This study explores the multiple ways in which Congressional Cemetery has been positioned for some two hundred years in "the shadow" of the U.S. Capitol. The narrative proceeds chronologically, discussing the burial ground during three periods: a) The antebellum years; b) The years from the end of the Civil War to approximately 1970, when the site progressively deteriorated; c) The period from the early 1970s to 2007, when both public and private organizations worked to preserve the physical site and the memory of what it has been and continues to represent. This monograph on Congressional Cemetery focuses on the dominant narrative associated with the site: its legacy as the first national burial ground in the United States. Given this emphasis, the text presents a political and cultural analysis of the cemetery, with particular focus on the participation of the U.S. Congress. "This book makes historians and many others aware of a fascinating and complicated history. Moreover, it not only details the long history of the cemetery, but it uses it to explore the nature of historic memorials generally in the creation of national memory." Steven Diner, Chancellor of Rutgers University at Newark. "The Johnsons have done an excellent job of mining a wide range of sources and conveying the complex history of an institution that merits documentation... It's stunning to realize what a who's who exists in that space." Howard Gillette, Professor Emeritus at Rutgers University at Camden. "The history of Congressional Cemetery is intimately tied up in the changing demographics of its locale, and its corresponding decline as the neighborhood around Christ Church changed led to its emergence as a cause celebre for historic preservationists." Donald Kennon, Chief Historian for the United States Capitol Historical Society, and editor of The Capitol Dome.

State Oddities takes a different kind of look at the American nation, spotlighting the fun foibles, peculiarities, and twists in each of the 50 states that are (mostly) united under the Stars and Stripes. State Oddities is a fascinating trip through the 50 states for students studying America, teachers planning classroom activities, and general readers who will enjoy an eye-opening journey through the nation's fun side. It offers a compelling look at the character of America through the individuality of 50 very distinct states that together form the USA. This book paints a picture of the broad sweep of the American story, offering a gateway to the country as it developed into one nation filled with individual states that can be remarkably different from each other, yet unified under such national symbols as the American flag and "The Star-Spangled Banner." The author of State Oddities has become known as a master of "painless history," telling America's story in a sparkling style along with the historian's eye for fascinating detail. On the book's cross-country journey, the reader will find that it differs from other works by taking a fresh look at stories we think we know. Engaging, entertaining, readable, and informative narratives for both students and adults Teacher-friendly entries on each state form the building blocks for history, geography, and social studies projects Lively sidebars add spice to the book Helpful Fact Box overviews for each state Fascinating images in every state entry Bibliographic references and suggestions for further information

In tracing the process through which monuments give rise to collective memories, this path-breaking book emphasizes that memorials are not just inert and amnesiac spaces upon which individuals may graft their ever-shifting memories. To the contrary, the materiality of monuments can be seen to elicit a particular collective mode of remembering which shapes the consumption of the past as a shared cultural form of memory. In a variety of disciplines over the past decade, attention has moved away from the oral tradition of memory to the interplay between social remembering and object worlds. But research is very sketchy in this area and the materiality of monuments has tended to be ignored within anthropological literature, compared to the amount of attention given to commemorative practice. Art and architectural history, on the other hand, have been much interested in memorial representation through objects, but have paid scant attention to issues of social memory. Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary in scope, this book fills this gap and addresses topics ranging from material objects to physical space; from the contemporary to the historical; and from 'high art' to memorials outside the category of art altogether. In so doing, it represents a significant contribution to an emerging field.

Taking as its focus memorials of the First World War in Britain, this book brings a fresh approach to the study of public symbols by exploring how different motives for commemorating the dead were reconciled through the processes of local politics to create a widely valued form of collective expression. It examines how the memorials were produced, what was said about them, how support for them was mobilized and behaviour around them regulated. These memorials were the sites of contested, multiple and ambiguous meanings, yet out of them a united public observance was created. The author argues that this was possible because the interpretation of them as symbols was part of a creative process in which new meanings for traditional forms of memorial were established and circulated. The memorials not only symbolized emotional responses to the war, but also ambitions for the post-war era. Contemporaries adopted new ways of thinking about largely traditional forms of memorial to fit the uncertain social and political climate of the inter-war years.
This book represents a significant contribution to the study of material culture and memory, as well as to the social and cultural history of modern warfare.

Drawing on a range of disciplines from within the humanities and social sciences, Multilingual Memories addresses questions of remembering and forgetting from an explicitly multilingual perspective. From a museum at Victoria Falls in Zambia to a Japanese-American internment in Arkansas, this book probes how the medium of the communication of memories affirms social orders across the globe. Applying linguistic landscape approaches to a wide variety of monuments and memorials from around the world, this book identifies how multilingualism (and its absence) contributes to the inevitable partiality of public memorials. Using a number of different methods, including multimodal discourse analysis, code preferences, interaction orders, and indexicality, the chapters explore how memorials have the potential to erase linguistic diversity as much as they can entextualize multilingualism. With examples from Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North and South America, this volume also examines the extent to which multilingual memories legitimize not only specific discourses but also individuals, particular communities, and ethno-linguistic groups - often to the detriment of others.

Evolving from a patrician domus, the emperor's residence on the Palatine became the centre of the state administration. Elaborate ceremonial regulated access to the imperial family, creating a system of privilege which strengthened the centralised power. Constantine followed the same model in his new capital, under a Christian veneer. The divine attributes of the imperial office were refashioned, with the emperor as God's representative. The palace was an imitation of heaven. Following the loss of the empire in the West and the Near East, the Palace in Constantinople was preserved - subject to the transition from Late Antique to Mediaeval conditions - until the Fourth Crusade, attracting the attention of Visgothic, Lombard, Merovingian, Carolingian, Norman and Muslim rulers. Renaissance princes later drew inspiration for their residences directly from ancient ruins and Roman literature, but there was also contact with the Late Byzantine court. Finally, in the age of Absolutism the palace became again an instrument of power in vast centralised states, with renewed interest in Roman and Byzantine ceremonial. Spanning the broadest chronological and geographical limits of the Roman imperial tradition, from the Principate to the Ottoman empire, the papers in the volume treat various aspects of palace architecture, art and ceremonial.

This bold intervention into the debate over the memory and post-memory of the Holocaust both scrutinises recent academic theories of post-Holocaust trauma and provides a new reading of literary and architectural memory texts related to the Holocaust.

Spontaneous shrines have emerged, both in the United States and internationally, as a way to mourn those who have died a sudden or shocking death, and to acknowledge the circumstances of the deaths. The contributors to "Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death "address events such as the Texas A&M bonfire collapse, the Pentagon and New York City after 9-11, roadside crosses, a memorial wall in Philadelphia, and the use of Day of the Dead altars to bring attention to deceased undocumented immigrants. The first comprehensive work to examine and theorize the phenomenon as a whole, this book explores the origins, types, uses, and meanings of these shrines.""

For the first time, the 92-metre frieze of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, one of the largest historical narratives in marble, has been made the subject of a book.

The pictorial narrative of the Boer pioneers who conquered South Africa’s interior during the ‘Great Trek’ (1835-1852) represents a crucial period of South Africa’s past. Forming the concept of the frieze both reflected on and contributed to the country’s socio-political debates in the 1930s and 1940s when it was made. The frieze is unique in that it provides rare evidence of the complex processes followed in creating a major monument.

Based on unpublished documents, drawings and models, these processes are unfolded step by step, from the earliest discussions of the purpose and content of the frieze through all the stages of its design to its shipping to post-war Italy to be copied into marble and final installation in the Monument. The book examines how visual representation transforms historical memory in what it chooses to recount, and the forms in which it depicts this. It also investigates the active role the Monument played in the development of apartheid, and its place in post-apartheid heritage.

The second volume, to be published later this year, expands on the first, considering each of the twenty-seven scenes in depth, providing new insights into not only the frieze, but also South Africa’s history.

Across the globe, memorial and grave sites are being increasingly weaponized in conflicts and politicized by parties to advance agendas. Here, Carol S. Lilly examines ideas of death, politics, memory, ideology and nationalism in the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, and Serbia to shine fresh light on cemetery culture in 20th-century Europe. More specifically, Death and Burial in Socialist Yugoslavia investigates how the Communist Party of Yugoslavia created its own communities of the dead by implementing cemetery policies which reinforced their ideals of secularism, pluralism, brotherhood, and unity. However, in doing so the communist regime left the previous system of ethno-religious segregation in place and further isolated Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims and Jews who continued to be buried in separate locations. This in turn further politicized burial rites and exacerbated tensions between different ethno-religious communities. As a result, by the time Yugoslavia disintegrated in the early 1990s, dead bodies and cemeteries had become a concerted weapon of war in the ongoing ethnic conflict. Ultimately, then, this timely study reveals for the first time the extent to which the communist regime not only failed to created their own communities of the dead but also further divided and alienated living communities in Yugoslavia.