Download or read book Public Commemoration of the Civil War and Monuments to Memory written by Edward T. O'Connell and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation examines the significance of the Virginia Memorial located on the former battlefield of the Gettysburg Military Park in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Dedicated on June 8, 1917 and prominently featuring an equestrian image of Robert E. Lee, this work of public commemorative art represents a dominant voice in the dialogue of the constructed public memory of the causes and the consequences of the Civil War. It signals the legitimacy and wide spread acceptance of the myth of the Lost Cause and its prominent association with the image of the most notable canonical icon of this ideology, Robert E. Lee. It represents a public memory and reiteration of the war's legacy that, as Frederic Douglass declared, forgets the difference "between those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty." It is this myth that in effect controls the commemorative discourse of the preserved battlefield at Gettysburg and beyond. Today, as it has done since the time of its dedication, the Virginia Memorial remains an important sign post in the nation's memory of the Civil War and is the result of an ongoing political discussion that continues to take place in the public sphere regarding the structures of power that are inextricably linked with the formation of public memory. It stands as a unique physical marker in the text that comprises the dialogue constructing the nation's public memory of the Civil War, a unique work of commemorative public art that serves simultaneously as a battlefield monument and war memorial to the Virginians who fought at Gettysburg, and a site specific work of public sculpture in contested civic space. As such, it serves the purposes of seemingly contradictory and antithetical interests while asserting the ideas of both cultural continuity and cultural revision within the constructed symbolic code of America's commemorative patriotic landscape. Although the Confederacy was defeated in battle it emerged on the field at Gettysburg as victorious in memory. The constructed image and public memory of Robert E. Lee makes this final victory of memory possible.

Download or read book Public Commemoration of the Civil War and Monuments to Memory written by Edward T. O'Connell and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation examines the significance of the Virginia Memorial located on the former battlefield of the Gettysburg Military Park in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Dedicated on June 8, 1917 and prominently featuring an equestrian image of Robert E. Lee, this work of public commemorative art represents a dominant voice in the dialogue of the constructed public memory of the causes and the consequences of the Civil War. It signals the legitimacy and wide spread acceptance of the myth of the Lost Cause and its prominent association with the image of the most notable canonical icon of this ideology, Robert E. Lee. It represents a public memory and reiteration of the war's legacy that, as Frederic Douglass declared, forgets the difference "between those who fought for slavery and those who fought for liberty." It is this myth that in effect controls the commemorative discourse of the preserved battlefield at Gettysburg and beyond. Today, as it has done since the time of its dedication, the Virginia Memorial remains an important sign post in the nation's memory of the Civil War and is the result of an ongoing political discussion that continues to take place in the public sphere regarding the structures of power that are inextricably linked with the formation of public memory. It stands as a unique physical marker in the text that comprises the dialogue constructing the nation's public memory of the Civil War, a unique work of commemorative public art that serves simultaneously as a battlefield monument and war memorial to the Virginians who fought at Gettysburg, and a site specific work of public sculpture in contested civic space. As such, it serves the purposes of seemingly contradictory and antithetical interests while asserting the ideas of both cultural continuity and cultural revision within the constructed symbolic code of America's commemorative patriotic landscape. Although the Confederacy was defeated in battle it emerged on the field at Gettysburg as victorious in memory. The constructed image and public memory of Robert E. Lee makes this final victory of memory possible.

Download or read book Monument Wars written by Kirk Savage and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-07-11 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the history of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., discussing its plan and structures, and considering how the concept of memorials and memorial space has changed since the nineteenth century.

Download or read book Standing Soldiers Kneeling Slaves written by Kirk Savage and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States began as a slave society, holding millions of Africans and their descendants in bondage, and remained so until a civil war took the lives of a half million soldiers, some once slaves themselves. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves explores how the history of slavery and its violent end was told in public spaces—specifically in the sculptural monuments that came to dominate streets, parks, and town squares in nineteenth-century America. Looking at monuments built and unbuilt, Kirk Savage shows how the greatest era of monument building in American history took place amid struggles over race, gender, and collective memory. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves probes a host of fascinating questions and remains the only sustained investigation of post-Civil War monument building as a process of national and racial definition. Featuring a new preface by the author that reflects on recent events surrounding the meaning of these monuments, and new photography and illustrations throughout, this new and expanded edition reveals how monuments exposed the myth of a "united" people, and have only become more controversial with the passage of time.

