Steve Lyons 
“Part III: Place Names and the War on Woke” examined how renaming functions as an ideological weapon within the so-called “War on Woke,” dividing the public, legitimizing authoritarian control, and reinscribing a nationalist and xenophobic vision of “American Greatness” onto the maps people navigate every day. “Part IV: Reopening the Frontier” shifts focus from what … Read more
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“Part II: Naming American Greatness” surveyed some of the many place name changes ordered or proposed by President Trump during the early phase of his second term. “Part III: Place Names in the War on Woke” turns to the cultural dimensions of this renaming campaign, examining how place-naming functions within the far right’s so-called “War … Read more
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In “Part I: Renaming in Retrospect,” we revisited the origins of Words Are Monuments, exploring the political and cultural debates that informed the project’s launch. “Part II: Naming American Greatness” considers how the stakes of renaming have changed in the past year, surveying some of the Trump Administration’s sweeping efforts to rename sites and landmarks … Read more
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As struggles over history and power play out across monuments, maps, and public memory, the political landscape for place names has undergone a tectonic shift. This four-part blog series, “The New Frontier: Place Names, Power, and Political World-Building,” explores the changing stakes of place-name campaigns in the United States—what has changed, where we’re heading, and … Read more
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What if we understood the movement to rename places not as a movement to make the settler-colonial world less offensive, but to affirm the enduring presence of the world that settler-colonial place-names have historically served to obscure?
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