Towards a People’s History of Landscape: Black & Indigenous Histories

FAIN: EH-293702-23

Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA 23284-9005)
Kathryn Howell (Project Director: February 2023 to November 2023)
Meghan Gough (Project Director: November 2023 to present)
Thaïsa Way (Co Project Director: February 2023 to present)
Andrea Roberts (Co Project Director: February 2023 to present)
Kathryn Howell (Co Project Director: March 2024 to present)

A three-week, combined-format institute for 25 college and university faculty on African American and Indigenous contributions to social and landscape history in Richmond, Virginia.

Using Richmond, Virginia as a backdrop, this institute challenges higher education participants to re-examine how we research and teach history through the lens of people in place with a focus on expanding critical spatial literacy. The Institute will lead participants through encounters with monumental and natural sites (such as the James River) that hold legacies of so-called historical firsts, including segregation and publicly contested public spaces commemorating the Lost Cause. Local groups who curate Black and Indigenous histories of Richmond’s cultural landscape will lead tours and participate in discussions to foster participants’ capacity to interpret patterns and narratives of erasure and racialized landscapes and to, in turn, teach and share with students and colleagues.