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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]

Table of 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.

Author/Creator:

Dennis, Matthew, 1955- , author

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

American relics and the politics of public memory [by Dennis, M.]

Other Related Resources:

Online version: American relics and the politics of public memory [by Dennis, M.] (Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2023] — ISBN 9781685750107; LCCN 2022045165)

Related Series:

Public history in historical perspective

Subjects:

Material culture — United States

United States — Social life and customs

Collective memory — United States

United States — Antiquities

General Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Description based on print version record.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Call Numbers:

E161 .D46 2023eb

ISBNs:

9781685750107 (electronic bk.)
1685750109 (electronic bk.)
9781625347114 [Invalid]
1625347111 [Invalid]
9781625347121 [Invalid]
162534712X [Invalid]

Other Control Numbers:

3656269 (source: EbpS)
[Unknown Type]: ybp305620857