The first Peter C. Gould Memorial Lecture since the start of the COVID pandemic was delivered by Prof. LaToya Eaves with an eye toward discomfort.
Eaves’ talk, titled “Uncomfortable Spaces: Placing Black Feminist Geographies in the U.S. South,” covered a great deal of ground — broadly speaking, all of the United States South and Southeast. Parts of her talk covered the role of race, heritage, memory, community and civic engagement through the work of Black women in the South, and the extent to which their work was inherently geographic and feminist before the inception of the formal disciplines of Black geography and feminism. She also discussed the physical geography of the South as opposed to the mental geography of white supremacy, poverty, and the heritage of plantations and slave labor.
Because of the way her work builds upon the work of many others as creators of knowledge, the talk contained multiple references to other work; a veritable reading list which included:
- Black Geographies and the Politics of Place, Katherine McKittrick (editor), Clyde Woods (Editor)
- Demonic Grounds, Katherine McKittrick
- A Voice From the South, Anna J. Cooper
And the writing and organizing of
- Ruth Wilson Gilmore
- Ella Baker
- Anna D. Kelly
- Septima Clark
- Southerners on New Ground blog
Additionally, she gave examples of the disruption of power hierarchy through the placement of people; teaching institutions; ideas, via billboards; and small actions, such as teaching literacy to overcome literacy tests for voting.
Eaves is the Menakka and Esell Bailey ’66 Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the College of the Environment at Wesleyan University and assistant professor of geography at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville and has been instrumental in increasing the visibility of Black geographies. In addition to her research, which centers questions of race, Blackness, gender, sexualities, and place — especially in terms of the U.S. South and Southeast — Eaves founded and chaired the Black Geographies Speciality Group of the American Association of Geographers.