Toward a People's History of Landscape: Black and Indigenous Histories of the Nation's Capital

Land as the material world’s ground is “infused with sensations and distinct ways of knowing” (McKittrick, ix). The history of imagining, designing, and making places is equally infused, layered, and messy. This Institute’s participants will interrogate narratives of place histories beginning with the nation’s founding and the cultural landscape of one of its earliest colonies, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and its capital Richmond, as an alternative model for teaching history. Institute participants will explore how we engage the lived experience of Black and Indigenous peoples and communities who imagine, construct, make, use, recall, and memorialize places in our teaching and scholarship.