Description
Book SynopsisCommemoration: The American Association for State and Local History Guide serves as a handbook for historic site managers, heritage professionals, and all manner of public historians who contend daily with the ground-level complexities of commemoration. Its fourteen short essays are intended as tools for practitioners, students, and anyone else confronted with common problems in commemorative practice today. Of particular concern are strategies for expanding commemoration across the panoply of American identities, confronting tragedy and difficult pasts, and doing responsible work in the face of persistent economic and political turmoil. A special afterword explores the role of emotion in modern commemoration and what it suggests about possibilities for engaging new audiences.
Trade ReviewWhile stone and metal monuments, sanctioned landscapes, and applied commemorative phrases might appear stationary, their value and role will always be fluid continuously evolving to serve the dynamism of future generations. This collection of essays assembled by Seth C. Bruggeman encourages public historians and other heritage professionals to rattle public memory, to challenge complacent narratives, and to scrutinize and reclaim public memory in order to purposely and productively make remembrances relevant. -- Julia Rose, director and curator, Johns Hopkins University Homewood Museum Baltimore, Maryland and author, Interpreting Difficult History at Historic Sites and Museums, (2016)
Table of Contents1. Introduction: Conundrum and Nuance in American Memory - Seth C. Bruggeman 2. The Exhibition and the Funeral: Commemoration as Display - Tammy S. Gordon 3. Festivals as a Commemorative Genre - William S. Walker 4. Reenactment: Performing the Past - Cathy Stanton 5. A Local Commemoration of National Significance - Anne C. Reilly 6. Get Territorial: Idaho at 150 - Janet L. Gallimore 7. Global Histories and Cross-Border Commemoration - Adam Hjorthén 8. Sir John A. Macdonald and the Problem of Great Men - Jean-Pierre Morin 9. Gay is Good: Commemorating LGBTQ History - Kenneth C. Turino 10. Sacred Subjects: Religion and Commemoration in America - Devin C. Manzullo-Thomas 11. Commemoration as Activism - Patrick Grossi 12. Alive in Our Imagination: The Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War - Rick Beard and Bob Beatty 13. Commemorating Tragedy at Mother Emanuel AME Church - George W. McDaniel 14. Afterword: Commemoration, Conversation, and Public Feeling in America Today - Erika Doss
