Fall 2023 Documentary Showcase Fuller

Home and Place is an exploration of enslaved and coerced labor at Rowan Oak, dating back to the site’s antebellum history. From 1844 to 1860, The Home Place in Oxford was a vacation home for Colonel Robert Sheegog, an index of the Colonel’s plantation footprint. Sheegog enslaved a total of at least 80 people between the Home Place and two cotton plantations out in the country.

This project was inspired by literary interpretations of Rowan Oak and new discoveries by the university’s archeology department. Equally important were my walks around the grounds while the dig took place. My choice to shoot handheld is part of this desire for the viewer to join me on a walk around the grounds while I offer an alternative understanding of the space. Another source of inspiration for this project is Fintan O’Toole’s description of Martin McDonagh’s plays as pre-modern superimposed over the postmodern like picture in picture.  I hope to depict this complication of place, memory, and identification through my editing choices.

My intention is to complicate the singular understanding of Rowan Oak as Faulkner’s home and make space to consider the debt we owe to the labor of enslaved people in the interpretation of antebellum historical sites.