How to Tend a Ghost Pool
Public talk by Hannah Palmer
Monday, February 16, 2026, 7 PM
Sewanee Convocation Hall

via zoom: https://sewanee-edu.zoom.us/j/91037989650

Palmer’s work as a writer and environmental advocate led her from lost creeks to buried swimming pools, then to deeper questions about the persistence of segregated landscapes in America. With The Pool is Closed: Segregation, Summertime and the Search for a Place to Swim (LSU Press, 2024), she considers her neighborhood “ghost pools” in the context of investment and disinvestment in public parks and infrastructure throughout the 20 th Century. Through public art projects at from Tuscaloosa to Toronto, Palmer invites communities to participate in collective memory and change. At this talk, Palmer will explore the historical context of Sewanee’s segregated Swim Pool and the significance of the Roberson Project’s effort to revisit and memorialize it. What is the cost of revisiting these lost pools and what is the benefit?