Encountering Haunted Public History Sites

Ghostly Sites

In this portion of the workshop, you'll get a chance to explore some public history sites that are entangled with a haunting. Four case studies are offered below. Each case utilizes a distinctive approach to consider their haunted histories, from performance art to oral history and memorialization. Consider the social violence that each case uniquely addresses. Moreover, think about the possibilities and limitations of each initiative in mediating a fraught relation to the past.

Hemings Foundation

Artist Marisa Williamson's Hemings Foundation is a living monument to known and unknown literal and figurative ancestors. Watch her video, The Fire (2017), in which Williamson imagines the interior life of Sally Hemings, an African American woman enslaved at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello.

The Legacy Museum

Through a more honest portrayal of the violence of enslavement, Jim Crow, and their enduring legacies, The Legacy Museum exposes truth and assigns responsibility not often found in antebellum sites. Videography, art, and historical research provide for deeper, more complex understandings of racial violence endemic to the US, particularly through the practice of lynching.

If They Should Ask

In her project, artist Sharon Hayes sought to address this absence of women as well as the intersectional dynamics of race, gender-identity, sexuality, and class. Her sculpture, If They Should Ask, recognized a long line of Philadelphia women, from the mid-1600s to the present day, who could have been or could be recognized with monuments.

The Academy Stories

In the 1970s, court-ordered public school desegregation transformed the Deep South’s classrooms, stadiums, and teachers’ lounges. An estimated 750,000 white students enrolled in segregation academies that sprouted up around 1970 in 13 states to defy the ideal of racial equality. The Academy Stories publishes first-person accounts from academy alumni.

Questions for Reflection & Discussion

What ghosts are these sites confronting?
How are the sites confronting these ghosts?
What is the impact of this confrontation?

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse