Memory Works: A Symposium on Remembering and Reckoning with Slavery's Legacies

Andrew Maginn Announcement
Location
Tennessee, United States
Subject Fields
African American History / Studies, Black History / Studies, Digital Humanities, Public History, Slavery

The Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation at the University of the South invites you to join us this October 6-8 (Thursday-Saturday) to attend Memory Works: A Symposium on Remembering and Reckoning with Slavery's Legacies. The symposium will spotlight ongoing initiatives that community organizations, colleges, and universities have undertaken, often in innovative partnerships, to identify, confront, and alter the legacies of slavery that still resonate in their local environments. It will bring together community leaders, museum professionals, scholars, and students in a small and friendly setting designed for generating conversations, sharing experiences, and workshopping new approaches to commemoration for a region that still reflects a century of fealty to the "Lost Cause."

In focusing on how "memory works," the symposium aims to shed light on the ways memory and commemoration operate in local contexts to reinforce inequities built into the status quo. But panels also will explore how "works of memory," including new or altered or removed memorials, can disrupt and even repair long-established patterns and practices of racist injustice. The emphasis throughout the symposium will be on sharing information about the "memory works" underway today in interactive community history projects, collaborative archiving, digital humanities, the design and installation of new memorials, and the recovery of the historical memory of African American lives and experiences.

The Roberson Project also invites undergraduate and graduate students, public historians, preservationists, and community organizers to submit proposals for a poster session at the Memory Works symposium. These proposed posters should address research, curricular and other campus activities, or community organizing that connects with the symposium theme of how "memory works" to preserve or disrupt slavery's legacies in memory and commemoration. Applicants for the Poster Session should submit proposals, including a 250-word abstract and 100-word maximum brief bio. Selected presenters will receive travel funding to attend the symposium. All submissions are due no later than September 1, 2022.

Contact Information

For any questions, please feel free to reach out to Dr. Andrew Maginn. 

Contact Email
awmaginn@sewanee.edu