Katherine Hite joined the Vassar faculty in 1997. She received her BA from Duke University and her masters in International Affairs and PhD in political science from Columbia University. She is the author of Politics and the Art of Commemoration: Memorials to Struggle in Latin America and Spain, as well as several publications on history and memory, memorials and memorial museums. More recently, Hite has focused on the politics of memory in the United States, including her home state of Texas.
In this essay, I focus on encounters within spaces of traumatic memory, and I think about how out... more In this essay, I focus on encounters within spaces of traumatic memory, and I think about how outsiders, primarily my college students, engage with narrators in
sites of traumatic memory. I explore the concept of empathic unsettlement, includ- ing how and whether empathic unsettlement lasts and how it moves with us.
In this article, I examine the efforts of a group of anti-Confederate monument activists in Willi... more In this article, I examine the efforts of a group of anti-Confederate monument activists in Williamson County, Texas. The article begins with the history of the monument itself, 100 years before the activists initiated their efforts. The intransigence to removing the Confederate monument is symbolic of white resistance to struggles for racial equality more broadly. Second, I discuss how the local legal impasse has contributed to distinct anti-monument activist strategies that deploy counternarratives and memories, from performances, to challenging narrative claims regarding who is more patriotic. Finally, I explore the politics of self-reckoning—the process by which white people find that they have to answer for racism deep within themselves as well as in relation to violent white supremacy and the legal and institutional fortress that protects whiteness generally. Battling both racists and racist institutions is hard and lengthy, and monument activism persistently exposes what is at stake.
From the 1980s through the close of the twentieth century, countries throughout Latin America, fr... more From the 1980s through the close of the twentieth century, countries throughout Latin America, from the southern tip of South America to Central America and Mexico, experienced a major wave of democratization. In contrast to the 1970s, when democracies in the region were few and far between, by the end of the century all but one Latin American country, Cuba, was a formal democracy.
The article examines the meaning of white denial and the struggle against it, through the entangl... more The article examines the meaning of white denial and the struggle against it, through the entanglements of the Imperial Sugar Company, the Texas state penitentiary system, a public school district, and incarcerated black people who were leased and who labored and died in absolutely brutal conditions. Their remains were discovered in 2018.
A Contracorriente: Revista de Historia Social y Literatura en América Latina, May 10, 2019
We argue that the defense of the Museum of Human Rights speaks to the power of memory as possibil... more We argue that the defense of the Museum of Human Rights speaks to the power of memory as possibility, as foundational to ways collectivities understand the genealogies of violence and injustice in order to imagine otherwise. Moreover, memorial site protagonists have successfully challenged and accessed state resources toward representation and education regarding the violence of the past and toward alternative ways of imagining justice and human rights in the present and future
1. Memorials to Struggle 2. Memorializing Spain's Narrative of Empire 3. "The Eye that C... more 1. Memorials to Struggle 2. Memorializing Spain's Narrative of Empire 3. "The Eye that Cries": Victims, Victimizers, and the Question of Empathy 4. Searching and the Inter-Generational Transmission of Grief 5. The "Bicis" of Fernando Traverso: The Globality of Art and Memory Making
In this essay, I focus on encounters within spaces of traumatic memory, and I think about how out... more In this essay, I focus on encounters within spaces of traumatic memory, and I think about how outsiders, primarily my college students, engage with narrators in
sites of traumatic memory. I explore the concept of empathic unsettlement, includ- ing how and whether empathic unsettlement lasts and how it moves with us.
In this article, I examine the efforts of a group of anti-Confederate monument activists in Willi... more In this article, I examine the efforts of a group of anti-Confederate monument activists in Williamson County, Texas. The article begins with the history of the monument itself, 100 years before the activists initiated their efforts. The intransigence to removing the Confederate monument is symbolic of white resistance to struggles for racial equality more broadly. Second, I discuss how the local legal impasse has contributed to distinct anti-monument activist strategies that deploy counternarratives and memories, from performances, to challenging narrative claims regarding who is more patriotic. Finally, I explore the politics of self-reckoning—the process by which white people find that they have to answer for racism deep within themselves as well as in relation to violent white supremacy and the legal and institutional fortress that protects whiteness generally. Battling both racists and racist institutions is hard and lengthy, and monument activism persistently exposes what is at stake.
From the 1980s through the close of the twentieth century, countries throughout Latin America, fr... more From the 1980s through the close of the twentieth century, countries throughout Latin America, from the southern tip of South America to Central America and Mexico, experienced a major wave of democratization. In contrast to the 1970s, when democracies in the region were few and far between, by the end of the century all but one Latin American country, Cuba, was a formal democracy.
The article examines the meaning of white denial and the struggle against it, through the entangl... more The article examines the meaning of white denial and the struggle against it, through the entanglements of the Imperial Sugar Company, the Texas state penitentiary system, a public school district, and incarcerated black people who were leased and who labored and died in absolutely brutal conditions. Their remains were discovered in 2018.
A Contracorriente: Revista de Historia Social y Literatura en América Latina, May 10, 2019
We argue that the defense of the Museum of Human Rights speaks to the power of memory as possibil... more We argue that the defense of the Museum of Human Rights speaks to the power of memory as possibility, as foundational to ways collectivities understand the genealogies of violence and injustice in order to imagine otherwise. Moreover, memorial site protagonists have successfully challenged and accessed state resources toward representation and education regarding the violence of the past and toward alternative ways of imagining justice and human rights in the present and future
1. Memorials to Struggle 2. Memorializing Spain's Narrative of Empire 3. "The Eye that C... more 1. Memorials to Struggle 2. Memorializing Spain's Narrative of Empire 3. "The Eye that Cries": Victims, Victimizers, and the Question of Empathy 4. Searching and the Inter-Generational Transmission of Grief 5. The "Bicis" of Fernando Traverso: The Globality of Art and Memory Making
This is an essay in collaboration with Jordi Huguet, a very reflective guide in Chile's Museum of... more This is an essay in collaboration with Jordi Huguet, a very reflective guide in Chile's Museum of Memory and Human Rights, on his experiences, challenges, and on possibility through his past five years.
Entrevista con el equipo del Instituto de la Democracia y los Derechos Humanos de la Pontificia U... more Entrevista con el equipo del Instituto de la Democracia y los Derechos Humanos de la Pontificia Universidad de la Católica, Lima, Peru, noviembre 2015.
entrevista con Valeria Duran y Silvina Fabri en la ex-ESMA, sobre los usos de los sitios de la me... more entrevista con Valeria Duran y Silvina Fabri en la ex-ESMA, sobre los usos de los sitios de la memoria en America Latina y los EEUU en relación al presente
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Papers by Katherine Hite
sites of traumatic memory. I explore the concept of empathic unsettlement, includ- ing how and whether empathic unsettlement lasts and how it moves with us.
sites of traumatic memory. I explore the concept of empathic unsettlement, includ- ing how and whether empathic unsettlement lasts and how it moves with us.