Publications by Matthew R Cook
In After Heritage: Critical Perspective on Heritage from Below, H. Muzaini and C. Minca, eds., 2018
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, 2018
In light of recent protests and debates over Confederate symbols, markers, and flags after the 20... more In light of recent protests and debates over Confederate symbols, markers, and flags after the 2015 Charleston shooting, the South remains fertile ground for critically reflecting on the role of history in shaping the present. State historical marker programs are a near ubiquitous feature of the United States’ commemorative landscape, used to retell history at important sites. However, geographers and other memory studies scholars have not devoted much time or effort in researching historical markers, in part because they are often considered mundane or they are ignored in favor of researching standalone monuments or other memory projects. Engaging with textual politics—the belief that language, words, and narrative are politically active within commemorative landscapes—along with the concepts of historical responsibility and surrogation, this chapter presents an analysis of the Alabama Historical Association’s marker program and its presentation and interpretation of African American history. Findings include that historical periods of slavery and emancipation have largely been ignored while the Civil Rights Movement is more widely represented and celebrated as a success story.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Teaching Difficult History Through Film, eds. J. Stoddard, A. Marcus and D. Hicks.T, 2017
Following the lead of John Wills (2005), we advocate for a critical pedagogy that transforms clas... more Following the lead of John Wills (2005), we advocate for a critical pedagogy that transforms classrooms into a “workspace” for “critically examining and complicating collective memory and privileged traditions of remembering” (p. 128). In this chapter, we outline a pedagogical framework for using filmic representations to teach about historical realities of plantation slavery and challenge a tradition of ignoring, trivializing, or romanticizing the struggles of enslaved communities. We examine the film 12 Years a Slave (2013) and online comedy series Ask a Slave (2013) as part of the newest chapter in a long history of slavery counter-narratives that challenge what is often a “whitewashed,” sanitized repetition of the United State’s dark past.These filmic counter-narratives draw attention to chattel slavery’s complexity and brutality in their own unique ways, using different representational strategies ranging from violence to humor. Collectively, these media challenge racially charged (and sometimes racist-inspired) narratives of the enslaved as a ubiquitous group without agency and personality.We draw upon our classroom experiences as geographers of the African American experience to discuss how media portrayals of slavery can help students develop more nuanced and responsible understanding of a historically difficult topic.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
From history museums and plantation tours to roadside markers and street names, the historical in... more From history museums and plantation tours to roadside markers and street names, the historical institution of slavery has become unevenly memorialized across the United States’ cultural landscape. This unevenness is particularly noticeable in the ‘Deep South’ states, such as Mississippi and Louisiana, where labor-intensive cotton or sugar cane plantations once required vast numbers of slaves to economically succeed. While several former antebellum plantation sites now function as tourist attractions complete with tours of the ‘Big House,’ they often ignore, downplay, or annihilate the memory of slavery from plantation history. However, not all plantations and museums disregard slavery so readily, and the owners, creators, and workers at these sites intentionally employ counter narratives of slavery to evoke empathy in visitors and create a more socially just cultural landscape. This paper examines three such sites along and beyond River Road that employ counter narrative techniques, namely the Natchez Museum of African-American History and Culture, Frogmore Cotton Plantation and Gins, and Whitney Plantation. The paper includes a discussion of each site’s counter narrative tactics and how they stand out from other antebellum plantation tourism sites in their representation of slavery. Engaging in the growing conversation on the possibilities and desirability of empathetic responses to counter narrative spaces, this paper also takes up the argument that empathy—while certainly important and possible for many visitors and consumers at these sites of memory—may also preclude important political activism and greater solidarity between racial groups in the United States.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Conference Papers by Matthew R Cook
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Book Reviews by Matthew R Cook
Review of R. Kinney, Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America's Postindustrial Frontie... more Review of R. Kinney, Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America's Postindustrial Frontier. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. In Historical Geography 45 (1): 263-264.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Review of "The Struggle for Black Freedom in Miami: Civil Rights and America’s Tourist Paradise, ... more Review of "The Struggle for Black Freedom in Miami: Civil Rights and America’s Tourist Paradise, 1896–1968." Chanelle N. Rose. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015. Pp. xv+344, figures, notes, index. US$47.50 (hardcover). ISBN: 9780807157657.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Review of "Commemoration as Conflict: Space, Memory, and Identity in Peace Processes," by Sara Mc... more Review of "Commemoration as Conflict: Space, Memory, and Identity in Peace Processes," by Sara McDowell and Máire Braniff, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. vii+209 pp., US$95.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-2302-7375-7.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Review of "Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion," Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Fra... more Review of "Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion," Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, eds., Oakland, AK Press, 2012. US$16.96 (paperback). ISBN: 9781849351102.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Other by Matthew R Cook