Download or read book Commemoration in America written by David Gobel and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2013-09-03 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commemoration lies at the poetic, historiographic, and social heart of human community. It is how societies define themselves and is central to the institution of the city. Addressing the complex ways that monuments in the United States have been imagined, created, and perceived from the colonial period to the present, Commemoration in America is a wide-ranging volume that focuses on the role of remembrance and memorialization in American urban life. The volume’s contributors are drawn from a spectrum of disciplines—social and urban history, urban planning, architecture, art history, preservation, and architectural history—and take a broad view of commemoration. In addition to the making of traditional monuments, the essays explore such commemorative acts as building preservation, biography, portraiture, ritual performance, street naming, and the planting of trees. Providing an overview of American memorialization and the impulses behind it, Commemoration in America emphasizes a universal tendency for individuals and groups to use monuments to define their contemporary social identity and to construct historical narratives. The volume shows that while commemorative acts and objects affect the community in fundamental ways, their meaning is always multivalent and conflicted, attesting to both triumphs and tragedies. Constituting a vital part of both individual and national identity, commemoration’s contradictions strike at the core of American identity and speak to the importance of remembrance in the construction of our diverse national cultural landscape. Contributors: Jhennifer A. Amundson, Judson University * Catherine W. Bishir, North Carolina State University Libraries * Thomas J. Campanella, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * Glenn T. Eskew, Georgia State University * Glenn Forley, Parsons / The New School for Design * Sally Greene, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * Alison K. Hoagland, Michigan Technological University * Lynne Horiuchi, University of California, Berkeley * Ellen M. Litwicki, SUNY Fredonia * David Lowenthal, University College London * Mark A. Peterson, University of California, Berkeley * Richard M. Sommer, University of Toronto * Dell Upton, University of California, Los Angeles

Download or read book Testament to Union written by Kathryn Allamong Jacob and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1998-10-13 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the stories behind the many District of Columbia statues that honor participants in the Civil War. Organized geographically for easy use on walking or driving tours, the entries list the subject and title of each memorial along with its sculptor, medium, date, and location. 92 photos.

Download or read book Civil War Canon written by Thomas J. Brown and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2015-02-17 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this expansive history of South Carolina's commemoration of the Civil War era, Thomas J. Brown uses the lens of place to examine the ways that landmarks of Confederate memory have helped white southerners negotiate their shifting political, social, and economic positions. By looking at prominent sites such as Fort Sumter, Charleston's Magnolia Cemetery, and the South Carolina statehouse, Brown reveals a dynamic pattern of contestation and change. He highlights transformations of gender norms and establishes a fresh perspective on race in Civil War remembrance by emphasizing the fluidity of racial identity within the politics of white supremacy. Despite the conservative ideology that connects these sites, Brown argues that the Confederate canon of memory has adapted to address varied challenges of modernity from the war's end to the present, when enthusiasts turn to fantasy to renew a faded myth while children of the civil rights era look for a usable Confederate past. In surveying a rich, controversial, and sometimes even comical cultural landscape, Brown illuminates the workings of collective memory sustained by engagement with the particularity of place.

Download or read book Remaking America written by John E. Bodnar and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1994-01-16 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a compelling inquiry into public events ranging from the building of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial through ethnic community fairs to pioneer celebrations, John Bodnar explores the stories, ideas, and symbols behind American commemorations over the last century. Such forms of historical consciousness, he argues, do not necessarily preserve the past but rather address serious political matters in the present.--Publisher description.

