Description
Book SynopsisDuring the global BlackLivesMatter protests of 2020, many called upon the United States to finally face its painful past. Tim Gruenewald's new book is an in-depth investigation of how that past is currently remembered at the national museums in Washington, DC.
Trade ReviewCurating America’s Painful Past explores the vital contest between the dream of casting America’s past as a virtuous story and the need to come to terms with the pain and suffering it has caused. Tim Gruenewald’s insightful probe of the tension between these competing frames on national memory in new museums on the National Mall dedicated to the experiences of groups like African Americans and Native Americans makes it clear that this raging debate is far from over." - John Bodnar, distinguished professor of history emeritus, Indiana University, and author of
The “Good War” in American Memory"
Curating America’s Painful Past makes powerfully clear that the National Mall in Washington, DC, is an ongoing script through which US national identity is curated and contested. In an incisive critical analysis of the museums on the mall that are wrestling with painful national pasts, this book reveals the limitations of the national story told on the Washington Mall and challenges us to imagine other possibilities." - Marita Sturken, professor of media, culture, and communication, New York University
"At a moment of national reckoning with traumatic histories of racial oppression, Tim Gruenewald offers deep insight into several sites casting these painful pasts, contributing to a broader collective forgetting that has long stymied the fight for racial justice. Undertaking a series of close readings of narratives and museum displays along the National Mall, as well as their affect, Gruenewald provides a powerful book that will challenge readers to reconsider the nexus of tourism, storytelling, and public culture. This is a critical work for a critical juncture in American society." - Nicole Maurantonio, associate professor of rhetoric and communication studies, University of Richmond, and author of
Confederate Exceptionalism: Civil War Myth and Memory in the Twenty-First Century
