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

Abstract

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.