO, and the Reparative Justice Coalition of St. Louis, a network of volunteers working with Equal Justice Initiative to address legacies of racist violence in the region. 

    Recent publications:

    Legacies of Racial Violence: Clarifying and Addressing the Presence of the Past

    Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social Science. v. 694 March 2021

    Edited by David Cunningham, Hedy Lee, and Geoff Ward

    Table of Contents
    Introduction
    Full Issue 

    Cover image: The "Old Jail" in St. Louis where, in 1836, a free black man named Francis McIntosh was abducted and lynched by a white mob, whose crimes went unpunished. The editors are working with the Reparative Justice Coalition of St. Louis to commemorate and address legacies of this grave injustice.
     

    Other recent publications:

    • Ward, G. (Forthcoming). "Crime Against Law: Legacies of Racial Violence for Crime and Punishment," in Tonry, M. (ed.) Crime and Justice v. 53: Crime and Justice in Historical Perspective
    • Austin, R. et al. (2022). “Remembering St. Louis Individual—Structural Violence and Acute Bacterial Infections in a Historical Anatomical Collection.” Communications Biology, 5.  LINK
    • Ward, G. (2022). “Recognition, Repair & the Reconstruction of ‘Square One’,” Daedalus: The Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 155(1): 153-169. LINK
    • Gaby, S., D. Cunningham, H. Lee, G. Ward, and A. Jackson (2021). "Exculpating Injustice: Coroner Constructions of White Innocence in the Postbellum South." Socius 7. LINK
    • Ward, G., N. Petersen, A. Kupchik, and J. Pratt (2019). "Historic Lynching and Corporal Punishment in Contemporary Southern Schools." Social Problems LINK
    • Cunningham, David, G. Ward and P. Owens (2019). "Configuring Political Repression: Anti-Civil Rights Enforcement in Mississippi." Mobilization: An International Quarterly LINK
    • Pérez, R. and Ward, G. (2019). "From Insult to Estrangement and Injury: The Violence of Racist Police Jokes." American Behavioral Scientist, 0002764219842617. LINK
    • Ward, G. (2018). "Living Histories of White Supremacist Policing," Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 15(1). LINK
    • Ward, G. and P. Hanink (2017). "Deliberating Racial Justice: Towards Racially Democratic Crime Control." In J. Jackson and J. Jacobs (eds.), Handbook of Criminal Justice Ethics. New York: Routledge. LINK
    • Ward, G. (2016). "Microclimates of Racial Meaning: Historical Racial Violence and Environmental Impacts." Wisconsin Law Review, 575. LINK

    To access research articles visit my page on Academia.edu.

    Selected creative projects:

    • Memory for the Future, a year-long "studiolab" combining study of the interlinked histories and legacies of colonialism, slavery, and genocide with the development of public humanities projects. 
    • Alternative Atlas of St. Louis, exploring new ways of thinking, seeing, being and thus making the greater St. Louis through fugitive mapping.
    • Monumental Anti-Racism, a StoryMap exploring the racial politics of public memory, and highlighting global practices and student proposals centering anti-racist commemorative intervention.
    • The Racial Violence Archive, a digital resource for research, teaching, and engagement focusing on histories of racial violence and their legacies today. 
    • Truths and Reckonings: The Art of Transformative Racial Justice, an exhibition at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and John M. Olin Library at Washington University (Spring 2020 and online).
    • Black Memory Work, a StoryMap and podcast supporting the Spring 2020 Senior Seminar and Capstone in the Department of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

    recent courses

    Monumental Antiracism

    This course examines the contentious racial politics of commemorative objects and practices, and theoretical and practical aspects of commemorative work as a strategy of anti-racism, through close readings of relevant texts, case studies, and a practicum component involving collaborative development of a memorial archive and student-led memorial design projects.

    Juvenile Justice in the Black Experience

    This course examines the socio-legal past, present, and future of American juvenile justice, with a focus on the black experience. The course is organized in three parts. Part I surveys the late 19th and early 20th century development of the "parental state," its institutional centerpiece (the juvenile court), and principle legal subjects ("dependents" and "delinquents"), as these took shape alongside the contemporaneous rise of 20th century American Apartheid (i.e., Jim Crow). Part II examines key changes and challenges in contemporary juvenile justice, centering transformations of this institution in the wake of the black freedom movement, and remnants of Jim Crow juvenile justice in the post-Civil Rights Movement period. Finally, Part III considers possible futures of youth justice, and practical strategies for achieving equal protection within and beyond law.

