Power of Place

Place offers a powerful lens through which we can view the past. It challenges us to think beyond modern political boundaries and to consider the full history of the space we now call the United States. A deep engagement with place enables us to reconsider significant questions about our history: from Indigenous peoples’ past and present connections with American spaces, to a community’s relationships with and use of land, waterways, and natural resources, to the profound and unequal consequences of imperial expansion and colonization across the continent. This theme encourages us to reexamine ideas about our natural and built environments and to reorient when and where we find our country’s history.