A Pale Vision of a Violent Past? Teaching about American Lynching with Technology in the Undergraduate Classroom

Session Submission Type: Paper Session: Traditional Format

Abstract

Faced with a decades-long campaign by a variety of journalists, activists, and eventually, politicians, the once commonplace practice of mob lynching began to peter out some three quarters of a century ago. In the years since, lynching’s specter has been evoked rhetorically in every conceivable area of American social and political life, while its spectacular violence has likewise continued apace, though usually without the appellation “lynching” attached to it. This panel will discuss the implications of teaching about lynching in an era where the intensity of media attention to the killings of African Americans is rivaled by journalistic forebears of a century ago, and the threat of bodily harm and death to black people is likewise omnipresent. Focusing on the experience of each of the presenters in teaching histories of lynching and racial violence to undergraduate students, this panel will both present student research on racial violence and reflect on the meaning of pedagogies invested in better understanding and contextualizing America’s historical and contemporary entanglements in racial violence and death.

Sub Unit

• American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Chair

• Juana María Rodríguez, University of California, Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• Pale Vision of a Red Record?: Violence and Anti-Violence in the Classroom - Seth M. Kotch, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Racial Terror: Lynching in Virginia, 1877-1927: Digital Scholarship as a Pedagogical Tool to Teach Racial Oppression - Gianluca De Fazio, James Madison University

• Learning about Lynching: Technologies of Transmission and Experiential Learning - Elijah Gaddis, Auburn University