E. Arnold Modlin

Tour Guides as Creators of Empathy: The Role of Affective Inequality in Marginalizing the Enslaved at Plantation House Museums

Criticized for ignoring or misrepresenting slavery, some docents at plantation house museums have responded by including more references to slavery, but rarely move beyond mere factual references of the enslaved. This contrasts with the emotionally evocative accounts tourists hear about the planter-class family. We refer to this disparity as affective inequality. At plantation house museums, affective inequality is created and reproduced through specific spatial and narrative practices by tour guides. By retracing docent-led tours at Destrehan Plantation, Louisiana, this article engages, conceptually and empirically, with the concept of affective inequality — how it contributes to the marginalization of the history of the enslaved community, and how it becomes reproduced within the practices of tour guides at plantation house museums in the Southern US.

(In)Visibility of the Enslaved Within Online Plantation Tourism Marketing: a Textual Analysis of North Carolina Websites

Tourism landscapes are constructed and marketed in selective ways that reaffirm long‐standing patterns of social power and inequality and thus influence whose histories and identities are remembered and forgotten. The purpose of this article is to conduct an analysis of plantation tourism marketing in North Carolina, measuring the degree to which the history of slavery and the enslaved are (in)visible within online promotional texts. Previous research has found that the slave experience is frequently ignored in promoting the Southern plantation, although the analysis of North Carolina has been limited in the past and no studies to date have examined the promotional images found on plantation websites. An analysis of 20 websites for historic plantations in North Carolina does not reveal a universal exclusion of the enslaved but it certainly shows an uneven treatment both in terms of the absolute number of textual references to slavery and the frequency of these references relative to other themes used in marketing the plantation landscape. Among those plantation websites that show a sensitivity to slave history, two discourses are employed that still run the risk of misrepresenting the enslaved even as they devote needed attention to this marginalized population. They are the discourse of the individual (a)typical slave, and the discourse of the good master/faithful slave. We conclude by highlighting two representational strategies used by some plantation websites that could serve as exemplars for other destinations inside the state and beyond. These strategies include documenting the different identities and histories of many slaves rather just a few, and discussing the hardships and resistance that often characterized the slave experience. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of the articles two anonymous reviewers and the support of the Center for Sustainable Tourism at East Carolina University. Derek dedicates the article to his wife Donna and son Tyler. Arnold dedicates the article to his son A. J. and daughter Onyx.

Tales Told on the Tour: Mythic Representations of Slavery by Docents at North Carolina Plantation Museums

Historic house plantation museums are common across the southeastern United States. Often these museums depict an idealized vision of the past that heavily emphasizes the experiences and possessions of the wealthy, white planter class while ignoring the large enslaved community that lived and worked on the plantation. Previous researchers have noted how little is said about slavery at these historic sites and have called for more inclusive, socially responsible narratives. This article suggests that, in general, these calls for inclusion have not been fully realized, finding that slavery is often misrepresented on tours at plantation museum sites in North Carolina, which have gone largely unexplored until now. In documenting marginalization of slavery at plantation sites, I conduct: (1) a content analysis of the frequency of hearing references to the enslaved in docentled tours; and (2) a discourse analysis of the myths and representational strategies used by docents in framing public understanding of the history of slavery.

Southern hospitality and the politics of African American belonging: an analysis of North Carolina tourism brochure photographs

Building upon James “Pete” Shortridges appreciation for the multiple and contradictory meanings associated with the portrayal of regions, we explore the racial politics of representation within the American South and actively link the study of regional identity with a concern for social justice and African American belonging. Our study of the American South, a region with a long history of limiting if not altogether denying the right of African Americans to travel, exposes the racial inequalities that characterize the seemingly harmless arena of southern hospitality and tourism promotion. Although the power to be seen is an important cultural right, African Americans are frequently made invisible in photographs published in North Carolina tourism brochures. In framing the region in this fashion, these brochures communicate powerful ideas about who is most welcome and, conversely, who is not. Our examination of brochures indicates that some communities are attempting to make a place for African Americans, but there are clear limits in the extent to which promoters are willing to racially re-code travel spaces.

Teaching Qualitative Research: Experiential Learning in Group-Based Interviews and Coding Assignments.

This article describes experiential-learning approaches to conveying the work and rewards involved in qualitative research. Seminar students interviewed one another, transcribed or took notes on those interviews, shared those materials to create a set of empirical materials for coding, developed coding schemes, and coded the materials using those schemes. Students’ input reveals that these assignments were more effective than readings and discussions in conveying the challenges and rewards of qualitative research. In particular, the coding assignment revealed the labor involved in doing qualitative research, but also the insights qualitative research can lead to. Others are urged to try similar assignments.

On the political utterances of plantation tourists: vocalizing the memory of slavery on River Road

ABSTRACT Within the study of southern plantation house museums, the cultural power that tourists exercise in interpreting, reacting to, and even shaping historical narratives has received limited attention. The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of the agency of visitors at plantation museums, paying particular attention to their verbal expressions as they respond to the depiction of slavery on guided tours. Spoken words, questions, and conversations of plantation tourists are not unproblematic transmissions of information but represent “political utterances” that play a crucial role in the constitution and mediation of the process of remembering (or forgetting) the enslaved. We consider the importance of tourist voice and outline two analytical settings for studying the political utterances of plantation visitors – the vocalizing of interpretative communities in post-tour or exit interviews and docent reaction to on-tour comments and questions posed by visitors. Drawing evidence from interviews with visitors and docents at four tourist plantation along the River Road District, we demonstrate the diversity and impact of the political utterances of tourists, and how these vocalizations of memory can possibly lead to greater changes in the way in which slavery is dealt with and remembered at southern plantation museums.

Following the story: narrative mapping as a mobile method for tracking and interrogating spatial narratives

ABSTRACT Museums and heritage tourism sites are highly curated places of memory work whose function is the assembling and ordering of space and narrative to contour visitors’ experiences of the past. Variations in such experiences within and between sites, however, necessitates a method that: (1) captures how guides, visitors, and exhibits interact within spaces when representing and performing history and (2) allows researchers to document those variations. We developed narrative mapping, a mobile and geographically sensitive form of participant observation, to enable museum scholars and professionals to systematically capture, visualize, and interpret tendencies and variations in the content, affective qualities, and spatial arrangements of museum narratives over multiple sites and across multiple tours at the same site. Two antebellum plantation museum case studies, Laura Plantation in Louisiana and Virginia’s Berkeley Plantation, demonstrate the method’s utility in documenting how stories are spatially configured and materially enlivened in order to analyze the ways enslaved persons are placed within these narratives.

Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao

Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao consist of five islands that make up the Leeward Islands of the Dutch Antilles off of the northern coast of South America, often referred to as the ABCs. Because of location, the islands share similar characteristics of climate, geology, geomorphology, and history, though each bears a variation of these characteristics. These largely limestone islands are part of the southern Caribbean dry zone. Historically, they were important centers of livestock grazing, aloe vera production, and salt export. All three islands in the twentieth century have been impacted by the growth of oil export in Venezuela. Curacao, once the tourism leaders among the Dutch Caribbean Islands, is trying to catch up with Aruba in stopover tourists, while Bonaire has smaller but strong “active” tourism for its size. While their climate in the past was considered less than desirable for large-area agricultural pursuits, presently their dry, warm weather largely outside the hurricane belt is an attractive asset to the millions of tourists who visit them annually.