HL90BL
Nicole Eaton
American Memorials From
Slavery to September 11
Fall 2015
Dates to Remember
September 15
October 13
October 27
November 3
Harvard Memory Site Field
Report
Memorial Visit Response
Paper #1: The Robert Gould
Shaw and Massachusetts 54th
Regiment Memorial
Memorial Visit Response
Paper #2 NE Holocaust
Memorial
Paper Proposal
November 10
Memorial Visit Response
Paper #3: Day of the Dead
November 20
Final Paper Drafts
November 24
Memorial Visit Response
Paper #4: MIT Collier
Memorial
December 1
Final Papers and
Presentations
Course Description
As poet Sonia Sanchez has eloquently written, “it’s our memory that connects
us.” What is memory? What is the relationship between memory and history?
What has been the place of the past in American society? And how does
memory help connect us as nations, as communities, as individuals? To fully
explore these questions, this course is organized around the theme of public
memorials in the United States. We will begin our survey with the question of
what exactly is a monument. From there, we will investigate the role
monuments and memorials play in societies and examine the politics of
memorialization. Throughout, we will broaden our conception of monuments
as texts beyond stone statues to include paintings, abstract sculpture, graphic
novels, poetry, fiction, film and other memorial forms. As such, we will
analyze formal commemorations such as war memorials, museums, and
national parks as well as popular culture commemorations in music, movies,
art and on the web. The course will focus on examples of American
monuments, including the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the United States
Holocaust Museum, and memorials to slavery, the Civil War, the Triangle
Fire, Japanese Internment and 9/11 among others.
Assigned articles will be available for download on the course website:
https://canvas.harvard.edu/courses/5226
Page 1
Course Goals and Objectives:
“The struggle against power is the struggle of memory over
forgetting” ~ Milan Kundera
To better understand the dynamic nature of creating meaning—both in the past and present—from
American memorials. Students will learn to read historical and literary sources critically,
appreciating the connection between the past and present, myth and truth. The course is structured
around questions of historical debate. Students will engage with all the complexities of the past.
Through course discussion and assignments students will begin to construct historical arguments
and become more effective and skilled writers. Students are expected to complete all course
readings and contribute to class discussion. Film screenings and viewings of local memorials will
supplement our seminar experience. Taking advantage of our location, we will utilize Boston,
Cambridge and the Harvard campus as a vital class resource through fieldtrips and field reports.
People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the
word "story". ~Ken Burns
2
The Following Books Are Recommended For Purchase
 Erika Doss, Memorial Mania Public Feeling in America, ISBN:
9780226159416
 Kristin Ann Hass, Carried to the Wall American Memory and the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial, ISBN: 9780520213173
 Sanford Levinson, Written in Stone Public Monuments in
Changing Societies, ISBN: 9780822322207
 Toni Morrison, Beloved, ISBN: 9781400033416
 Anne Nelson, The Guys A Play, ISBN: 9780812967296
 Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried, ISBN:
9780618706419
 John Okada, No-No Boy, ISBN: 9780295994048
 Kirk Savage, Monument Wars Washington, D.C., the
National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial
Landscape, ISBN: 9780520271333
 Art Spiegelman, Maus I A Survivor's Tale My Father Bleeds
History, ISBN: 9780394747231
 Katharine Weber, Triangle, ISBN: 9780312426149
REQUIREMENTS:
Discussion Participation --- 20%
Monument Response Papers --- 10 %
Field Reports and Presentation --- 35%
Monument Project Proposal, Draft, Paper and
Presentation --- 35%
Class Discussion
A successful seminar depends upon YOUR active
engagement in class discussion. So come to class
having done the assigned readings and bring
comments, queries and opinions on the reading
and the larger themes and issues invoked.
Discussion Questions
For every class there is assigned reading, please
post a question for discussion by noon on the day
of class the class canvas site.
Field Reports
Students are required to complete two field
reports. (1) a Harvard University memory site (2-3
pages) and (2) a field report on a national or local
monument (4-6 pages). For this second report,
students should also prepare a 10-minute
presentation to share with the class. A sign-up
sheet will be circulated.
Monument Project
You will write a final research paper
designed to explore an aspect of American
memorials due December 1 by midnight.
Projects will be presented to the class
during the last session of the semester
(December 1) and should be 10 minutes
each. Papers should be between 10-12
pages. A proposal for your project is due
November 3. The assignment is to
respond to a historical question that you
pose from the list provided below:
Option 1): Review essay. Choose a
historical event, social movement, cultural
movement, historical figure or issue and
examine how he/she/it has been
memorialized.
Option 2): Design your own memorial.
Then contextualize your monument
within the history of memorialization.
History
Matters!
3
Schedule of Readings
Week 1 (September 8): Introduction
In-class film: The Last Conquistador (2008)

Patricia Limerick, “The Battlefield of
History” New York Times, August 28,
1997 and response: “Little Bighorn Sealed
Fate of American Indians,” New York
Times, September 3, 1997
Week 2 (September 15): Collective Memory


In-class memory exercise: Bring a family
photograph to class!






