Geosciences Colloquium to Explore Revisioning Power and Place Through Black Museums

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LaToya Eaves of the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

LaToya Eaves, assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Sustainability at University of Tennessee-Knoxville, will present a colloquium in the Department of Geosciences titled "Urgent Care: Revisioning Power and Place through Black Museums."

The talk will start at 3:05 p.m. Friday, Oct. 14, in Gearhart Hall 026.

According to the Association of African American Museums, there are more than 200 African American history and cultural museums — or other sites with substantial African American collections such as libraries and archives — across the United States. Many of these museums had their start shortly after the height of the Civil Rights Movement, with a surge in establishments in the 1970s. The African American history and cultural museums serve to decenter white stories of America and refocus on Black experiences of this country.

While geographers have studied an array of institutions and phenomena relating to memory and heritage as well as urban and regional transformations, museums remain understudied and undertheorized despite engaging in valuable historical and geographic narratives. Using data from participant observation and semi-structured interviews, Eaves' research analyzes Black placemaking and the construction of power in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The results reveal the ways African American museums are integral to understanding the relationships between Black place-making and urban geographies in the United States and, therefore, to contributing to insurgent knowledges about place.