#Endview plantation september 2016 professional#

The purpose of the Press, as stated in its charter, is 'to promote generally, by publishing deserving works, the advancement of the arts and sciences and the development of literature.' The Press achieved this goal early on, and the excellence of its publishing program has been recognized for more than eight decades by scholars throughout the world.

#Endview plantation september 2016 professional#

Founded in 1922, the Press is the creation of that same distinguished group of educators and civic leaders who were instrumental in transforming the University of North Carolina from a struggling college with a few associated professional schools into a major university. The University of North Carolina Press is the oldest university press in the South and one of the oldest in the country. In so doing, we determine how these plantations deploy local histories to distinguish themselves and whether, in their selective appropriation of the region’s past, they detach themselves from local histories of the enslaved. To more fully assess how the enslaved are present or absent in promotional historical narratives, we perform content and discourse analyses of twenty-seven James River plantation websites. Writing enslaved African Americans out of materials promoting these commemorative landscapes makes it possible for consumers of these sites to conclude that Black lives do not belong in the James River region’s past or present.

As sites of local learning, these museums assert particular ways of knowing the past that reinforce exclusionary local and regional identities.

Such research, however, seldom places plantation websites in the context of specific local histories. Previous studies of plantation websites note that the enslaved are marginalized in promotional materials featuring romanticized stories of plantation owners or the mansion’s architectural significance. The websites of plantation museums along Virginia’s James River promise visitors unique experiences based on their place within this region’s history.