Consequential Museum Spaces: Representing African American History and Culture

In Consequential Museum Spaces: Representing African American History and Culture, Bettina Messias Carbonell examines how African American history and culture is--and historically has been--represented in culturally specific and mainstream museums. Carbonell argues that African American museums provide a corrective history that is both argumentative and pragmatic: these museums educate and enlighten, and they seek to effect change. Themes examined here include settlement narratives; key movements and individuals in political, social, and military history; the treatment of slavery includingthe African, transatlantic, and American slave trade and the long history of slavery as an institution in the United States; the status of Africa--the continent and individual countries and regions--as a source of origins and traditions and a destination for reconnection with the past; and activism and human rights. Carbonell considers this museum-based work in the context of relevant historical (written) texts and in the context of contemporary theories involving memory and history, corrective history, intergenerational trauma, human rights, and historical consciousness.