Download or read book Civil War Monuments and Memory written by Jon Tracey and published by Savas Beatie. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Civil War left indelible marks on the country. In the century and a half since the war, Americans have remembered the war in different ways. Veterans placed monuments to commemorate their deeds on the battlefield. In doing so, they often set in stone and bronze specific images in specific places that may have conflicted with the factual historical record. Erecting monuments and memorials became a way to commemorate the past, but they also became important tools for remembering that past in particular ways. Monuments honor, but they also embody the very real tension between history and the way we remember that history—what we now today call “memory.” Civil War Monuments and Memory: Favorite Stories and Fresh Perspectives from the Historians at Emerging Civil War explores some of the ways people monumented and memorialized the war—and how those markers have impacted our understanding of it. This collection of essays brings together the best scholarship from Emerging Civil War’s blog, symposia, and podcast—all of it revised and updated—coupled with original pieces, designed to shed new light and insight on the monuments and memorials that give us some of our most iconic and powerful connections to the battlefields and the men who fought there.

Download or read book Dixie s Daughters written by Karen L. Cox and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-02-04 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wall Street Journal’s Five Best Books on the Confederates’ Lost Cause Southern Association for Women Historians Julia Cherry Spruill Prize Even without the right to vote, members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy proved to have enormous social and political influence throughout the South—all in the name of preserving Confederate culture. Karen Cox traces the history of the UDC, an organization founded in 1894 to vindicate the Confederate generation and honor the Lost Cause. In this edition, with a new preface, Cox acknowledges the deadly riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, showing why myths surrounding the Confederacy continue to endure. The Daughters, as UDC members were popularly known, were daughters of the Confederate generation. While southern women had long been leaders in efforts to memorialize the Confederacy, UDC members made the Lost Cause a movement about vindication as well as memorialization. They erected monuments, monitored history for "truthfulness," and sought to educate coming generations of white southerners about an idyllic past and a just cause—states' rights. Soldiers' and widows' homes, perpetuation of the mythology of the antebellum South, and pro-southern textbooks in the region's white public schools were all integral to their mission of creating the New South in the image of the Old. UDC members aspired to transform military defeat into a political and cultural victory, in which states' rights and white supremacy remained intact. To the extent they were successful, the Daughters helped to preserve and perpetuate an agenda for the New South that included maintaining the social status quo. Placing the organization's activities in the context of the postwar and Progressive-Era South, Cox describes in detail the UDC's origins and early development, its efforts to collect and preserve manuscripts and artifacts and to build monuments, and its later role in the peace movement and World War I. This remarkable history of the organization presents a portrait of two generations of southern women whose efforts helped shape the social and political culture of the New South. It also offers a new historical perspective on the subject of Confederate memory and the role southern women played in its development.

Download or read book Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America written by Thomas J. Brown and published by Civil War America. This book was released on 2019 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This ... assessment of Civil War monuments unveiled in the United States between the 1860s and 1930s argues that they were pivotal to a national embrace of military values. Americans' wariness of standing armies limited construction of war memorials in the early republic, ... and continued to influence commemoration after the Civil War. ... distrust of standing armies gave way to broader enthusiasm for soldiers in the Gilded Age. Some important projects challenged the trend, but many Civil War monuments proposed new norms of discipline and vigor that lifted veterans to a favored political status and modeled racial and class hierarchies. A half century of Civil War commemoration reshaped remembrance of the American Revolution and guided American responses to World War I"--

Download or read book Commemorations written by John R. Gillis and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Memory is as central to modern politics as politics is central to modern memory. We are so accustomed to living in a forest of monuments, to having the past represented to us through museums, historic sites, and public sculpture, that we easily lose sight of the recent origins and diverse meanings of these uniquely modern phenomena. In this volume, leading historians, anthropologists, and ethnographers explore the relationship between collective memory and national identity in diverse cultures throughout history. Placing commemorations in their historical settings, the contributors disclose the contested nature of these monuments by showing how groups and individuals struggle to shape the past to their own ends. The volume is introduced by John Gillis's broad overview of the development of public memory in relation to the history of the nation-state. Other contributions address the usefulness of identity as a cross-cultural concept (Richard Handler), the connection between identity, heritage, and history (David Lowenthal), national memory in early modern England (David Cressy), commemoration in Cleveland (John Bodnar), the museum and the politics of social control in modern Iraq (Eric Davis), invented tradition and collective memory in Israel (Yael Zerubavel), black emancipation and the civil war monument (Kirk Savage), memory and naming in the Great War (Thomas Laqueur), American commemoration of World War I (Kurt Piehler), art, commerce, and the production of memory in France after World War I (Daniel Sherman), historic preservation in twentieth-century Germany (Rudy Koshar), the struggle over French identity in the early twentieth century (Herman Lebovics), and the commemoration of concentration camps in the new Germany (Claudia Koonz).

