social justice (Other Keyword)
1-15 (15 Records)
The Parker Academy, founded in 1839 in southern Ohio, was the first secondary school in the country to house multiracial, coeducational classrooms. Furthermore, several primary sources suggest it was also a participatory component of the Underground Railroad network. This paper highlights our findings of recent excavations and continuing archival research to explore how the school was a site of everyday resistance under a framework of transformative change through education for a multi-racial...
"America in Tears." The Revolutionary Foundations of National Identity Narratives. (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Advocacy in Archaeology: Thoughts from the Urban Frontier" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. What can we learn from urban archaeology about the early formation of American identity that can help us address the many current challenges to social justice? Historical narratives are constantly rewritten to serve various interests of power. Archaeology can help us to see the constructedness of those narratives and...
Anti-Racism in the Time of Covid-19 (2021)
This is a forum/panel proposal presented at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen a rise of anti-racist protests due to the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others. The protests have brought attention to the Black Lives Matters movement, the fight for social justice, and the impact of structural racism. This forum focuses on how these events and issues have affected the work and profession of historical...
At the Heart of the Ikaahuk Archaeology Project (2017)
For several years, we have been working with Inuvialuit community members from Sachs Harbour in Canada’s Northwest Territories, developing a research partnership called the Ikaahuk Archaeology Project (IAP). Many Inuvialuit connect with the past through "doing"; engaging in a range of traditional and non-traditional activities. Through them, they come to know the past physically, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. While archaeologists primarily engage with the past intellectually,...
Barriers to Access, or the Ways Racism Continues (2015)
Black history at historic plantations concerns more than slavery and freedom; it also tells the story of why blacks in the past are omitted at places with so much of their history to tell. Historic plantations offer rich laboratories in which to examine the ways that racism changes and stays the same through the circumstances that enable black history to be revealed or hidden. By studying the interpretation--or lack thereof--of black history at places like Mount Clare, we can learn from the...
Breaking Open The Narrative: New Directions In Social Justice From Archaeology And Education In The Northeast (2023)
Often characterized as the hub of the American abolitionist and human rights movements, the Northeast United States has a more complex legacy. Evidence of enslavement and systemic oppression is plentiful, revealing a more accurate picture of the brutal conditions under which enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples lived. Popular views ignore or underplay this disturbing legacy. However, immunity from critique is waning and re-examination with fresh data is underway. A new generation of scholars...
Coal-fired Power: Household goods, Hegemony, and Social Justice at Appalachian Company Coal Mining Towns (2017)
Hegemonic power structures in Appalachia solidified during industrialization and shape the region’s representation and economic strategies today. Appalachia is a land of backward hillbillies in the public consciousness, alternately uplifted and oppressed by extractive industries. Popular perceptions privilege the coal industry’s ‘power over’ Appalachian people without confronting the dynamic interplay of many power structures. Household goods from two Kentucky company coal towns illuminate the...
Confronting Uncomfortable Pasts: Gender and Domestic Violence in Pennsylvania Company Towns, 1850 to Present (2016)
Historical archaeology has an opportunity to tell histories that have been obscured, overlooked, or forgotten, purposefully or otherwise, through the passage of time; however, some of these facets of the past continue to ring true in the present. Archaeologists from the University of Maryland have documented patterns and stories of domestic violence in small company "patch" towns in Northeastern Pennsylvania’s Anthracite coal region covering nearly 100 years of history. Oral histories with town...
Critical Public Archaeology as Social Change: Five Years of Public Outreach at the Anthracite Heritage Program (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeologists from the University of Maryland have been carrying out excavations in Northeastern Pennsylvania coal company towns since 2009. Since 2013, there has been a concerted effort within this work to use public archaeology and archaeological interpretations to effect social change in the surrounding...
The Parker Academy: A Place of Freedom, A Space of Resistance (2016)
In a time when social and racial justice and collective action is evermore the crux of African American communities, the importance of public engagement and community archaeology and mapping historical activism is evident. This paper will present initial findings of the archaeological and archival research project at the Parker Academy, founded in 1839 in southern Ohio. This Academy was the first school in Ohio, and the country, to house multiracial coeducational classrooms. Importantly, it was...
Reparations & Archaeology: Envisioning Social Justice for People of African Descent (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Black Studies and Archaeology" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Recent U.S. protests over George Floyd’s death and racial health disparities emerging from COVID 19 are the latest of many calls for anti-racist justice that have been pondered by Black studies and activists for a long time. These pressing traumas have led people to call into question their beliefs about their capacities for survival and...
Searching for Proud Shoes: The Pauli Murray Project and the Place of Historical Archaeology within a Social Justice Organization (2017)
The authors organized an excavation on the site of the Pauli Murray Family Home in 2016. Murray was a fierce advocate for equal rights, especially on behalf of African Americans and women. In her autobiographies she traces her refusal to follow the scripts available to "Negro" "women" in the early 20th century to her upbringing among extended family in Durham, North Carolina. The session abstract urges contributors to consider how historical archaeology can inform contemporary strategies for...
Student Voice: A Revolution Worth Listening To (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Advocacy in Archaeology: Thoughts from the Urban Frontier" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. “Revolution” appears less than 10 times in the most recent NY State Regents test on US History, a requirement for high school graduation. Teaching the American Revolution has been supplanted with different revolutions, including labor reform and civil rights. The revolution is not dead, but it is different. Public...
Taking Archaeology to Heart: Reflections on Passions and Politics (2017)
Talking about "heart-centered archaeology" is not necessarily easy, but it is easily necessary. Those of us who work with descendant communities know the power of the personal in making those projects possible, desirable, and enjoyable. As analytical as we must be, we must also have open hearts to those who experience the past(s) in more palpable, less academic, more heart-centered ways already. These can be profoundly transformative and positive, as they require more emotional and personal...
Turnaround Archaeology: Reorienting Archaeology So Its Main Purpose Is the Pursuit of Social Good (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Congress: Multivocal Conversations Furthering the World Archaeological Congress Agenda" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This conversation is between archaeologists (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) and Aboriginal people from the Barunga region of the Northern Territory Australia. We present our emerging vision for reorienting archaeology so its primary purpose is as a tool for social good. We discuss...