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Books > Arts & Architecture > Architecture > Public buildings: civic, commercial, industrial, etc > Memorials, monuments
Twentieth Anniversary Edition with a new preface and afterword From
the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans in the spring
of 2017 to the violent aftermath of the white nationalist march on
the Robert E. Lee monument in Charlottesville later that summer,
debates and conflicts over the memorialization of Confederate
"heroes" have stormed to the forefront of popular American
political and cultural discourse. In Written in Stone Sanford
Levinson considers the tangled responses to controversial monuments
and commemorations while examining how those with political power
configure public spaces in ways that shape public memory and
politics. Paying particular attention to the American South, though
drawing examples as well from elsewhere in the United States and
throughout the world, Levinson shows how the social and legal
arguments regarding the display, construction, modification, and
destruction of public monuments mark the seemingly endless
confrontation over the symbolism attached to public space. This
twentieth anniversary edition of Written in Stone includes a new
preface and an extensive afterword that takes account of recent
events in cities, schools and universities, and public spaces
throughout the United States and elsewhere. Twenty years on,
Levinson's work is more timely and relevant than ever.
Authorized Heritage analyses the history of commemoration at
heritage sites across western Canada. Using extensive research in
Parks Canada records, it argues that heritage narratives are almost
always based on national and conventional messages that commonly
reflect colonialist visions of the past. Throughout western Canada
there are vivid examples of original and official views of what
constitutes a national narrative. Yet many of the places that
commemorate Indigenous, fur trade, and settler colonial histories
are contested spaces, places such as Batoche, Seven Oaks, and Upper
Fort Garry being the most obvious. At these heritage sites,
Indigenous perceptions of the past confront the conventions of
settler colonial history and denote the fluid cultural perspectives
that must define the shifting ground of heritage space. Robert
Coutts brings his many years of experience as a Parks Canada
historian to this detailed examination of heritage sites across the
prairies. He shows how the process of commemoration reflects social
and cultural perspectives that privilege a confident and
progressive national narrative. He also examines how class, gender,
and sexuality often remain apart from the heritage discourse. Most
notably, Authorized Heritage examines how governments became the
mediators of what is heritage and, just as significantly, what is
not.
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