Object narratives and the enslaved at Sam Houston memorial museum

ABSTRACT

Objects offer an opportunity to narrate the past. Tourism scholarship has found that plantation museums in the American South give considerable attention to objects associated with the planter class to engage visitors with stories about them and their lifestyle. At the same time, museum stakeholders have cited a lack of objects associated with the enslaved as a barrier to greater representations of slavery. However, the concept of an interface object indicates objects can be used to make connections between things that are not intrinsic and to insert issues into stories that are told. These objects can even become charged with such issues. Using the case study of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum in Huntsville, Texas (USA), this paper considers the use of objects in narrating the past, particularly as it relates to slavery. It draws upon participant observation of guided tours and narrative analysis of the stories told about the enslaved on the Houston farm to consider how ordinary objects are used to incorporate slavery into the overarching museum narrative. Finally, the paper concludes that such objects are effective in initiating the conversation about slavery but are not sufficiently charged to facilitate a more meaningful engagement with the issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Slavery
• heritage museum
• Texas
• interface objects
• narrative analysis

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the staff of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum for their participation in this project and those who provided feedback on an earlier version of this paper presented at the 2016 Race, Ethnicity, and Place conference.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Velvet Nelson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Geology at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, USA. She is a human geographer with interests in a range of issues in cultural geography and the geography of tourism. She is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Cultural Geography and Tourism Geographies as well as a member of the International Geographical Union Commission for the Geography of Tourism, Leisure and Global Change.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Sam Houston State University Faculty Research Grant.