This course focuses on public history and social memory, the ways society engages the past collectively, through political discourse, oral traditions, monuments, mass culture (journalism, movies, music), art, literature, and iconography. Recently scholars have acknowledged the role of memory in organizing social life, by forging national identities, and conversely, by sustaining small, marginal, or oppositional groups. Case studies include the American historical and cultural scene, the South's commemoration of its lost cause, the recent incorporation of the European holocaust into US history, the role of Lincoln Memorial as a civil rights symbol, the debates over the Enola Gay exhibition in the Smithsonian Institution, and tourism to historical sites.

This course focuses on public history and social memory, the ways society engages the past collectively, through political discourse, oral traditions, monuments, mass culture (journalism, movies, music), art, literature, and iconography. Recently scholars have acknowledged the role of memory in organizing social life, by forging national identities, and conversely, by sustaining small, marginal, or oppositional groups. Case studies include the American historical and cultural scene, the South's commemoration of its lost cause, the recent incorporation of the European holocaust into US history, the role of Lincoln Memorial as a civil rights symbol, the debates over the Enola Gay exhibition in the Smithsonian Institution, and tourism to historical sites.