Hello histarchers,

 

Following is an interesting Call for Papers that the session organizer has
asked me to share with this list. He would love to have archaeological
input! Contact him directly if you are interested.

 

Carol

*****************************

Carol McDavid, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Community Archaeology Research Institute, Inc.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Rice University

Secretary, Society for Historical Archaeology

Co-editor, Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage
(http://www.maneypublishing.com/journals/cah)

1638 Branard

Houston, TX 77006

www.publicarchaeology.org <http://www.publicarchaeology.org/>  

 

 

Call for presentations, 2014 meeting of Association of American Geographers
(AAG), Tampa, Florida, April 8-12.

 

Session Title: The Southern Plantation Museum: The "Tough Stuff" of Heritage
Tourism Research 

 

Session Organizers: David Butler, The University of Southern Mississippi,
Derek H. Alderman, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

 

Session Description: The examination of heritage tourism has grown
considerably over the past few decades, both inside and outside the field of
geography.  Accompanying this research has been an examination of the
plantation museum, a mythic yet often misrepresented heritage landscape
within the southeastern United States. Plantation managers and docents have
traditionally offered a romanticized, uncritical view of race, gender, and
class relations during the antebellum era.  This is especially evident in
how discussions of African-Americans and slavery have been avoided or
trivialized in favor of valorizing the perspective and lifestyle of the
white planter family.  At the same time, a transformation is taking place at
a growing number of southern plantation museums as they face greater social
and economic pressure to embrace a broader vision of American social history
and incorporate the enslaved experience.  However, this process of inclusion
is not universal and can be open to multiple, dissonant constructions and
public interpretations-thus demonstrating how slavery and race are, in the
words of historians Oliver and Lois Horton, the "tough stuff" of American
memory.  The proposed paper session at the Tampa AAG meeting seeks to
respond to the need for scholarship that can ferret out the nuances,
complexities, and conflicts of memory production and consumption at these
museum sites.  The organizers of the session call for presentations from
emerging and established scholars who are developing theories, methods,
data, analysis and ideas about southern plantation museums and the changes
taking place (or not) at these sites.  Conducting such research is important
to understanding the central and contested place of slavery within
contemporary American life and a greater involvement of the Academy in
challenging social injustices in social memory and heritage tourism
development.  Papers that approach plantation museums from a variety of
perspectives and disciplines are welcome. The organizers are especially
mindful of the need to bring scholarship together that analyzes a variety of
plantation tourism regions as well as the wide range of stakeholders who
shape plantation museums as heritage tourism landscapes-owners/managers,
marketers/place promoters, tour guides/docents, and visitors/tourists.  The
proposed session is sponsored by RESET (Race, Ethnicity, and Social Equity
in Tourism), a multi-university initiative that advocates for a critical
analysis of southern travel and tourism (tourismreset.org).

 

 

Contact:  David Butler at  <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
[log in to unmask] if you are interested in participating in this session