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.