Empty Pedestals: Countering Confederate Narratives Through Public Design
Edited by Kofi Boone and M. Elen Deming
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Empty Pedestals: Countering Confederate Narratives Through Public Design Edited by Kofi Boone and M. Elen Deming
BOOK TALK
MON, Nov 18
CAMPBELL 153
5 PM (ET)
Empty Pedestals (LSU Press, 2024) uses a design perspective to explore how monuments to the Confederacy speak to regionalism, racist political agendas, and residual collective pain. Many designers and artists working in the public realm have created innovative projects to replace Confederate memorials, contextualize those that still stand, and foster new conversations about history, race, and justice in America. By drawing lessons from these initiatives and considering the questions that remain, editors Kofi Boone and M. Elen Deming hope to assist educators and students in combating endemic prejudice and other forms of social division.
Join Boone and Deming, along with C.L. Bohannon and Elgin Cleckley, two of the volume’s contributors, who will discuss novel frameworks and shared solutions for the issues that continue to trouble American cultural landscapes.
This event will be recorded and made available on the School of Architecture's YouTube Channel.
About the Speakers
Kofi Boone, FASLA is a Joseph D. Moore Distinguished Professor and University Faculty Scholar at NC State University. He is the founder of the Just Communities Lab. Kofi is a Detroit native and a graduate of the University of Michigan. His work is in the overlap between landscape architecture and environmental justice with specializations in democratic design and interpreting cultural landscapes. He is the winner of student and professional ASLA awards including the Jot D. Carpenter Teaching Medal. He is Past President of the Landscape Architecture Foundation, and serves on the board of the Land Loss Prevention Project.
M. Elen Deming is Professor Emerita of Landscape Architecture (University of Illinois) and Founding Director (2017–2024) of the Doctor of Design program at the College of Design at North Carolina State University. She is an educator, essayist and editor who considers how society shapes, and is in turn shaped by, its cultural landscapes.
C.L. Bohannon, PhD, FASLA, is an Associate Professor in the Landscape Architecture Department and the Associate Dean of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (AD JEDI). Bohannon is a nationally recognized scholar and educator in the areas of community-engaged design and pedagogy, social and environmental justice, and African American landscapes, especially in the American South.
Elgin Cleckley, NOMA, is an Assistant Professor of Architecture with an appointment in the School of Education and Human Development and the School of Nursing. He is the Undergraduate Architecture Program Director, Director of Design Thinking, and the Director of Design Justice at UVa’s Equity Center (Democracy Initiative Center for the Redress of Inequity Through Community-Engaged Scholarship), where he leads the school’s NOMA Project Pipeline: Architecture Mentorship Program. Cleckley is founding principal of _mpathic design, a multi-award-winning pedagogy, initiative, and professional practice.
This lecture is made possible with support from the Dean's Forum on Inclusion + Equity.
