Rebecca Jackson, Ph.D.
Dr. Jackson is a scholar working at the nexus of contemporary art performance, public memory, and cultural heritage. She is a critical ethnographer who specializes in legacy performances of white supremacy.
Confederacy Now, Confederacy Always: White Power Future-Pasts and/as Performative Time
Rebecca Jackson PhD | ASTR Conference Plenary | November 2024
Rebecca Jackson, PhD at ASTR 2024 gives a plenary presentation examining Confederate performative time as a mechanism perpetuating white supremacy in contemporary American identity. Through the Confederate Memorial Day celebration at Beauvoir, this presentation explores how commemorative practices embody and transmit Confederate ideologies, aligning them with American Christian nationalism and reinforcing racial hierarchies across generations.
Resources:
Why Performance Studies?
Art, Activism, and Articulation underscore why performance studies lends itself to the exploration of cultural heritage and the examination of systems of power.
White Power, Confederate Heritage, and American Christian Nationalism
Derrick Bell believed in the permanence of racial bias in America. Dr. Jackson’s research examines the genealogy of white power through Confederate heritage and its contemporary iteration, American Christian nationalism.
Performance Studies
Dr. Jackson leans on Performance Studies scholars like D. Soyini Madison, Sandra Richards, Dwight Conquergood, Diana Taylor, and Rebecca Schneider to examine how memories of white supremacy are embodied and/or resurrected today.
Alternative Monuments
Dr. Jackson’s doctoral research began with a contemporary art performance exhibition entitled Althernative Monuments. Alternative Monuments are performative monuments that add to the national conversation surrounding Confederate Monuments. These performative monuments are productive because they neither affirm nor condemn traditional Confederate monuments; instead, our monuments add to the country’s overall narrative about the Civil War.
Get in Touch
Questions about American white supremacy and/or American Christian nationalism? Get in touch about your questions or concerns.