Racialized retellings: (Un)ma(r)king space and place on college campuses

ABSTRACT

In higher education, the place of the college campus, as a site of experiences, histories, symbols, and encounters, has important implications for student outcomes. However, the place of campus is often treated as a static or neutral site – a black box within which student outcomes such as belongingness occur. This article argues that excavating the encounters and memories around campus monuments can serve as an entry point for unfolding how systems of colonization and white supremacy persist in higher education, offering a critical re-imagining of the concept of belongingness. Guided by McKittrick and Massey’s feminist decolonial spatial theories and Barad’s conceptualization of memory and re-membering, the article excavates two campus monuments: a boulder commemorating confederate soldiers and a clocktower honoring the legacy of the first Black students at the University. These monuments are memory objects, memorializing particular moments in time on campus, and thus becoming part of the current reproductions of place. Through tracing the memories of campus monuments into the entanglements of the present climate of higher education, this article offers implications and considerations for institutions grappling with their history and responsibility to the past.

KEYWORDS:

• Belonging
• Memory
• Space
• Monuments
• College Campus
• White Supremacy

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Susan Cannon, Laura Smithers, Paul Eaton, and Whitney Toledo, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful reading(s) and insightful feedback on this manuscript during its preparation.

Disclosure statement

The author has no conflict of interest to declare in regards to this research.

Notes

1. Flint (2019b) points to an earlier examination of the discourses of race-place-belonging through an analysis of campus tour rhetoric, confederate monuments, and my interaction(s) with Jon. This manuscript in some ways picks up where that manuscript left off, placing the layered yet temporally distinct encounters with Jon and Leo in conversation. As a result, this manuscript relies more heavily on the later encounter with Leo.

2. Indeed, working on a revision of this paper, this statement feels even more prescient in the wake of the storming of the U.S. Capitol building by insurrectionists associated with the sitting president as the Senate counted electoral college votes in January 2021.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maureen A. Flint

Maureen A. Flint is Assistant Professor in Qualitative Research at the University of Georgia where she teaches courses on qualitative research design and theory. Her scholarship explores the theory, practice, and pedagogy of qualitative methodologies, artful inquiries, and questions of social (in)justice, ethics, and equity in higher education. Representations of her artful inquiries can be found on her website at http://www.maureenflint.com.