Introduction
Shortly after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Black and Ho-Chunk student unions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison lobbied for the removal of a 42 ton boulder formally known as Chamberlin Rock from campus. Their stated motive for the boulder’s relocation was that the rock generated distress among students of color due its nickname “N*****head” used first by a local newspaper in 1925. After more than a year of deliberation with various university stakeholders, Chamberlin Rock was removed from campus to another property owned by UW nine-and-a-half miles to the south east. American Sisyphus is an interpretive research driven project concerning Chamberlin Rock, it’s geological history, and it’s human-scale impact.
