Creating Memories in Community

This book brings together a collection of projects that explore how communities use place-based memory to tell their stories, especially those that have been overlooked or marginalized. Grounded in close collaboration with community partners, the contributions examine efforts such as Black history trails in Georgia and Virginia and survivor-led commemorations in Ireland. These projects highlight how memory is not only about the past but also about shaping how places are understood in the present. Across diverse contexts, the authors show how community-driven approaches can challenge dominant narratives and make space for more inclusive and honest representations of history.

By connecting memory to specific landscapes, these works demonstrate how storytelling, mapping, and commemoration can foster dialogue, recognition, and, in some cases, healing. Featuring contributions from leading geographers, this collection offers new ways of understanding how geography functions as a relational, ethical practice. It addresses critical issues including urban renewal displacement, Black geographies, and institutional trauma, demonstrating the vital intersection of community geography with memory work.

This volume is essential reading for scholars, practitioners, and students in geography, public history, heritage studies, and community development committed to participatory, justice-oriented approaches to commemorating the past. It was originally published as a special issue of Geographical Review.

Stephen P. Hanna is a professor of Geography at the University of Mary Washington, Virginia, USA, specializing in commemorative landscapes and cartography. His recent efforts to help communities map their stories into public space include Fredericksburg’s Civil Rights Trail.

Amy E. Potter is a professor of Geography at Georgia Southern University, Georgia, USA, specializing in heritage tourism, memory, affect, and cultural landscapes. She is lead author of Remembering Enslavement: Reassembling the Southern Plantation (2022), an NSF-funded researcher, and co-creator of the Tybee Island Black History Trail.