Katy Lamb

• BA Combined Honours
• "Cradle of the Confederacy, Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement": Race, Social Memory, and Landscapes of Commemoration in Montgomery, Alabama.

Museums and memorials offer powerful vantage points from which to examine the complexities of contemporary social relations, via the lens of the remembered past. In Montgomery, Alabama, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is developing two extraordinary projects opening in 2018: The Memorial to Peace and Justice, the first monument to the history of racial terror lynching in America; and a museum, From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which maps the ongoing legacies of slavery.

Drawing on interviews, and analysis of Montgomery’s monuments and museum exhibits, this research explores how memories are built, renewed and reinterpreted via public sites of commemoration. Standing in contrast to ambivalent representations of this history elsewhere in the city, the emergence of the EJI’s work from grassroots, anti-racist activism is an important element to be considered. Another key consideration is how place can be used and invoked to both uphold, or create a challenge to normative histories.

Funding source: Newcastle University

Supervisor: Dr Catherine Degnen