History, heritage, and haunting: educational entanglements within former carceral spaces

This dissertation begins with the observation that there is often a haunted quality to the built environment of former carceral spaces, sometimes explicit and sometimes denied, concerning structures that either sit empty or in ruin, or have been repurposed and put to new use. This haunted quality can suggest a rupturing through of the past into the present that is often difficult to exorcize. In some cases, this haunting is utilized by developers as a form of dark heritage, which celebrates this past as a means of revenue generation. In other cases, it becomes a nuisance for developers who would rather forget, deny, or ignore the uncomfortable past as they attempt to rebrand and repurpose. Moreover, these sites are entangled within the local, vernacular discourse often overlooked by memory scholars who tend to focus on discourses of civic or national public memory.

In the cases I examine—Eastern State Penitentiary, Athens Lunatic Asylum, and Camarillo State Hospital—there is an explicit element of hauntedness derived from systematic traumas related to mental illness or imprisonment that leaves traces within the built environment, thus marking each site as different from national sites of public memory. Instead, the haunted sites of memory that I will investigate are often a strange mixture of history, heritage and haunting, of public and private redevelopment—in some cases, with ghosts sold as part of the package. I intend to show that the ghosts or uncanny effects, which circulate at these former sites of incarceration, mark an uncomfortable liminal space, not yet fully recognized or understood by developers who take possession of these locations.