SAH Roundtable Leads to Book Examining Impact of U.S. Confederate Monuments in the Cultural Landscape

SAH programs and activities are designed to promote scholarship, connect scholars, and encourage collaborations. A recent publication on Confederate monuments is an example of this type of collaborative work, where an SAH Connects program galvanized the project and inspired the editorial team with a fresh sense of relevance and urgency.

From the start, symbols of colonialism and the Confederacy have often been the focus of public discourse (and rage). Scholars point to research that shows the original intent of monuments to the Confederacy was to reinforce racist ideals, a concept that should be abhorrent to all Americans. While calls to remove Confederate monuments and rename buildings and streets memorializing Confederate leaders are not new, 2020 was a watershed moment. The murder of George Floyd compelled bold protests, and the national debate extended beyond that unjust act sparking conversations about structural racism and white supremacy, and the ways in which they have been (and still are) reinforced in American public spaces.

Responding to the resurgence of public attention to the issue, SAH released a statement in June 2020 supporting the removal of Confederate monuments from public spaces. A month later, the Society’s Heritage Conservation Committee organized a public virtual roundtable, “Removal of Monuments from Public Spaces”.

Attending the program was longtime SAH member Lake Douglas, then-associate dean and professor in the College of Art & Design at Louisiana State University. Joining the stream from his office at the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture, he was curious to see the angles from which his peers were approaching the issue.

Remembering the moment, he said: "In [popular media] discussions of these monuments, they always come from a position of race, history, and remembered history. I don't recall too many people talking about the spatial aspect and the urban design aspect of the impact of these monuments."

According to Douglas, the discussion over Zoom that day included a variety of interesting perspectives that offered "much to think about" as he heard positions articulated and rationales for various courses of action.

"Examining the spatial impact leads into discussions of equity; whose space is it, and what stories are being told? And why are they being told?” he said. To answer those questions, you need to see the woven fabric of a place that pulls together threads from many disciplines. Douglas believed there were even more perspectives that could be brought to bear on the subject. "I thought this would make a great book for the Reading the American Landscape series I edit for LSU Press, " he noted.

In parallel, M. Elen Deming, professor and director of the Doctor of Design program at the College of Design at North Carolina State University (NCSU), who was already working on the topic, had also joined the SAH roundtable.  Deming’s research interests in the theory and history of landscape representation and the rhetorical values present in landscape design aligned well with the subject.  

Deming was working on the topic of Confederate narratives with her NCSU colleague Kofi Boone, Joseph D. Moore distinguished professor and director of NC’s State’s graduate program in landscape architecture. Boone initiated work on Confederate monuments as part of a cultural landscape presentation for The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s Leading with Landscape: Research Triangle in Spring 2018 (hosted by NCSU). That presentation contrasted community responses to confederate monuments in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. That sparked Deming and Boone’s ongoing collaboration including academic conference talks and, in 2019, a co-authored article titled “Symbolic Conversations in Public Landscapes of the American South.”  

“We decided to tackle the topic because, in the past decade — especially since 2017 — media attention to Confederate monument removals begged for much-needed clarity.” Deming writes.  Boone acknowledges, “I was dealing with some ‘landscape blindness.’ As a relocated northerner [from my hometown of Detroit], I really didn't give the monuments and memorials any real attention.”  “But,” he continues, “as I got to understand southern communities more, especially smaller rural ones, it became clear that although not spoken about in the open, the artifacts were exerting some power on their communities.”

In March 2019, Deming and Boone organized a panel session on the topic of Confederate monuments called  “Symbols of Division: Deploying Narratives and Counter-Narratives in Public Space,“ hosted by the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA). As a repeat collaborator of Douglas’, Deming feels the conceptual seeds for a book were planted at that time.  However, the project languished for many months until the SAH Roundtable gave it new impetus.

Finally, "the stars aligned, and the project took shape. … the Roundtable stimulated new conversations on content and the addition of potential participants," Douglas said. In fact, two of the SAH Roundtable participants—Dell Upton and Zena Howard—accepted the editors’ invitation to join the book project and made very important contributions.

"We invited an extraordinary group of experts to help us study the problem. With eighteen contributors overall, the book became quite complex, a multi-year project running right through Covid-time," Deming shared. "Some of our authors were historians and geographers; some artists and designers; and some social activists and advocates for inclusive public space. The book would have been impossible without this 'village.'"

Empty Pedestals: Countering Confederate Narratives through Public Design, was published in June 2024, exactly three years after the auspicious SAH discussion.

"The end products of such roundtables and collaborations are greater than any individual efforts could be," said Douglas. "Maybe that suggests that there should be more articles or more presentations or more discussions that focus on one thing from different perspectives."

“There is a need to bridge the gap between research and action,” adds Boone. “Finding common ground between academics and practitioners to enable more diverse voices in the conversation would be good. [Any way we can] consider the broader ideas of scholarship and impact as opposed to strictly research could remove some barriers to access for non-academics to participate.”

SAH programming is dedicated to bringing scholars across disciplines together for meaningful interaction. With the support from its community, the Society has connected its members around topics of interest at Meetups, hosted expert-led public fora through the SAH CONNECTS event series, and expanded opportunities to present research at its in-person and virtual conferences.

The author credits SAH’s Statement on Monuments to the Confederacy and its authors for language used to open this article.

Cover image: Detail of Northumberland County Confederate Monument, an obelisk on the courthouse lawn. Heathsville, Virginia, United States. Carved into the stone is an image of two crossed swords with their point of connection wrapped in a shroud. Photo by Dell Upton and submitted to SAHARA.