Remembering Enslavement explores plantation museums as sites for contesting and reforming public interpretations of slavery in the American South. Emerging out of a three-year National Science Foundation grant (2014–17), the book turns a critical eye toward the growing inclusion of the formerly enslaved within these museums, specifically examining advances but also continuing inequalities in how they narrate and memorialize the formerly enslaved.
Using assemblage theory as a framework, Remembering Enslavement offers an innovative approach for studying heritage sites, retelling and remapping the ways that slavery and the enslaved are included in southern plantation museums.
It examines multiple plantation sites across geographic areas, considering the experiences of a diversity of actors: tourists, museum managers/owners, and tour guides/interpreters. This approach allows for an understanding of regional variations among plantation museums, narratives, and performances, as well as more in-depth study of the plantation tour experience and public interpretations. The authors conclude the book with a set of questions designed to help professionals reassemble plantation museum narratives and landscapes to more justly position the formerly enslaved at their center.
About the Author :
Amy E. Potter (Author)
AMY E. POTTER is associate professor of geography at Georgia Southern. She is the coauthor of Social Memory and Heritage Tourism Methodologies.
Stephen P. Hanna (Author)
STEPHEN P. HANNA is professor of geography at the University of Mary Washington. He is the coauthor of Mapping Tourism and Social Memory and Heritage Tourism Research Methodologies.
Derek H. Alderman (Author)
DEREK H. ALDERMAN is professor of cultural and historical geography at the University of Tennessee. He is the coauthor of The Political Life of Urban Streetscapes: Naming, Politics, and Place and Civil Rights Memorials and the Geography of Memory.
Perry L. Carter (Author)
PERRY L. CARTER is associate professor of geography at Texas Tech University. His writing has appeared in the Journal of Heritage Tourism and Urban Geography.
Candace Forbes Bright (Author)
CANDACE FORBES BRIGHT is assistant professor of sociology at East Tennessee State University. She is the author Conceptualizing Deviance: A Cross-Cultural Social Network Approach to Comparing Relational and Attribute Data.
David L. Butler (Author)
DAVID L. BUTLER is professor of geography and vice provost for research and dean of graduate studies at Middle Tennessee State University.
Review :
What the authors successfully do is offer guides, site managers, and visitors a window into the plantation interpretation experience outside of their own, as well as points of reflection for guides and site managers revising interpretation strategies . . . . Remembering Enslavement makes a significant contribution to cultural geography, plantation/slavery tourism, and public history.
Remembering Enslavement is a welcome addition to the canon of literature related to interpreting difficult history at heritage tourism sites. . . . The authors have managed to pull off something that most public historians only dream about—a report on a group project that is insightful, useful, and also a great read!
Remembering Enslavement meticulously disassembles the plantation museum not only to improve our understanding of the many factors and actors that shape the visitor experience but also to advance the authors’ reparative approach of reimagining the southern plantation museum assemblage. . . . The book should be essential reading for plantation museum owners, managers, and guides.
This comprehensive and rigorous analysis confirms what many previous scholars have reported, but with more depth and nuance.