In the more than 150 years since the end of the Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation, and 13th, 1... more In the more than 150 years since the end of the Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation, and 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that formally brought an end to chattel slavery, people in the United States have done much to downplay, sanitize, and outright forget both the history of slavery—despite its foundational role in the establishment of the U.S. political economy—and the life-altering damage that powerful white men, predominantly, inflicted upon millions of Africans and African Americans through a brutal system that lasted more than 200 years. Contributing to the process of whitewashing the histories and geographies of slavery have been the large absences of many academic disciplines to engage in critical research on chattel slavery until relatively recently. Since the 1960s, geographers have increasingly grappled with the discipline’s racist and imperialist past, engaging in “critical” studies that have advanced the discipline and added emphases on social justice, drawing upon diverse social theories such as Marxism, feminism, Critical Race Theory, and postmodernism. This dissertation builds upon this scholarship in developing a critical historical geographic understanding of slavery and its legacy in the U.S., paying particular attention to the “Deep South” states of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. In the case of researching slavery, this dissertation argues that the ways in which people in the contemporary South (mis)remember the United States’ history are serious reflections on how contemporary issues of racism and white privilege operate in America. Taking a critical approach to historical geographic research of slavery is not merely an academic process but is inherently political. The dissertation engages with critical historical geographies of slavery by focusing primarily on counter narratives of slavery—“counter” in the sense that they stand in opposition to and correct whitewashed, dominant narratives that purport slavery was a mostly benign, patriarchal system. Further, it examines social and economic relations that operate to perpetuate these mythic perceptions of the United States’ chattel slavery system. The overarching goal of the dissertation is to study the processes through which people form, operationalize, and can advance counter narratives of slavery.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Geographers have long been interested in the ways that states and individuals use cultural landsc... more Geographers have long been interested in the ways that states and individuals use cultural landscapes to shape the meaning and understanding of the past. In this thesis, I argue that individuals and the state embed different interpretations of the Holocaust past in the German landscape. In particular, I focus on the German artist Gunter Demnig and his Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) Project as a case study of memorial projects created by an individual. The Stolpersteine are small memorial stones for a single Holocaust victim. The stones are installed in front of homes and businesses that were the last known location of the victim before deportation or murder by the Nazi regime. While the project began as a small art installation to memorialize Romany Holocaust victims in Cologne, the memorial stones are now installed for all victims of the Holocaust, including Jews, Roma, Sinti, the handicapped, homosexuals, political opponents, euthanasia victims, and others. I compare the Stolpersteine Project to three large Holocaust memorial projects in Berlin that were sponsored by the German government.
This project incorporates qualitative methods to research the ways that Demnig creates meaning in the landscape and to observe how people respond to the Stolpersteine. The findings provide insights into how cultural landscapes are produced and also contribute to the literature on landscape studies and memorial processes. I explain how the Stolpersteine fit into the broader context of Holocaust memorialization through an explanation of the scholarly debate on how to represent the Holocaust.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Publications by Matthew R Cook
Conference Papers by Matthew R Cook
Book Reviews by Matthew R Cook
Other by Matthew R Cook
This project incorporates qualitative methods to research the ways that Demnig creates meaning in the landscape and to observe how people respond to the Stolpersteine. The findings provide insights into how cultural landscapes are produced and also contribute to the literature on landscape studies and memorial processes. I explain how the Stolpersteine fit into the broader context of Holocaust memorialization through an explanation of the scholarly debate on how to represent the Holocaust.
This project incorporates qualitative methods to research the ways that Demnig creates meaning in the landscape and to observe how people respond to the Stolpersteine. The findings provide insights into how cultural landscapes are produced and also contribute to the literature on landscape studies and memorial processes. I explain how the Stolpersteine fit into the broader context of Holocaust memorialization through an explanation of the scholarly debate on how to represent the Holocaust.