Historical plantation museums have been criticized for biased interpretation practices that marginalize the historical presence of enslaved African Americans. This is a curriculum question that is relevant to historical museums that are wrestling with impacting social change and developing equitable practices to serve increasingly broad and diverse audiences.
I conducted an action research study with five museum workers at Magnolia Mound Plantation (MMP) in south Louisiana to better understand the limits and possibilities of expanding slave life representations at this museum. I implemented the study using action research and archival research. Action research involved ethnographic methodologies including tour observations, interviews, focus group meetings, and feedback from outside reviewers. The archival research generated a report documenting this sites enslaved community from 1786-1830.
Museum workers demonstrated that they were engaged in remembrance learning, a kind of learning to live with loss, when they were faced with revising the museums traditional planter-focused tour to an integrated tour that elevated the historical presence of the enslaved community. Looking through an educational psychoanalytic lens, I found that the newly introduced slave life histories disrupted museum workers understandings of MMPs history, which incited feelings of loss for the iconic meanings of the historical site and for museum workers personal attachments to French Louisiana plantation heritage. Museum workers used expressions of mourning and melancholia to describe their engagement with the slave life histories.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-06292006-183004 |
| Date | 30 June 2006 |
| Creators | Rose, Julia Anne |
| Contributors | Thomas Durant, Miles Richardson, Petra Munro Hendry, William Doll, Claudia Eppert |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-06292006-183004/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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