American Relics & the Politics of Public Memory

This is a hybrid event. FREE for MHS Members. $10 per person fee (in person). No charge for virtual attendees or Card to Culture participants (EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare). The in-person reception starts at 5:30 and the program will begin at 6:00.

Please visit here to register.

The gold epaulettes that George Washington wore into battle. A crushed wristwatch after the 9/11 attacks. Volatile and shapeshifting, relics have long played a role in memorializing the American past, acting as physical reminders of hard-won battles, mass tragedies, and political triumphs. Surveying the expanse of US history, American Relics and the Politics of Public Memory shows how these objects have articulated glory, courage, and national greatness as well as horror, defeat, and oppression. The atrocious artifacts of lynching and the looted remains of Native American graves were later evidence of shameful things, exposing ongoing racial violence, and advancing calls for equality and civil rights. Matthew Dennis pursues this history of fraught public objects and assesses the emergence of new venues of memorialization, such as virtual and digital spaces. Through it all, relics continue to fundamentally ground and shape US public memory in its uncertain present and future. 

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