Disrupting institutional memory sites: racialized counter-memory at the University of Maryland

Abstract

ABSTRACT As universities grapple with their long-standing and ever-present relationships with white supremacy, how do they choose to physically mark racial memories on campus, especially those related to racial violence? At the University of Maryland, competing messages from two different memorials for a slain Black student demonstrate the need to critique the form and content of university memorialization. In this essay, I focus on the ideas of disruption, movement, and tension to argue that specific physical elements of the two memory sites communicate diverging recommendations for how a university should take responsibility for racial injustice.