Contesting Commemorative Landscapes: Confederate Monuments and Trajectories of Change

Following the racially motivated shootings at an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, a wave of contentious campaigns around Confederate statuary emerged, or at least intensified, in communities across the country. Yet local struggles have culminated in vastly different alterations to the built environment. This paper develops a framework for differentiating distinct “modes of recontextualization” rooted in the relocation and/or modification of commemorative objects. Building on models of memory as an iterative, path-dependent process, we track recontextualization efforts in three communities—St. Louis, Missouri; Oxford, Mississippi; and Austin, Texas—documenting how each mode alters the meaning of contested symbols. An analysis of local news sources in the year following recontextualization shows how each mode exerts identifiable proximate effects on broader political debates and, through that process, structures the horizon of possibility for longer-range outcomes.

“And the word became . . . gossip?” Unhinging the Samaritan woman in the age of #MeToo

This article examines the Samaritan woman’s speech in John 4. More specifically, this article employs a womanist hermeneutic of “unhinging” to argue that the Samaritan woman serves as an example for women who struggle with issues of testimonial authority in the midst of silence and shame at the hand of their communities. Thinking through the dynamic of the #MeToo movement and issues of power, testimonial authority, and trauma, this article interrogates the phrases dia ton logon (“because of the word”) and dia tēn sēn lalian (“because of your gossip”) to argue that, although the Samaritan woman possesses agency and voice with the power to engage Jesus in theological discussions, interpreters of her story still interrogate her for perceived sexual indiscretions to the point of her continued silence and shame in the history of interpretation. This article wrestles with both the Johannine author’s and the Samaritan community’s reducing her agency and voice to the point that readers live in ambiguity regarding her status. Concluding thoughts imagine what “living in ambiguity” looks like as a way to unhinge not only the Samaritan woman but contemporary African American church women from the experiences of silence and shaming in the age of #MeToo.

On Menus

The closing chapter pulls together the many strands of foodways that continue to define the Eastern Shore of Virginia as a distinct and distinctive terroir. The chapter begins with an African American church menu and turns to a group of award-winning contemporary chefs for their reactions to the listed fare. Every menu is much more than the itemized listing it provides. Menus are invitations to invention through pairings and juxtapositions. They are a literature where individual items speak to the expertise of the cook and the expectations of the diner. Menus are the most optimistic of all literary forms. They are about art and gratification.