Students of Abolition Geography

Abstract This essay is an introspection on a teaching of twinned concurrent courses across academic institutions. The courses offered took place in the Spring semester of 2024, and they included “Abolition Geography” at Wesleyan University, taught by Dr. Zaira Simone-Thompson, and “Freedom Is a Place! Abolition Geography” at Princeton University, taught by Dr. Allison Guess. Following this sister course pairing, the first ever undergraduate Abolition Geography Student Symposium was organized in April of 2024. Here the essay explores the genealogy of the project, proposing not an argument, but a series of meditations on this pedagogical undertaking while taking note of the challenges and the inversed potentialities of doing this kind of work in a moment of extensive reckoning. The essay presents an offering; one which demonstrates how the authors employ abolition in their own work as scholars of Reparations/Grief and the notion of Black Land. In doing so, the essay reflects on how abolition—as both a theory and as a historical tradition with an attendant set of ever-evolving practices—responds to and in our present while providing a different path to consider.