Mapping visitor emotion at historic plantations.

As more historic plantation sites work to incorporate stories of enslaved people into tours and interpretive materials, the question of how these stories exist alongside spaces of recreation at the same sites (i.e. walking trails and picnic areas) grows in importance. 

For my National Science Foundation-funded dissertation research, I collaborated with three plantation sites in North Carolina that intentionally incorporate stories of enslavement while also providing walking trails, picnic areas, and other outdoor recreation opportunities for visitors. I asked visitors to map their emotions using stickers while moving through the sites and conducted structured 1:1 interviewed the visitors about their maps and the feelings that emerged.
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Pictured at right: Visitors used creative methods with the materials at hand to illustrate the complexity and mutability of emotion in place.

Lessons learned:

Products:
While some visitors experienced cognitive dissonance between the recreational spaces of the historic sites and interpretive materials on enslavement, others expressed appreciation for how the beauty of the sites allowed them to process tragic and emotional histories. Still others – many of them local to the area of the site – used these historic spaces solely for outdoor recreation, but appreciated how a morning walk could become a space of learning. Historic plantation sites should be cognizant of these dual uses of space (leisure and learning) and seek to engage visitors in both. Furthermore, visitor emotions are an often-untapped, yet important measure of museum evaluation that can be effectively investigated through self-driven sticker maps and subsequent 1:1 interviews.
Reports:
  • Three professional reports – one per site – consolidating visitor responses and drawing out major themes from maps and interviews. These reports enabled site staff to translate my findings into additional interpretive and engagement opportunities for visitors. Example.
Peer-Reviewed Articles & Edited Blog Posts:
Undergraduate class presentations:
  • “Landscape management, landscape justice,” two class presentations (Fall 2020; Spring 2021) to an undergraduate geography seminar on landscape and justice (virtual).
Conference presentations:
  • “Territorial Entanglements: Memory and Recreation at North Carolina’s Somerset Place State Historic Site,” presented to The American Association of Geographers annual conference during Territorializing Memory (virtual).
  • “‘You Are Here’: Text, Landscape, and the Rebirth of the Confederacy at Fort Fisher State Historic Site,” presented to the Memory Studies Association Annual Conference during Memory & Geography (III): Racial Justice (virtual).