The classroom as “toponymic workspace”: towards a critical pedagogy of campus place renaming

ABSTRACT

There are growing debates over removing the names of racist historical figures from public schools and university campus buildings, streets, and other public spaces. This article develops a pedagogical framework for transforming the classroom into a “toponymic workspace,” where students can understand and possibly make interventions in the politics of place (re)naming within their own educational institutions. Moving away from traditionally passive treatments of toponyms, we focus on the materiality and active political-affective work behind the creation and maintenance of commemorative campus toponymies along with the complicity of place naming in creating violent social and cultural orders that have contributed to the production of racially-wounded places. We offer three instructional strategies for developing a critical pedagogy of campus place naming: (1) tracing and mapping the historical-ideological genealogies of “landscape backstories” related to naming practices and named spaces; (2) documenting and empathizing with the “affective entanglements” of educational toponyms associated with historically marginalized identities, memories, and struggles; and (3) interrogating questions of “procedural justice” within university place naming policies. We conclude by underscoring the broader aim of this pedagogical framework, which is to engage students in planning a more inclusive and socially just campus landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical toponymy
• cultural landscape
• place naming
• university campus
• critical pedagogy

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their appreciation for the helpful suggestions made the anonymous reviewers and editors of the journal. Reuben Rose-Redwood would also like to acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for funding the Insight Grant project, “Memory-Politics: Commemorative Conflicts on University Campuses in North America,” to support his research on the geographies of commemoration in higher education settings. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the International Seminar on Sea Names, held in Alexandria, Virginia in July 2019.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.