      Histories of Racial Violence, Legacies, and Reckonings

      This course examines legacies of historical racial violence and contemporary reckoning efforts, with emphasis on the African American experience. The course combines seminar readings, discussion and academic writing on legacies of racial violence with a practicum component, where individual students and groups of students and faculty conceptualize and develop projects intended to clarify and disrupt legacies of racial violence, facilitating contemporary reckoning. The seminar and practicum explores and encourages a broad range of remedial efforts, including public policy measures, original research, archival development, commemorative efforts, and a related array of mediums, including visual art, design, film, digital projects, and other creative interventions.

        Memory for the Future

        Co-taught with Prof. Anika Walke (History), and supported through the RDE initiative in the Center for Humanities, this course leverages the concepts of multidirectional memory and reparative curatorial practice to develop new forms of humanities education and public humanities practice. This concept emphasizes the productivity of commemorating different, yet related histories of systematic violence such as the Holocaust, slavery, apartheid, genocide, and colonialism if/when they confront each other in the public sphere. Focusing on commemorative efforts through public memorials, monuments, archives, and museums, M4F blends a seminar (engaging related scholarship and acquiring practical and curatorial skills) and practicum where students and faculty work with area institutional and organizational partners to apply reparative curatorial practices.

        Performing the Past: Black History and Collective Memory in Charleston and the Sea Islands

        On Location 2023 explored the theme, "Performing the Past: Black History and Collective Memory in Charleston and the Sea Islands," and was co-led by WashU professors Paige McGinley (Performing Arts and American Culture Studies) and Geoff Ward (African and African-American Studies). The content and methods of this course sit at the intersection of the instructors' shared interests in Black history in the Americas and practices and sites of collective memory and commemoration, including museums, monuments, live performance, and heritage preservation. Charleston and the Lowcountry region of coastal South Carolina and Georgia offered an ideal destination for an On Location course committed to exploring these topics. Every aspect of region's past and present--including its contemporary tourist economies--is informed by racialized violence and resistance. How can such traumas be represented? What is at stake in making these pasts visible, and how might different modes of remembrance facilitate our reckoning with the past and the reparative work necessary for a more equitable and just future?

        MO Black Heritage Preservation - Seminar and STL Workshop

        The MO Black Heritage Preservation (MBHP) seminar and workshop explores several questions - what is Black heritage, how is it thoughtfully preserved, and to what ends? - through enagement with past and present Black heritage preservation efforts across the African Diaspora, and here, in Missouri, and St. Louis. These questions also guide our workshop, where we engage in hands-on, community-based work to help preserve the African American heritage of St. Louis and Missouri. MBHP is fueled by recognition that "Black history needs the same protections as Black lives. Imperilment of the two is related" (Cep, "The Fight to Preserve African American History," The New Yorker, 2020).

        in the news:

        Public humanities lab takes on reparative memory to uncover the legacy of slavery in Missouri

        Public humanities lab takes on reparative memory to uncover the legacy of slavery in Missouri

        Why St. Louis County removed a memorial to 'white colonists'

        Why St. Louis County removed a memorial to 'white colonists'

        Cunningham and Ward share Mellon Foundation grant for project on the virality of racial terror

        Cunningham and Ward share Mellon Foundation grant for project on the virality of racial terror

        WashU faculty seek student partners in new Civil Rights & Restorative Justice Action Research Lab

        WashU faculty seek student partners in new Civil Rights & Restorative Justice Action Research Lab

        Read more news
        The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice

        The Black Child-Savers: Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice

        By Geoff K. Ward

        The Black Child Savers: Racial Democracy and Juvenile Justice (University of Chicago Press, 2012) provides the first in-depth historical account of the racial politics of American juvenile justice, examining the rise, fall, and lasting remnants of Jim Crow juvenile justice (ca. 1890-2000). The study traces ordeals of racial oppression and domination in juvenile justice – an imagined “citizen-building” institution – to embattled 20th century racial politics of American liberal democracy, while emphasizing the resistance of generations of black civic leaders.  The result is a more complex and dynamic view of how varied racial projects formed and functioned to not only diminish but also affirm the democratic standing of black youth and communities in this context of racialized social control. Theoretically, the project challenges conventional views of racialized social control which frame nonwhites as passive, subjugated populations, revealing the contentious nature of these relations, and the ability for less powerful groups to impose their interests within processes of social control. In terms of public policy, the book illustrates how redistributive remedies rooted in colorblind racial ideology have undermined gains in racial and ethnic group recognition, limiting the relevance of formal integration to substantive inclusion. 
         

        Winner of the Michael J. Hindelang Book Award of the American Society of Criminology, 2013

        Winner of the Outstanding Book Prize of the History of Education Society, 2013