America’s Renaming Moment: On Realizing Its Reparative Possibilities

America is in the midst of place renaming moment. Names affixed to spaces across a variety of scales-- from city streets and university campuses to national parks and military bases—are being challenged and changed because they valorize historical figures associated with racism, settler colonialism, and patriarchy. In addition to this de-commemoration, communities are using place names as tools of reparative memory-work, to recover and do justice to erased indigenous ties to the land and the neglected contributions of people of color, women, and queer communities. While this renaming moment has been criticized (and rightly so to some degree) for being a performative distraction from “real issues,” such a perspective can too easily dismiss the nation’s history of place name activism along with how some members of historically marginalized groups view commemoratively named places as important to their lived experiences, identity struggles, and political-emotional wellbeing. Dr. Alderman explores the narrative, material, and affective capacities of place naming and along with what is required—intellectually and practically—to realize the full reparative possibilities of the nation’s renaming moment. Such possibilities depend upon communities responding to the violent racialized and gendered histories behind named places, recasting place naming as a public participatory and regenerative process, and recognizing how commemorative renaming works with wider place-making discourses, practices, and locations to reproduce (or resist) social inequality.

More information for this event can be found here.

About the Presenter: 

Derek H. Alderman (Ph.D., University of Georgia) is a Professor of Geography and the Betty Lynn Hendrickson Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Tennessee, where he has also served as Head of the Department of Geography & Sustainability. His teaching, research, and public outreach focus on cultural and historical geography, with a major emphasis on the African American Freedom Struggle in the Southeast. Dr. Alderman is a past President of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) and a Fellow of the AAG. He is the (co)author of over 150 articles, essays, and book chapters—many of which have helped develop the growing interdisciplinary field of critical toponymic or place naming studies. His scholarship advances understanding of the role of named places in struggles over social justice, memory, and public space in America. Dr. Alderman is a nationally recognized authority on the topic of street naming, especially for civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. In August of 2022, he was appointed by Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland to serve on a National Advisory Committee on Reconciliation in Place Names, which is charged with identifying and recommending changes to offensive terms still in use for places throughout the U.S. as well as improving existing federal naming/renaming processes. The National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities have fund Dr. Alderman’s research and pedagogical work. Committed to publically engaged scholarship, Dr. Alderman regularly assists municipal officials, community organizations, journalists, documentarians, and DEI advocates. Print, radio and television media outlets have interviewed or quoted him numerous times, including CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, CityLab, Washington Post, USA Today, and National Public Radio.

Geography Holiday Party at Kenwick Table (201 Owsley Ave, Lexington, KY 40502)

Philanthropy-State Relations in an Age of Biodiversity Crisis

Dr. Clare Beer, UCLA

The role of philanthropy in biodiversity conservation is rapidly changing. As philanthropic foundations and wealthy donors commit massive sums to help 'save the planet,' they are fueling a growing discourse that large-scale conservation and large-scale giving are both indispensable to solving the coupled climate and biodiversity crises. But are they? What would this mean, and how would this function in practice? This talk addresses such questions through a case study of one large-scale conservation initiative in Chilean Patagonia, established through a novel public-private partnership between the Chilean state and the U.S.-based philanthropic foundations Tompkins Conservation and The Pew Charitable Trusts. Drawing on thirteen months of qualitative fieldwork, it traces the origins and trajectories of this initiative and interrogates the broader implications of leveraging philanthropy in state environmental governance. Tompkins Conservation and The Pew Charitable Trusts attracted state buy-in for the partnership by speculating on the value and investability of national parks as economic assets. Reflecting a logic of conservation-as-development, this disrupted an entrenched state logic of conservation-versus-development that had derailed previous attempts to protect the region. Yet, my research finds that the execution of conservation-as-development in Chile – largely facilitated by these philanthropic foundations – is mimicking and reproducing key dynamics of extractive-led development, raising critical doubts about the feasibility and appeal of conservation-as-development as a green transition alternative.

Eunjung Kim’s research and teaching interests include transnational feminist disability studies; theories of vulnerability and human/nonhuman boundaries; Korean cultural history of disability, gender, and sexuality and anti-violence feminist disability movements; Asian feminisms and women’s movements; critical humanitarian communications and human rights; asexuality and queer theories. She is currently working on a book-length manuscript on violence against people with disabilities and illnesses, health justice activisms, posthumous care, and the ecology of aging and dying in South Korea and beyond.

Zomm Link: TBD

"Necropolitics, Border Walls, and a Murder of Jim/Juan Crow in the Mexico-US Frontera"

Across the Mexico-US borderlands, overlapping white supremacist and Anglo-nationalist movements are building private walls as monuments to Donald Trump. Many social justice activists and ecological stewards have warned that these Trumpist border walls present specific and new threats to social and ecological landscapes, particularly along the riparian sections of the borderlands. To slow their building and, even, topple these walls, many activists and ecological caretakers are working to fortify networks with similar efforts elsewhere. In an effort to provide analyses useful to such justice endeavors, I employ Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics to situate the borderland activist struggles against the Trumpist walls within a broader context of struggle against the commemoration of racist terror in the US South. Specifically, I use Mbembe’s theorization of necropolitical deathworlds to illustrate some potential common cause linking protests against Trumpist walls in the Paso del Norte region of the Mexico-US border with a Black Lives Matter/Say Her Name coalition that is bringing down Confederate monuments in central Texas. In placing these movements in connection with each other, I highlight a synergy of the white supremacy of Jim Crow with the Anglo nationalism behind a Juan Crow variant of racist terror and anti-immigrant hatred driving the Trumpist wall constructions. Recognition of this convergence is one way, I maintain, for identifying opportunities for making common cause across Americas’ myriad struggles to destroy the racist monuments that glorify the necropolitical legacy of racist colonialism and its ongoing social and ecological devastation.

A native of Puerto Rico, Yomaira was born and raised in Hoboken, NJ and is a first-generation high school and college graduate. She is Associate Professor of Global Afro-Diaspora Studies in the department of English at Michigan State University. She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and her B.A. in English, Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick (Douglass College).

Zoom Link: TBD

Geography Awareness Week starts this Wednesday, November 2nd and culminates in a tabling outside Whitehall on Nov 9th, 8:30–noon. We have three activities that people can participate in:

• Pin your hometown on a poster map that is laminated and mounted on a 40" x 42" foam board.
• Virtually pin your hometown on a web map of the world.
• Find hidden gems around campus in a virtual geocache.

More details here.