Contested Histories in Public Space

Edited by Daniel Walkowitz and Lisa Maya Knauer
Duke University Press, 2009


      Contested Histories in Public Space, co-edited by Daniel Walko¬witz, a professor in NYU’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, reflects the impact of political transformations on contested histories of museums, monuments, media, and texts around the globe. Several contributors examine how the experiences of indigenous groups and the imperial past are incorporated into public histories in British Commonwealth nations. Others consider iconic American landmarks, such as Ellis Island and the Alamo.
      “The essays in this collection…highlight the existence of fundamental conflicts over the interpretation of history and its representation in the public arena,” write Walkowitz and co-editor Lisa Maya Knauer, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.