Specters and Spectators: Paranornal Tourism and Historic Sites of Confinement in the American South

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this paper, authors Cayla Colclasure (she/her) and Zoe Schwandt (they/she) consider the phenomenon of paranormal tourism and related media as one way various publics engage with historic sites of confinement in the American South and attempt to bridge the epistemological divide between these forms of engagement with the past and the discipline of historical archaeology. We focus on historic sites of confinement such as prisons, jails, convict leasing camps, asylums, and sanatoriums as loci of difficult histories which have received widespread attention in the form of paranormal tourism and media. Through site visits, media analysis, and archaeology of digital spaces, we explore how the paranormal (mal)functions as a lens for education and learning about difficult histories, consider the implicit carcerality of haunting, and contemplate the afterlives of historic sites of confinement from an abolitionist perspective. Ultimately, the authors relate this discussion to their work on incarcerated labor, institutional life, and the multi-temporal politics of confinement.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38127.0