Reframing Dixie: Cultural identity and the production of cinematic and public space in the Southern United States

This short-form article interrogates how productions of cinematic and public space in the Southern United States can both perpetuate and resist long-embedded, often exploitative frameworks depicting racial trauma prevalent in popular media portrayals of the region. Citing their personal experiences in film production, the author engages with critical geography, historiography and spatial theory to contrast how mainstream cinematic productions have reproduced past events at historical sites of racial violence with recent media and sculpture-based installations at The Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama. Engaging with the scholarship of Trouillot, Hall, Gordon, McKittrick and McPherson, this article situates identity and place as ongoing processes being presently negotiated through spatial production practices in which innovative modes of historical production and remembrance unsettle long-standing hegemonic narratives.