We the People of Tennessee — Stories of Land and Place:
A statewide, eighteen-month project of oral history collection and provocative programming centering on the idea of community in Tennessee. We'll uncover the personalities of communities across the state by exploring together the places we share through stories about them. The project began at the 2006 Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written WordSM with a special series of presentations that raise in multiple forms, the question: do places matter?
Scholars who have studied the human need for narrative generally agree that, as the Educational Resources Information Center put it: "Stories are the repository of our collective wisdom about the world of social/cultural behavior. … It is through story that people quite literally come to know — that is, to construct and maintain their knowledge of the world. Through a story, an individual creates meaning out of daily happenings, and this story, in turn, serves as the basis for anticipation of future events."
Profound attachment to homeland appears to be a worldwide phenomenon
— Yi-Fu Tuan
Like individuals, communities, if they are to move forward and prosper, must maintain a store of community narratives that are shared, and actively participated in, by a critical mass of diverse community members. Belonging to a community, or a country, or a culture largely means that one shares essential stories with others. According to Jacques Barzun, when scholars, or ordinary people, are asked "'What Makes a Nation?' A large part of the answer to that question is: common historical memories." Remembered stories are the context for a nation's or any community's day-to-day relationships and actions; they create meaning for the community out of daily happenings, and serve as the basis for the community's anticipation of future events. Without shared narratives of where it comes from and has been, without "common historical memories," a community cannot aspire to participate — intelligently, wisely, or even fully consciously — in the creation of its on-going narrative.
Place, too, to the extent it is a human creation, and most places are, needs human narrative, if only for its own protection. Narratives give place human meaning — the particular meanings that create such places as homeland, or hometown, or even home itself. "Profound attachment to homeland," according to Yi-Fu Tuan, "appears to be a worldwide phenomenon … not limited to any particular culture and economy. … The city or land is viewed as mother and it nourishes; place is an archive of fond memories and splendid achievements that inspire the present; place is permanent and hence reassuring to man, who sees frailty in himself and chance and flux everywhere."
It is widely believed, and bemoaned, that — largely because of our mobility, both real and virtual — we are losing, or failing to maintain, our "common historical memories" of place. The purpose of We the People of Tennessee — Stories of Land and Place is to gather, and create an electronic database of stories — be they "common historical memories," good or bad, or "fond memories," or stories of "splendid achievements that inspire the present" — that give land and place human meaning. This database will tie these stories to the places they create on electronic maps, and make these narratives publicly accessible through these maps on the Internet. Each community participating in We the People — Stories of Land and Place will collect at least twenty narratives, and with the assistance of project scholars, create a on-line cultural tour, or K–12 lesson plan, or analytic or descriptive essay, or community history, or other narrative using these collected stories.
The organizations participating in We the People of Tennessee — Stories of Land and Place are:
- Dyer County Historical Society, Dyersburg
- School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, University of Memphis
- Woodbine Community Organization, Nashville
- Elkton Historical Society, Elkton
- Tennessee Overhill Heritage Association, Etowah
- International Storytelling Center, Jonesborough
Read articles from We the People of Tennessee — Stories of Land and Place
- "Stories of Land and Place: A Small Town Perspective Reclamation of the Past in Franklin"
- "I didn't move to Franklin in 1974 because of any passion for the Civil War. Don't laugh. I know folks who have done just that. I moved to Franklin because I wanted to live in a small town near Nashville with some sense of place, in time and history. Growing up in South Florida in the 1960s, everything was about today, everything seemed new. I didn't want to live in the past. I just wanted to live in a place that actually had a past … " read more
- "Stories of Land and Place: An Urban Perspective Lost and Found: Reclaiming "Community" in Memphis through Revitalization of the Neighborhood"
- "When reflecting on land and place in cities, first thoughts are often of downtown skyscrapers, bridges, or parks. For urban dwellers, however, the significance of land and place is often contained within neighborhoods, the specific buildings, spaces, and people among which they go about their daily lives. As, or more, important than the physical buildings and places, is the history, identity, the very personality of a neighborhood that connects urban people with their space … " read more
- "A Land Threaded with Memory"
- "As early as 1670, explorers from the east had crossed Tennessee and reached the Chickasaw Bluffs at Memphis. That journey was one of the most daring and exciting in Tennessee history. They saw the Tennessee of full Native American culture — a land that was mostly forested but with many large towns and villages along the rivers and creeks. Here and there they would have even seen some land under cultivation … " read more
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