Sites of Memory:
New Orleans & Place-Based Histories in the Americas
Simone Leigh, Sentinel (Mami Wata), 2020–21. Bronze, 194 x 64 x 28 inches. Installation view: Prospect. 5 Yesterday we said tomorrow, 2021-22. Tivoli Circle (formerly Robert E. Lee Circle), New Orleans. Courtesy Prospect New Orleans. Photo: Alex Marks. Courtesy of Prospect.5.
The 2021/ 2022 Sawyer Seminar at Tulane University was organized by the Newcomb Art Department and School of Liberal Arts and sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
The Sites
Sites of Memory: New Orleans and Place-Based Histories of the Americas took New Orleans as a key case study for a broader understanding of settler-colonial, formerly slavery-fueled economies in the Americas using the theme of site-based public history and memorialization. Combining scholarship and public history—and embracing “site” as the pedagogical center—the seminar examined accretions of myth and memory at contested sites of public history such as heritage sites; plantations and historic houses; monuments and memorials; “historic” districts; and site-specific artworks.
The Speakers
Sites of Memory, co-led by Professors Mia L. Bagneris and Adrian Anagnost, brought together scholars, artists, and activists. Through lectures, artist talks, panel discussions, and site visits in the academic year 2021-22, each symposium explored place-based historical narratives in New Orleans and the Gulf South in comparison with those analogous sites across the Americas.
The Sessions
While embracing local specificity, the Sawyer Seminar aimed to understand New Orleans as a case study in the broader context of post-colonial and former slavery-fueled economies in the Americas. Each session adopted a comparative framework that paired sites in and around New Orleans with international analogues from elsewhere in the Americas, from Congo Square in New Orleans with Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janeiro, to the Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana (the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw historical homeland) with Mi’kmaq nations in Canada’s Maritime Provinces. Sessions asked how memory work rooted in New Orleans overlaps with memorialization happening in other former slavery-based economies, in other port cities, and in other immigrant hubs.
