Town/gown hostilities and memory entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT Increased controversy over the truth and meaning of the past has fueled an economic surge in public memory spurring competition between universities and cities for material and symbolic resources. Relations between “town and gown” are often fraught with distrust and sabotage as university administrators and government officials carve out their own memory territories for profit. As rhetorical scholars, educators, and practitioners critically engage our places of employment, careful consideration must be paid to how memory boundaries are drawn, and who stands to gain from the monopolization of culturally relevant narratives of racial struggle.