Sanford Levinson, Written in Stone:
Public Monuments in Changing Societies
(1998)
Annette Kuhn, Family Secrets: Acts of
Memory and Imagination (chapters 1 & 2)
James Mcauley, “Remembrance of Things
Past,” The Harvard Crimson, November
11, 2010
Stephen Gapps, “Mobile Monuments: A
View of Historical Reenactment and
Authenticity from inside the Costume
Cupboard of History,” Rethinking
History: The Journal of Theory and
Practice, Volume 13, Issue 3, 2009, pp.
395-409.
Tony Horwitz, “The Horrific Sand Creek
Massacre Will Be Forgotten No More,”
Smithsonian Magazine, December 2014
Neil MacFarQuhar, “Another Huge Statue
in Russia? Not Rare, but Hugely
Divisive,” New York Times, May 28, 2015
Week 3 (September 22): The Politics of
Memory


Charlene Mires, “In the Shadow of
Independence Hall: Vernacular
Activities and the Meanings of Historic
Places,” The Public Historian, Vol. 21,
No. 2 (Spring, 1999), pp. 49-64.
Scott A. Sandage, “A Marble House
Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the

Civil Rights Movement, and the
Politics of Memory, 1939-1963,”
Journal of American History, Vol. 80, No.
1. (Jun., 1993), pp. 135-167.
Christopher Capozzola, “A Very
American Epidemic: Memory Politics
and Identity Politics in the AIDS
Memorial Quilt, 1985-1993,” Radical
History Review - Issue 82, Winter 2002,
pp. 91-109.
Stephanie E. Yuhl, “Sculpted Radicals:
The Problem of Sacco and Vanzetti in
Boston’s Public Memory,” The Public
Historian, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Spring 2010)
(pp. 9-30).
Day of the Dead reading TBA
Week 4 (September 29): Monuments and
National Identity
In-class film: selected scenes from Mr. Smith
Goes to Washington (1939)



Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address”
(1863)
John Gillis, “Memory and Identity:
The History of a Relationship,” in
Gillis, ed., Commemorations: The
Politics of National Identity
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Univ.Press, 1994), pp. 3-24.
Kirk Savage, Monument Wars:
Washington, D.C., the National Mall,
and the Transformation of the
Memorial Landscape (2011)
(selections TBA)
Week 5 (October 6): Slavery in History and
Literature


Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)
Felicia R. Lee, “Bench of Memory at
Slavery’s Gateway,” New York Times,
July 28, 2008
4
Week 6 (October 13): The Unfinished Civil War
Musical interlude: Charles Ives, “The ‘St.-Gaudens’ in Boston
Common”



Your Instructor

Dr. Nicole Eaton
eaton@fas.harvard.edu
Office: Barker 031
Office Hours TBA or by
appointment

Visit: The Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th
Regiment Memorial (located across Beacon Street from the
State House)
Film: Glory (1989)
David Blight, “For Something Beyond the Battlefield:
Frederick Douglass and the Struggle for the Memory of the
Civil War,” Journal of American History, March, 1989.
Laurie Burgess, “Buried in the Rose Garden: Levels of
Meaning at Arlington National Cemetery and the Robert E.
Lee Memorial,” in Myth, Memory, and the Making of the
American Landscape (Gainesville: University Press of Florida,
2001), pp. 159- 173.
Kevin Allen, “The Second Battle of Fort Sumter: The
Debate over the Politics of Race and Historical Memory at
the Opening of America’s Civil War Centennial, 1961,” The
Public Historian 33, No. 2 (Spring 2011): 94-109.
Week 7 (October 20): Remember the Ladies




Late Policy
Assignments are
expected by the due
date, unless previously
discussed with the
professor and an
extension is granted.
Late papers will be
marked down.
Katharine Weber, Triangle: A Novel (2007)
Steven Greenhouse, “In a Tragedy, A Mission To
Remember,” New York Times, March 20, 2011
“Suffrage Statue,” radio debate between Joan Meacham and
C. Delores Tucker on Democracy Now! aired April 15, 1997
Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party
Week 8 (October 27): The Holocaust in American Memory




