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American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory
Title
American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory / Matthew Dennis.
ISBN
9781685750107
9781625347121
9781625347114
Publication
Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2023]
Manufacture
Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 0000
Copyright Notice Date
©[2023]
Physical Description
1 online resource : illustrations
Local Notes
Access is available to the Yale community.
Notes
Description based on print version record.
Access and use
Access restricted by licensing agreement.
Summary
"The gold epaulettes that George Washington wore into battle. A Union soldier's bloody shirt in the wake of the Civil War. A crushed wristwatch after the 9/11 attacks. The bullet-riddled door of the Pulse nightclub. Volatile and shape-shifting, relics have long played a role in memorializing the American past, acting as physical reminders of hard-won battles, mass tragedies, and political triumphs. Surveying the expanse of U.S. history, "American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory" shows how these objects have articulated glory, courage, and national greatness as well as horror, defeat, and oppression. While relics mostly signified heroism in the nation's early years, increasingly, they have acquired a new purpose--commemorating victimhood. The atrocious relics of lynching and the looted remains of Native American graves were later transformed into shameful things, exposing ongoing racial violence and advancing calls for equality and civil rights. Matthew Dennis pursues this history of fraught public objects and assesses the emergence of new venues of memorialization, such as virtual and digital spaces. Through it all, relics continue to fundamentally ground and shape U.S. public memory in its uncertain present and future"-- Provided by publisher.
Variant and related titles
Project MUSE complete collection 2023.
Format
Books / Online
Language
English
Added to Catalog
August 14, 2023
Series
Public history in historical perspective
Contents
"Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?"
Making the New Nation Old; Or, Founding Objects : Relics and Nationalism
Making the New Nation Ancient : The Incognitum, American Antiquities, and Indigenous Relics
Making the New Republic Venerable : Object Lessons from the Relict Colonial Past and Early National Present
"O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" : Pioneers, Relics, and the Colonial Landscape of Westward Expansion
The Bloody Shirt : A Short History of a Sanguinary Object and Political Trope
Atrocious Relics : Trophy-Taking, Lynching, and the Objects of Terror
"We Will Never Forget" : The New Political Voices of Relics in Post-Holocaust America
9/11 : Material Victimology
Future Relics.
Subjects
Also listed under
Project Muse. distributor
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