ABOUT THIS BOOK

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 Delgrès, 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

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.

REVIEWS

“[T]his is an intellectually stimulating volume with great applicability for many new and future venues for analysis.” - Hong-Ming Liang, Journal of Intercultural Studies

“Public historians—whether academics or practitioners—will find much of value within the pages of Contested Histories. . . . Walkowitz and Knauer have compiled a rich and instructive collection of essays that, together, demonstrate the ‘international and spatial reach’ of complex historical debates as they played out in a diverse array of public spaces.” - Andrea Thabet, The Public Historian

“Perhaps the greatest strength of this compilation is how the authors capture the vigorous contestation that can arise between advocates with radically opposed sentiments, allegiances, outlooks and agendas. With the devil generally being in the details, the particulars in these examples reflect the categorical messiness, the fluidity, the complexities, the shifting loyalties, the unpredictability and the undeniably fascinating nature of such cultural conflicts. . . . [A] reader hungry for insight into the politics of representation on an international scale will find much to chew on in Contested Histories in Public Spaces.” - Steven Dublin, Reviews in History

“The wide range of geographical areas covered (six continents and fourteen countries) offers a fascinating study on the impacts of globalization, including the resulting emergence of localisms. . . . The incorporation into memory studies of the rich fruits of postcolonial studies to interrogate how the postcolonial condition might challenge our understanding of the relationship between history and memory is an important and much needed endeavor, for which that I hope this volume has broken ground.” - Akiko Takenaka, Pacific Historical Review

“[A] rich and interesting volume. . . . The contributors are well chosen, the essays unusually consistent, and the topics, juxtaposed rather than braided, convey precisely what the editors hoped for: that public spaces are used, abused, and ‘contested,’ perhaps especially when the subject turns to the
commemoration of empire, no matter where they are. . . . It is sure to have a powerful impact on the way we think about the struggle over space and representation in the dusk of older empires and in the dawn of newer
ones.” - Matthew Pratt Guterl, Museum Anthropology Review

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

“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

“[A] rich and interesting volume. . . . The contributors are well chosen, the essays unusually consistent, and the topics, juxtaposed rather than braided, convey precisely what the editors hoped for: that public spaces are used, abused, and ‘contested,’ perhaps especially when the subject turns to the commemoration of empire, no matter where they are. . . . It is sure to have a powerful impact on the way we think about the struggle over space and representation in the dusk of older empires and in the dawn of newer
ones.”

-- Matthew Pratt Guterl Museum Anthropology Review

“[T]his is an intellectually stimulating volume with great applicability for many new and future venues for analysis.”

-- Hong-Ming Liang Journal of Intercultural Studies

“Perhaps the greatest strength of this compilation is how the authors capture the vigorous contestation that can arise between advocates with radically opposed sentiments, allegiances, outlooks and agendas. With the devil generally being in the details, the particulars in these examples reflect the categorical messiness, the fluidity, the complexities, the shifting loyalties, the unpredictability and the undeniably fascinating nature of such cultural conflicts. . . . [A] reader hungry for insight into the politics of representation on an international scale will find much to chew on in Contested Histories in Public Spaces.”

-- Steven Dublin Reviews in History

“Public historians—whether academics or practitioners—will find much of value within the pages of Contested Histories. . . . Walkowitz and Knauer have compiled a rich and instructive collection of essays that, together, demonstrate the ‘international and spatial reach’ of complex historical debates as they played out in a diverse array of public spaces.”

-- Andrea Thabet The Public Historian

“This is a provocative, reflective and well-balanced collection and makes a key contribution to the field of public history.”

-- Australian Historical Studies

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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