Date of Award
1-26-2017
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Heritage Studies, Ph.D.
First Advisor
Lauri Umansky
Committee Members
Cherisse Jones-Branch; Ruth Hawkins
Call Number
LD251 .A566d 2016 P42
Abstract
Arkansas Heritage Sites under the direction of Dr. Ruth Hawkins has become one of Arkansas State University’s most successful endeavors for developing heritage tourism in the state of Arkansas and the Mississippi Delta. To understand the processes of restoring a building and transforming it into a community museum, I apply the theories of the politics of culture in historic restoration projects and culture conservation. This case study reviews the problematic complexities of creating and opening a museum with a complex past. Museums are community educational repositories that preserve a particular past. They allow individuals to place themselves in an acting role in history. This case study examines how some community members in Lakeport, Arkansas, both blacks and whites, have accepted their assigned institutionalized history and heritage that is on display at the Lakeport Plantation museum and education center. Although museums are intended to be inclusive, the opening of the Lakeport Plantation museum has unintentionally provided many African Americans with the opportunity to voice their long disdained feelings and memories about life as laborers on Lakeport Plantation. I use this dissertation to document their livelihood on Lakeport Plantation and what they define as their history and heritage.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Perry-Guillory, Aketa Shantel, "Heritage Mine, Not Defined: The Politics of Culture in the Lakeport Plantation Historic Restoration Project" (2017). Student Theses and Dissertations. 611.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/611
