Spring 2025 Showcase Fuller

How we remember and how we move forward
Garrett Fuller

How We Remember and How We Move Forward explores the organizers and participants involved in Behind the Big House, a public history program based in Holly Springs, Mississippi. This initiative seeks to interpret the lives and conditions of enslaved people during the Antebellum period through educational demonstrations, local genealogy research, and dramatic readings. For the second year in a row, I served as a tour guide for the program, leading a group of fifth graders from Holly Springs Middle School. As this section forms a core part of my thesis, I chose to focus on the event itself—highlighting the contributions of organizers, local experts, and the curious young students who make the program possible.

Throughout the semester, I built trust within the community by volunteering to photograph local events and developing relationships with the program’s organizers. Their openness gave me a rare opportunity to go behind the scenes and observe how this powerful public history work is created and sustained.

Garrett Fuller is a scholar and photographer from Nashville, Tennessee. He has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College and is currently a second year MA candidate in Southern Studies. During his time in the graduate program, he has been researching the way that the legacy of enslavement and competing narratives of Antebellum culture reverberate in the present. In addition to his documentary work, Garrett is interested in how poetic reflection and visual arts can be used as a means of inquiry in the social sciences.