The University named Robyn Autry the new faculty director for the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life (CSPL) at the beginning of the 2023–24 academic year. Autry has been teaching at the University for nine years and maintains her role as an associate professor of sociology in addition to serving as the CSPL director.
As a part of its goals for civic engagement, the CSPL works to create a community for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to discuss teaching practices and work on public life. It also sponsors courses not typically covered by tenure-track professors, including funding the annual Koeppel and Harber fellows. It includes the Office of Community-Engaged Learning, which integrates experiences outside the classroom into the academic curriculum.
Autry was initially surprised when Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Nicole Stanton asked her to step into the position.
“I had to really think about it,” Autry said. “When I think of Allbritton, I think of a lot of civic engagement stuff. And then I think of the government department, and I’m not in government, and I don’t do civic engagement stuff. So I had to kind of have some conversations about, like, am I the right person?”
However, Autry has plenty of experience related to public engagement, including her scholarship in sociology and articles aimed at a public audience, which have appeared in news outlets such as MSNBC, NBC News, and The Atlantic.
“All the things I write about, all the things I study and teach, are about public life, inherently,” Autry said. “My own research is on race, racial identity, blackness, and memory, and I do a lot of public writing…so that’s what [has] the most synergy with what I’m trying to do at the Center for the Study of Public Life.”
After receiving tenure at the University, Autry began writing research pieces intended for a more general audience. She hopes to emphasize these works at the CSPL and to widen the scope of the Center’s understanding of public life.
“We are looking at things that are just of general interest,” Autry said. “We’re trying to have speakers that are of general interest, not just academics. We’re trying to think about public life in a different way in terms of fashion and style and music, and not this kind of narrower definition of what [public life] means. [We’re] thinking about how all aspects of everyday life, our lives, are part of public life.”
That broadening of CSPL’s focus is part of Autry’s goal of rethinking what public life means.
“I want to kind of re-conceptualize what constitutes public life,” Autry said. “And to think about things like the clothes you wear—that’s public life. I’m still working on that. But the main point is to have different sorts of venues and spaces to rethink that, to have experiments in public life. Like, what do we even mean by that term?”
Three events planned for later this semester particularly excite Autry: an online training for civil dialogue initiative beginning next week, a masterclass on international fashion reporting in April, and bringing journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones to speak in a series created by Autry.
President Michael Roth ’78 praised Autry’s teaching and her direction for the CSPL.
“I think she’s great,” Roth said. “She’s amazing. If you read her pieces, she writes a fair amount in the popular press and I always enjoy reading her [and] love talking with her. She’s a great teacher. I think she’s doing really interesting things, bringing interesting speakers, and we’re meeting soon to discuss this constructive dialogue initiative she has, so I think she’s marvelous.”
Spencer Landers can be reached at sklanders@wesleyan.edu.