Constructing Reconciliation and Healing: Monuments of Trauma, Loss, and Resistance in the Black Atlantic

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Degree type
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Graduate group
History of Art
Discipline
Arts and Humanities
Architecture
African Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
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2023
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Gibson, Stephanie, M.
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Abstract

By interrogating how and why certain buildings, monuments, urban spaces were built and how and why they function the way they do, my research reveals the structural forces that uphold capitalism, colonialism, and white supremacy. Situated within the discourse surrounding the role of race and resistance within the field of architecture, my research demonstrates how marginalized groups have successfully leveraged the built environment in order to confront their oppressors. The architects, designers, and museum curators of the sites I discuss in my dissertation recognized the important role that place and space play in Black memory and as such have employed various methods—ranging from urban design to abstraction – in order to educate, influence, or undo the trauma wrought by white supremacy and colonialism. All the dissertation case studies are site of memory concrete or imagined. They are places that have been constructed to memorialize the trauma and pain experienced in Africa and its diaspora. Moreover, they are sites that hold space for Black memory to be preserved. My work thinks about space critically and provides an important and much needed intervention that uses the richness of Black cultural memory sites to help us understand how Black collective memory is shaped and maintained through the built environment.

Advisor
Weissberg, Liliane
Date of degree
2023
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