Rebecca Sheehan, Professor of Geography

Why Do Protests about Memorials in Public Spaces Matter? Geographers to the Rescue

Cultural landscapes—the human imprint on the earth—convey the most basic  strivings of humankind. Cultural landscapes not only reflect humanity, but they also can exemplify and amplify social relations, especially concerning power and identity. Dr. Sheehan studies public spaces, particularly those that are meant to memorialize. Her work explores how public spaces act upon the social world by prioritizing specific memories to shape political, economic, and cultural relations in the present and in the future. Some of these public spaces are hotly contested; in the U.S. South, calls to remove, replace, retain, or construct memorialization related to the Confederacy and Black people are persistent. Dr. Sheehan will discuss her research, which examines such contestations around public spaces in New Orleans, Montgomery, and Birmingham, illustrating the need for what she terms “regenerative memorialization” in the landscape.