University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2020 From South of the Mason-Dixon Line to South of the Equator: A Critical Exploration of the Transnational Contours of Confederate Memory Jordan P. Brasher University of Tennessee, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Brasher, Jordan P., "From South of the Mason-Dixon Line to South of the Equator: A Critical Exploration of the Transnational Contours of Confederate Memory. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2020. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5801 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Jordan P. Brasher entitled "From South of the Mason-Dixon Line to South of the Equator: A Critical Exploration of the Transnational Contours of Confederate Memory." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Geography. Derek Alderman, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Solange Muñoz, Stefanie Benjamin, Michelle Christian Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) From South of the Mason-Dixon Line to South of the Equator: A Critical Exploration of the Transnational Contours of Confederate Memory A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Jordan P. Brasher May 2020 Copyright © 2020 by Jordan P. Brasher All rights reserved. ii Acknowledgements Writing a dissertation is not something anyone does alone. Though my name is the only one listed on the document, numerous colleagues, mentors, friends and family have provided support, encouragement, insight and assistance throughout the years that I have worked on this project. Though I cannot possibly mention the names of every single person who has contributed in some small or large way to this dissertation, I hope to highlight and acknowledge as much of my intricate support system as I can here. First and foremost, I want to thank my parents, Mark and Martha Brasher, for their support and encouragement through what has been one of the more difficult seasons of my life. Through loss and grief, joy and triumph, they have been there every step of the way, even when the decisions I made left them scratching their heads. Your financial and emotional support has been crucial to my ability to complete this project and graduate school. Next, I owe a great deal of gratitude to my dissertation advisor, Dr. Derek Alderman. Even though you tried to pass me off onto Dr. Inwood when I first got here, you have been a steady stream of generous, compassionate, thoughtful, and encouraging source of support from my first day on campus throughout the dissertation writing phase. There is no one else with whom I would rather work, and I hope that I can be half the mentor you are in my professional career. You have gone over and above to see me through hard times and I feel fortunate to consider you not only a mentor, colleague, and co-author, but also a friend. The generosity you give to others and the humility with which you approach the job is a rarity in an academy too often driven by big egos and selfish gain. I cannot thank you enough for showing me the ropes the way you have. I also owe a great deal of thanks to my dissertation committee members, Drs. Solange Muñoz, Michelle Christian, and Stephanie Benjamin. Thank you for your patience with me as I developed my ideas and for helping me get through my comprehensive exams with a relatively short timeframe between the notification of funding and the leave dates for my language program. Your cooperation and support has been vital, and I look forward to maintaining our professional relationships and hopefully even working together more closely in the future. Thank you to Drs. Deborah Popper, Steven Schnell, and Dallen Timothy, whose comments, feedback, and editorial leadership helped me develop Chapters 1, 2, and 3 for publication in the Journal of Cultural Geography, FOCUS on Geography, and the Journal of Heritage Tourism respectively. Thanks as well to the anonymous reviewers of the manuscripts. As is true for the entire dissertation, any and all mistakes are mine alone. I wish to thank my professors, colleagues, fellow graduate students, and the staff of the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee and my friends in the greater Knoxville area for your friendship and encouragement over the four years I have been in Knoxville. It has been a huge pleasure and joy of mine to grow and learn and live life together. Special thanks to Ashton Cooper, Marlon Johnson, Ethan Bottone, Bradley Hinger, Emma Walcott-Wilson, Hannah Gunderman, Shaundra Cunningham, and Emily Frazier for your friendship and encouragement, and for being great sounding boards for my work. Also, to my teachers and fellow students at Middlebury Language iii School, thank you for an incredible and memorable summer 2018, for helping me learn to challenge and believe in myself, and to learn Portuguese. Special thanks to my extraordinary teachers Rafael O. Dias, Sarah Catão de Lucena, Regina Santos, Stephen Butterman, and Director Luci Moreira, as well as my friends Richard Raber, Anne Briggs, Addison Hoggard, Emily Travis, Gabrielle Santos-Priest, and Andre Goelzer. Additionally, the support and encouragement of innumerable friends and activists in Brazil helped me acclimate to the new language and culture, provided solace and friendship in times of loneliness, and provided endless insights into Brazilian politics and culture. The following people deserve acknowledgement: Cláudia Monteiro, Pedro Monteiro, Isabella Monteiro, Roberto Mendes, Marielle Ananias, Rafael Brugnollo, Paula Leme, Tiago Viano, Patricia Félix, Thiago “Jabu” Luiz, Giovana Bortoleto, Élisson “Tuki” Uetuki, Alexandre Lima, Michelle Lima, Prof. Humberto Ramos, Rafaela Peroni, Vinícius Correa, Pamela Wiezel Morahes, Ari Gomes, Luiza Cláudia Silva Marinho, Christopher DiTrolio, and Vera Barros. Special thanks to João Antonio and Ana Tomazeli for allowing me to study at Aware Idiomas and to Gustavo Roberto for the endless hours of Portuguese lessons and conversation. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the funding agencies whose financial support has been crucial to the completion of the fieldwork on which this dissertation is based. The National Security Education Program (NSEP) David L. Boren Fellowship, the University of Tennessee’s Thomas-Penley-Allen Fellowship, the W.K. McClure Scholarship for the Study of World Affairs, and the Stewart K. McCroskey Memorial Fund enabled me to study Brazilian Portuguese at Middlebury Language School and conduct ten months of fieldwork in residence at Aware Idiomas Language School in Americana, São Paulo, Brazil that would not have otherwise been possible. The financial support of these agencies additionally helped me fulfill my dream of living and studying abroad. iv Abstract The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, of right-wing populism, and incidences of white supremacist domestic terrorism associated with the presence of Confederate iconography since 2015 in the United States has brought much attention to the issue of Confederate memory. According to a study by the Southern Poverty Law Center, as of 2018, only eight percent of graduating high school seniors could correctly identify slavery as the primary cause of the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). This speaks to a crisis of memory and identity around what the Confederate States of America (CSA) were and how we should remember the Confederacy today. Yet, for all the scholarly work that has been done to understand the politics of Confederate memory in the United States, especially in the South, little known is the fact that thousands of Confederate soldiers and their families migrated to Brazil in light of the devastation of the war and the potential incorporation of formerly enslaved people into Southern society and politics associated with Reconstruction. Today, Confederate descendants in the interior of São Paulo, Brazil still celebrate their heritage with an annual festival called the Festa Confederada. A museum on the town square, too, narrates the Confederate migration from the perspective of descendants. The purpose of this dissertation is to broaden academic and public perspective on the Confederacy by exploring the racialized transnational contours of commemoration at these sites of Confederate memory. This research is situated at the intersection of scholarly work in cultural-historical geography on the relationship between public memory, race and racism, heritage tourism, settler colonialism, Black Geographies, and regional identity. This dissertation advances understandings of public memory as socially constructed and negotiated by social groups competing over rights and recognition on the memorial landscape. Further, it examines how Confederate memory moves and takes