Enshrining Gender in Monuments to Settler Whiteness
South Africa’s Voortrekker Monument and the United States’ This Is the Place Monument
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20249084 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Cynthia Culver Prescott (0000-0002-8429-3714, University of North Dakota, corresponding author), Nathan Rees (0000-0001-9868-9659, University of West Georgia), Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, Rebecca Weaver‐hightower (Virginia Tech, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 41 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/h10010041 |
| OpenAlex | W3135848847 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 17 |
This essay examines two monuments: the Voortrekker Monument in South Africa and the American This is the Place Monument in Utah. Similar in terms of construction and historical purpose, both employ gender as an important tool to legitimize the settler society each commemorates. Each was part of a similar project of cultural recuperation in the 1930s−1940s that chose as their object of commemoration the overland migration in covered wagons of a group of white settlers that felt oppressed by other white settlers, and therefore sought a new homeland. In a precarious cultural moment, descendants of these two white settler societies—the Dutch Voortrekkers of South Africa and Euro-American Mormons (Latter-day Saints or LDS) of Utah—undertook massive commemoration projects to memorialize their ancestors’ 1830s−1840s migrations into the interior, holding Afrikaners and Mormons up as the most worthy settler groups among each nation’s white population. This essay will argue that a close reading of these monuments reveals how each white settler group employed gendered depictions that were inflected by class and race in their claims to be the true heart of their respective settler societies, despite perceiving themselves as oppressed minorities
Ancient history · Archaeology · Chose · Ethnology · Homeland · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Cultural History and Identity Formation · Demography · Gender Studies · History · Law · Mormonism, Religion, and History · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment
Manhood in America
From Memory to Marble
Monumental Mobility
Landscape of Memory
Unwrapping Ernest L. Blumenschein’s The Gift
This is the Place Salt Lake City, Utah and the Voortrekker Monument Pretoria
This Is the Place
Racializing Babylon
Manliness and Civilization
Imperial Leather
The Angel and the Beehive
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,2 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2021 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |