Publisher Description

Contested Histories in Public Space brings multiple perspectives to bear on historical narratives presented to the public in museums, monuments, texts, and festivals around the world, from Paris to Kathmandu, from the Mexican state of Oaxaca to the waterfront of Wellington, New Zealand. Paying particular attention to how race and empire are implicated in the creation and display of national narratives, the contributing historians, anthropologists, and other scholars delve into representations of contested histories at such "sites" as a British Library exhibition on the East India Company, a Rio de Janeiro shantytown known as "the cradle of samba," the Ellis Island immigration museum, and high-school history textbooks in Ecuador.Several contributors examine how the experiences of indigenous groups and the imperial past are incorporated into public histories in British Commonwealth nations: in Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum; in the First Peoples' Hall at the Canadian Museum of Civilization; and, more broadly, in late-twentieth-century Australian culture. Still others focus on the role of governments in mediating contested racialized histories: for example, the post-apartheid history of South Africa's Voortrekker Monument, originally designed as a tribute to the Voortrekkers who colonized the country's interior. Among several essays describing how national narratives have been challenged are pieces on a dispute over how to represent Nepali history and identity, on representations of Afrocuban religions in contemporary Cuba, and on the installation in the French Pantheon in Paris of a plaque honoring Louis Delgres, a leader of Guadeloupean resistance to French colonialism.
Contributors. Paul Amar, Paul Ashton, O. Hugo Benavides, Laurent Dubois, Richard Flores, Durba Ghosh, Albert Grundlingh, Paula Hamilton, Lisa Maya Knauer, Charlotte Macdonald, Mark Salber Phillips, Ruth B. Phillips, Deborah Poole, Anne M. Rademacher, Daniel J. Walkowitz

Notes

Historians, anthropologists, and other scholars explore the public presentation of contested historical narratives in museums, monuments, texts, and festivals around the world

Back Cover

"By offering studies from six continents, this volume makes the important point that globalization on the one hand and new sorts of localism on the other have powerfully affected discussions of how an often dark and morally compromised past can be critically assimilated into the nearly universal state of fractured national consciousness."-Thomas W. Laqueur, University of California, Berkeley

Author Biography

Daniel J. Walkowitz is Professor of History, Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, and Director of Experiential Education at New York University. Lisa Maya Knauer is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African and African American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. They are editors of Memory and the Impact of Political Transformation in Public Space, also published by Duke University Press.Lisa Maya Knauer is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African/African-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Table of Contents

About the Series vii
Introduction / Lisa Maya Knauer and Daniel J. Walkowitz 1
First Things First
Two Peoples, One Museum: Biculturalism and Visitor "Experience" at Te Papa—Our Place, New Zealand's National Museum / Charlotte J. MacDonald 29
Contesting Time, Place, and Nation in the First Peoples' Hall of the Canadian Museum of Civilization / Ruth B. Phillips and Mark Salber Phillips 49
"Unfinished Business": Public History in a Postcolonial Nation / Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton 71
Colonial Legacies and Winners' Tales
Exhibiting Asia in Britain: Commerce, Consumption, and Globalization / Durba Ghosh 99
The Alamo: Myth, Public History, and the Politics of Inclusion / Richard R. Flores 122
Ellis Island Redux: The Imperial Turn and the Race of Ethnicity / Daniel J. Walkowitz 136
State Stories
A Cultural Conundrum? Old Monuments and New Regimes: The Voortrekker Monument as Symbol of Afrikaner Power in a Postapartheid South Africa / Albert Grundlingh 155
Narratives of Power, the Power of Narratives: The Failing Foundational Narrative of the Ecuadorian Nation / O. Hugo Benavides 178
Affective Distinctions: Race and Place in Oaxaca / Deborah Poole 197
Under-Stated Stories
Marking Remembrance: Nation and Ecology in Two Riverbank Monuments in Kathmandu / Anne M. Rademacher 227
Saving Rio's "Cradle of Samba": Outlaw Uprisings, Racial Tourism and the Progressive State in Brazil / Paul Amar 239
Afrocuban Religion, Museums, and the Cuban Nation / Lisa Maya Knauer 280
Haunting Delgrès / Laurent Dubois 311
Bibliography 329
Contributors 353
Index 357

Review

"By offering studies from six continents, this volume makes the important point that globalization on the one hand and new sorts of localism on the other have powerfully affected discussions of how an often dark and morally compromised past can be critically assimilated into the nearly universal state of fractured national consciousness."--Thomas W. Laqueur, University of California, Berkeley "This is an exceptionally strong and interesting collection about public history in the context of evolving sensibilities about nation, race, culture, 'identity,' and public representation itself. It features great essays instructively organized, as well as a thoughtful, focused introduction that sets them all in a broader context."--Michael Frisch, University at Buffalo, SUNY

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Historians, anthropologists, and other scholars explore the public presentation of contested historical narratives in museums, monuments, texts, and festivals around the world

Review Quote

"This is a provocative, reflective and well-balanced collection and makes a key contribution to the field of public history." - Australian Historical Studies

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Historians, anthropologists, and other scholars explore the public presentation of contested historical narratives in museums, monuments, texts, and festivals around the world

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