Overcoming Moonlight and Magnolias: Holistic Strategies for Recovering Enslaved Stories in Plantation Museums
Loading...
Authors
Foreman, Adam Thomas
Issue Date
2025-10-29
Type
Dissertation
Language
en_US
Keywords
Museum studies , Hospitality, Leisure, and Tourism Studies , African American studies , Descendant Communities , Institutional Transformation , Leadership , Plantation Museums , Slavery , Dissertations, Academic
Alternative Title
Abstract
This dissertation examines how three plantation museums, James Madison’s Montpelierin Virginia, Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, and McLeod Plantation Historic Site in South Carolina, work with descendant communities, engage public audiences, and pursue holistic organizational transformation in interpreting slavery. Using a qualitative multiple case study approach, the research analyzes interviews and institutional documents to identify nine emergent strategies, including authentic collaboration and radical inclusion, institutionalized participation, moral and historical accountability, truth-telling over comfort, and emotional and cognitive Engagement. Framed through Bolman and Deal’s Four Frames of Leadership and Critical Race Theory, the study demonstrates how these museums restructure operations to move beyond sanitized histories and position themselves as sites of ethical accountability and historical reckoning. The findings contribute to public history, museum studies, and heritage tourism by offering a model for descendant-centered institutional change that integrates interpretive reform with structural and cultural realignment.
Description
Citation
Publisher
License
This dissertation is protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States (Public Law 94-553, revised in 1976). Consistent with fair use as defined in the Copyright Laws, brief quotations from this material are allowed with proper acknowledgement. Use of the materials for financial gain with the author's expressed written permissions is not allowed.