Dr. Renée Ater
Provost Visiting Professor,
Africana Studies, Brown University

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Memoryscapes of Slavery:

The Slave Dwelling as Remains and Commemorative Object

From Maryland to Louisiana, the slave dwelling is undergoing a significant reexamination through archaeological excavation of its remains and new interpretive strategies that suggest the dynamic lives of the enslaved. Along with these reappraisals, the slave cabin has also been transformed into an object of remembrance and commemoration. This lecture centers From Absence to Presence, Commemorative to Enslaved Peoples of Southern Maryland (2020), designed by Shane Albritton and Norman Lee of RE:site Studio for St. Mary’s College of Southern Maryland. The commemorative takes the form of a free-standing rectangular building with wood slats and mirrored surfaces that are inscribed with Quentin Baker’s erasure poetry derived from nineteenth-century runaway slave advertisements. The local “ghost” architecture of Historic St. Mary’s City (a living history museum of the colonial era), a slave cabin at nearby Sotterly Plantation, and the writings of Angela Davis on enslaved families and intimacy (Women, Race, and Class) inspired Albritton and Lee to create a commemorative object rooted in the local. I argue for the centrality of the link between memory and place in relation to From Absence to Presence. This memorial functions within “a dynamic zone of memory interaction and interchange” between people, the built environment, language, and the geography of Southern Maryland. Tracing the memorial’s relationship to the modest slave cabin depicted in the iconic Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) and to the slave dwelling as domestic architecture, I offer a reading of From Absence to Presence as a complex memorial that is both materially visible and invisible within the memoryscape of slavery at St. Mary’s College and in Southern Maryland.