Civil Rights Memorials And The Geography Of Memory

"Owen Dwyer and Derek Alderman examine civil rights memorials as cultural landscapes, offering the first book-length critical reading of the monuments, museums, parts, streets, and sites dedicated to the African-American struggle for civil rights and interpreting them is the context of the Movement's broader history and its current scene. In paying close attention to which stories, people, and places are remembered and which are forgotten, the authors present an engaging account of an unforgettable story."--BOOK JACKET.

US Public Memory, Rhetoric, and the National Mall examines “the nation’s front yard,” understanding it as both a public face the United States presents to the world and a site where its less apparent moral story is told. This book provides a uniquely thorough, interdisciplinary, and integrated examination of how the National Mall shares a moral story of the United States and, in so doing, reveals the soul of the nation. The contributors explore 11 different memorials, monuments, and museums found across the Mall, considering how each rhetorically remembers a key element of the nation’s past, what the rhetorical memory tells us about the nation’s soul, and how each site must thus be understood in relation to the commemorative landscape of the Mall.

The movement for civil rights in America peaked in the 1950s and 1960s; however, a closely related struggle, this time over the movement's legacy, has been heatedly engaged over the past two decades. How the civil rights movement is currently being remembered in American politics and culture--and why it matters--is the common theme of the thirteen essays in this unprecedented collection. Memories of the movement are being created and maintained--in ways and for purposes we sometimes only vaguely perceive--through memorials, art exhibits, community celebrations, and even street names. At least fifteen civil rights movement museums have opened since 1990; Mississippi Burning, Four Little Girls, and The Long Walk Home only begin to suggest the range of film and television dramatizations of pivotal events; corporations increasingly employ movement images to sell fast food, telephones, and more; and groups from Christian conservatives to gay rights activists have claimed the civil rights mantle. Contests over the movement's meaning are a crucial part of the continuing fight against racism and inequality. These writings look at how civil rights memories become established as fact through museum exhibits, street naming, and courtroom decisions; how our visual culture transmits the memory of the movement; how certain aspects of the movement have come to be ignored in its "official" narrative; and how other political struggles have appropriated the memory of the movement. Here is a book for anyone interested in how we collectively recall, claim, understand, and represent the past.

This collection shifts the focus from collective memory to individual memory, by incorporating new performative approaches to identity, place and becoming. Drawing upon cultural geography, the book provides an accessible framework to approach key aspects of memory, remembering, archives, commemoration and forgetting in modern societies.

Focusing on the practices and politics of heritage-making at the individual and the local level, this book uses a wide array of international case studies to argue for their potential not only to disrupt but also to complement formal heritage-making in public spaces. Providing a much-needed clarion call to reinsert the individual as well as the transient into more collective heritage processes and practices, this strong contribution to the field of Critical Heritage Studies offers insight into benefits of the ‘heritage from below approach’ for researchers, policy makers and practitioners.

The examination of social memory and heritage tourism has grown considerably over the past few decades as scholars have critically re-examined the relationships between past memories and present actions at international, national, and local scales. Methodological innovation and reflection have accompanied theoretical advances as researchers strive to understand representations, experiences, thoughts, emotions and identities of the various actors involved in the reproduction of social memory and heritage landscapes. Social Memory and Heritage Tourism Methodologies describes and demonstrates innovations – including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method approaches – for analysing the process and politics of remembering and touring the past through place. An introductory chapter looks at the history of social memory and heritage tourism research and the particular challenges posed by these fields of study. In subsequent chapters, the reader is lead through the varying methodologies employed by presenting them in the context of an in-depth case study from range of geographical locations. The resulting volume showcases innovative research in social memory and heritage tourism and provides the reader with insights into how they can successfully conduct their own research while avoiding common pitfalls. This title will be useful reading for scholars, professionals and students in tourism, geography, anthropology and museum studies who are preparing to conduct research on the reproduction of social memory in particular landscapes and places or are interested in investigating heritage tourism practices and representations.

Table of Contents for Volume 52, Number 4 (Winter 2012) Special Issue: Placing Memory and Heritage in the Geography Classroom Guest Editor: Chris W. Post Cover Art The Mule Pull at the Mississippi Pecan Festival Joseph S. Miller Introduction: Placing Memory and Heritage in the Geography Classroom Chris W. Post Part I: Papers ''History by the Spoonful'' in North Carolina: The Textual Politics of State Highway Historical Markers Derek H. Alderman Remembrance and Place-Making: Teaching Students to Look Ahead While Looking Back Stephen S. Birdsall Editing Memory and Automobility & Race: Two Learning Activities on Contested Heritage and Place Kenneth E. Foote A Tale of Two Civil War Statues: Teaching the Geographies of Memory and Heritage in Norfolk, Virginia Jonathan I. Leib Objectives and Prospects for Bringing Service-Learning into the Memory and Heritage Classroom Chris W. Post Making Memory, Making Landscapes: Classroom Applications of Parallel Trends in the Study of Landscape, Memory, and Learning Owen J. Dwyer and Matthew McCourt Part II: Geographical Notes A Tribute to Dr. Louis De Vorsey, Jr. (1929–2012) Sanford H. Bederman Part III: Reviews From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540–1715 Robbie Ethridge Reviewed by Craig S. Revels Key Methods in Geography Nicholas Clifford, Shaun French, and Gill Valentine (Editors) Reviewed by Bandana Kar

**Named a 2014 Choice Outstanding Academic Title** Combining coverage of key themes and debates from a variety of historical and theoretical perspectives, this authoritative reference volume offers the most up-to-date and substantive analysis of cultural geography currently available. A significantly revised new edition covering a number of new topics such as biotechnology, rural, food, media and tech, borders and tourism, whilst also reflecting developments in established subjects including animal geographies Edited and written by the leading authorities in this fast-developing discipline, and features a host of new contributors to the second edition Traces the historical evolution of cultural geography through to the very latest research Provides an international perspective, reflecting the advancing academic traditions of non-Western institutions, especially in Asia Features a thematic structure, with sections exploring topics such as identities, nature and culture, and flows and mobility