About Us

In 2020, Roanoke College established the Center for Studying Structures of Race (CSSR) as a venue for teaching, research and community engagement on issues of race. The academic center is dedicated to the study of historical and contemporary issues involving race and the legacies of slavery in modern American society, with a particular focus on examining forms of institutional racism at local, national and international levels.

Through its work, CSSR strives to offer thoughtful, creative and innovative responses to the problems of race in multi-faceted contexts. Its name intentionally invokes the physical structures on and around Roanoke College's campus that reveal histories and legacies of slavery, while also emphasizing the necessity of examining forms of structural racism from an interdisciplinary perspective. The center attempts to both expand and complicate the ways in which we teach, research and learn about race, creates a space for unique and experiential student learning activities, and works to establish connections with the broader community. 

Jesse Bucher is Associate Professor of History, Founding Director of the Center for Studying Structures of Race, College Historian, and Coordinator of the African and African Diaspora Studies Concentration at Roanoke College.  He has a PhD in African history from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities where he was a MacArthur Scholar at the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change.  Prior to arriving at Roanoke College in 2012, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the  Centre for Humanities Research at University of the Western Cape.  Bucher’s research utilizes postcolonial and critical theory to interpret the history of political violence, colonialism, racial politics, and public memory in Tanzania, South Africa, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States.  He has worked extensively on projects related to histories of public commemoration, memorialization, and monuments.  At Roanoke College he formed the Genealogy of Slavery project which documents the history of enslaved people in southwest Virginia, and led efforts to construct a permanent campus memorial in collaboration with Creative Time and the conceptual artist Sandy Williams IV. He regularly offers courses on the history of slavery, on African history, and on Black political movements throughout Africa and the African Diaspora. He can be reached at bucher@roanoke.edu.