Download or read book Spectacle of Grief written by Sarah J. Purcell and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2022-02-16 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illuminating book examines how the public funerals of major figures from the Civil War era shaped public memories of the war and allowed a diverse set of people to contribute to changing American national identities. These funerals featured lengthy processions that sometimes crossed multiple state lines, burial ceremonies open to the public, and other cultural productions of commemoration such as oration and song. As Sarah J. Purcell reveals, Americans' participation in these funeral rites led to contemplation and contestation over the political and social meanings of the war and the roles played by the honored dead. Public mourning for military heroes, reformers, and politicians distilled political and social anxieties as the country coped with the aftermath of mass death and casualties. Purcell shows how large-scale funerals for figures such as Henry Clay and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson set patterns for mourning culture and Civil War commemoration; after 1865, public funerals for figures such as Robert E. Lee, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, and Winnie Davis elaborated on these patterns and fostered public debate about the meanings of the war, Reconstruction, race, and gender.

Download or read book Memory in Black and White written by Paul A. Shackel and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2003 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul Shackel uses four well-known Civil War-era National Park sites to illustrate the evolution of commemorative expression at sites of controversy. He shows how interpretation may change dramatically from one generation to another as interpreters try to accommodate, or ignore, certain memories. Memory in Black and White is important reading for all who are interested in history and memory. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Download or read book Monuments to the Lost Cause written by Cynthia Mills and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This richly illustrated collection of fourteen essays examines the ways in which Confederate memorials - from Monument Avenue to Stone Mountain - and the public rituals surrounding them testify to the tenets of the Lost Cause, a romanticized narrative of the war. Several essays highlight the creative leading role played by women's groups in memorialization, while others explore the alternative ways in which people outside white southern culture wrote their very different histories on the southern landscape. The authors - who include Richard Guy Wilson, Catherine W. Bishir, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, and William M.S. Ramussen - trace the origins, objectives, and changing consequences of Confederate monuments over time and the dynamics of individuals and organizations that sponsored them. Thus these essays extend the growing literature on the rhetoric of the Lost Cause by shifting the focus to the realm of the visual. They are especially relevant in the present day when Confederate symbols and monuments continue to play a central role in a public - and often emotionally charged - debate about how the South's past should be remembered. The editors: Art Historian Cynthia Mills, a specialist in nineteenth-century public sculpture, is executive editor of American Art, the scholarly journal of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Pamela H. Simpson is the Ernest Williams II Professor of Art History at Washington and Lee University. She is the coauthor of The Architecture of Historic Lexington.

Download or read book Race and Reunion written by David W. BLIGHT and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No historical event has left as deep an imprint on America's collective memory as the Civil War. In the war's aftermath, Americans had to embrace and cast off a traumatic past. David Blight explores the perilous path of remembering and forgetting, and reveals its tragic costs to race relations and America's national reunion.

Download or read book Contested Commemoration in U S History written by Klara Stephanie Szlezák and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-25 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the backdrop of two recent socio-political developments—the shift from the Obama to the Trump administration and the surge in nationalist and populist sentiment that ushered in the current administration—Contested Commemoration in U.S. History presents eleven essays focused on practices of remembering contested events in America’s national history. This edited volume contains fresh interpretations of public history and collective memory that explore the evolving relationship between the U.S. and its past. The individual chapters investigate efforts to memorialize events or interrogate instances of historical sanitization at the expense of less partial representations that would include other perspectives. The primary source material and geography covered is extensive; contributors use historic sites and monuments, photographs, memoirs, textbooks, periodicals, music, and film to discuss the periods from colonial America, through the Revolutionary and Civil Wars up until the Vietnam War, Civil Rights movement, and Cold War, to explore how the commemoration of those eras resonates in the twenty-first century. Through a range of commemoration media and primary sources, the authors illuminate themes and arguments that are indispensable to students, scholars, and practitioners interested in Public History and American Studies more broadly.