Date of Award
6-19-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Heritage Studies, Ph.D.
First Advisor
Lauri Umansky
Committee Members
Dinah Tetteh; Edward Salo
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on the materiality of heritage as a proactive and strategic resource for ensuring survival and reshaping justice in rural places. Set in Phillips County, in the Arkansas Delta, a region where environmental neglect and economic marginalization are visibly apparent in the landscape, this research interrogates how a community responds to environmental crises in a contested landscape using locally driven, art-based initiatives. By centering the Water Story Project in Phillips County, funded by One Nation One Project, a national art-based initiative, I explore a ‘thin institutional ecology’ where the scarcity of regulatory oversight and intermediary civic support has left residents to navigate a landscape of environmental vicissitudes, contaminated water, and aging infrastructure. Through ethnographic engagement and arts participation, I document the emergence of ‘situated rural women’s agency,’ a form of leadership that leverages heritage and art-based practice to demand public health and territorial integrity. The findings demonstrate that in constrained environments, heritage-based initiatives function as a necessary surrogate for civic engagement. Through heritage, acts of “performative sovereignty” allow marginalized residents to name injustice, build solidarity, and envision alternative futures. Ultimately, this work argues that for environmental justice to be meaningful in the rural South, it must address the materially embedded realities of the land while honoring the sophisticated and sustained activism of the women who protect it.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Mohammed, Faisal, "Heritage As Performative Sovereignty: Situated Agency and Environmental (In)Equity in the Arkansas Delta" (2026). Student Theses and Dissertations. 1188.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/1188
