JILL FOUND, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
Proposal Type
Roundtable
Seeking
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking Specific Expertise
- Seeking General Feedback and Interest
Related Topics
- Memory
- Public Engagement
- Reflections on the Field
Abstract
As more historically white and white-majority colleges and universities study their own racist histories, how do they present this past to the public? How do we determine who the public is on a college campus?
Description
The goal of this roundtable is to discuss different ways that predominately white colleges and universities have presented their racist histories to the public and how they determined who the public audience was for such projects. Why have institutions undertaken these projects? Who are the beneficiaries? Is the public the students, staff, and faculty of the school? The community surrounding the institution? An even wider public? I am open to broadening these questions or including others – I’d like race and the university to remain the central focus, however.
I am a graduate student at the University of South Carolina studying slavery on college campuses, but I am also involved in public history projects about the civil rights movement in our community and on campus. I am looking for other panelists for a roundtable interested in talking about how their schools, or schools in their community, have undertaken projects that deal with race for a public audience. My hope is to have a diverse array of experiences in presenting racial histories at colleges and universities that consider who their audience for such presentations is and how that shapes the interpretation.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly: Jill Found, [email protected]
All feedback and offers of assistance should be submitted by July 1, 2019. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.
Jill, this has potential to be a great session, particularly with many universities dealing with commemoration via building names, monuments, and previous administrations. There is another session proposal here entitled INSTITUTIONAL HISTORIES & THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEMORY that might work well to combine. Perhaps y’all can talk? Additionally, check my comments on that proposal, because many of them work for this one. Good luck!
Hi Jill, also helpful in thinking about this (and a potential source of some co panelists) might be the working group I co-led at the NCPH 2016 (I think) meeting in which we focused on “campus history as public history.” Many of our participants were from PWIs and working on race. I’m interested in this as well though probably not able to be involved with a session proposal this year.
Jill,
One person to consider soliciting for the roundtable is Dr. Hilary Green at the Univ. of Alabama. She has created walking tours and pop-up exhibits about slavery and its afterlife on campus and builds classroom teaching around research and interpretation of slavery at UA: http://hgreen.people.ua.edu.
Julia Brock