Visit: The New England Holocaust Memorial (located
outside Faneuil Hall)
Art Spiegelman. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1991)
Edward Linenthal, “The Boundaries of Memory, The
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,” American
Quarterly 46 (1994): 406-433.
Web: http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/exhibit
5
Week 9 (November 3): Narrating Internment
In-class film: Rea Tajiri, Dir. History and Memory (1991)


John Okada, No-No Boy (1957)
Dorothea Lange, censored photographs of Japanese American
Internment
Marita Sturken, “Absent Images of Memory: Remembering and
Reenacting the Japanese Internment,” in T. Fujitani et.al.
Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s) (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2001), pp.33-49.
Robert T. Hayashi, “Transfigured Patterns: Contesting
Memories at the Manzanar National Historic Site,” Public
Historian 25:4 (Fall 2003), pp. 51-71.

Academic Integrity
Policy

Week 10 (November 10): War Memorials
In-class film: selected scenes from Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision
(1994)

It is expected that all homework
assignments, projects, lab reports,
papers, theses, and examinations
and any other work submitted for
academic credit will be the
student’s own. Students should
always take great care to distinguish
their own ideas and knowledge
from information derived from
sources. The term “sources”
includes not only primary and
secondary material published in
print or online, but also information
and opinions gained directly from
other people. Quotations must be
placed properly within quotation
marks and must be cited fully. In
addition, all paraphrased material
must be acknowledged completely.
Whenever ideas or facts are derived
from a student’s reading and
research or from a student’s own
writings, the sources must be
indicated.



Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried (1990) (“The Things
They Carried,” “How to Tell a True War Story,”
“Speaking of Courage,” “Notes,” “Field Trip,” and “The
Lives of the Dead”)
Maya Lin, “Making the Memorial,” The New York Review of
Books, 11/2/2000
Kristin Hass, Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the
Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1998) (selections)
Kirk Savage, “What Will Our Iraq War Memorial Look
Like,” Washington Post, May 27, 2011
6
Week 11 (November 17):Producing and Consuming Memory of
9/11



Special
accommodations
Any student needing academic
adjustments or accommodations is
requested
to present
their letter
Any student
needing
from
the
Accessible
Education
academic adjustments or
Office
(AEO) and speak
accommodations
is with the
professor
by
the
end
of
second
requested to presentthe
their
week
of
the
term.
Failure
to
do so
letter from the Accessible
may
result
in
the
Course
Head's
Education Office (AEO)
inability
to respond
in a timely
and speak
with the
manner.
All
discussions
professor by the end will
of remain
confidential,
although
AEO
the second week of the may be
consulted
to discuss
appropriate
term. Failure
to do
so may
implementation.
result in the Course
Head's inability to
respond in a timely
manner. All discussions
will remain confidential,
although AEO may be
consulted to discuss
appropriate
implementation.




Anne Nelson, The Guys (2001)
Micki McElya, “Remembering 9/11’s Pentagon Victims and
Reframing History in Arlington National Cemetery,” Radical
History Review (2011): 51-63.
Beverly Haviland, “Henry James @ Ground Zero:
Remembering the Future,” The Henry James Review, Volume
25, Number 3, Fall 2004, pp. 285-295.
David W. Blight, "Will it Ever Rise? September 11 in
American Memory,” in Clifford Chanin, ed., Francesc
Torres, Memory Remains: 9/11 Artifacts at Hangar 17,
(Washington DC: National Geographic, 2011), 92-97:
Adam Gopnik, “Stones and Bones,” The New Yorker, June
30, 2014.
Marita J. Sturken, (2004). “The Aesthetics of Absence:
Rebuilding Ground Zero,” American Ethnologist 31: 311–325.
Explore the 911 memorial and museum
Week 12 (November 24): Not Your Mother’s Monument:
Old Ideas in New Memorial Form
In-class film: selected scenes from Krzysztof Wodiczko:
Projections (1991)
Visit: MIT Collier Memorial

Erika Doss, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (2010)
(intro and chapters 1, 2, 5 and 6)
Week 13 (December 1): LAST DAY OF CLASS
Monument Presentations
FINAL PAPERS DUE BY MIDNIGHT!
“Our
ideas about
Consequat
id,
whatvulputate
is possible
eu, for
nonummy
sit amet,
the
future are
formed nulla.
out of our
knowledge of what
was possible in the
past”
~ Gerda Lerner

7