Some Thoughts on/about Memorial Day

Memory studies, 2019

This article examines how and to what extent recent wars affect war commemoration. We do this through an analysis of the establishment of a Veterans Day in Norway, instituted on May 8, the traditional Liberation Day in memory of World War 2. We document how this merger has transformed May 8 from a low-key war commemoration to a celebration of the Armed Forces. Through our study, we emphasize how authorities attempt to form new mnemonic practices to give meaning to recent wars. These practices were informed by transnational events, but also constrained by deeply embedded national genres of commemoration. In Norway, the Liberation and Veterans Day has become a secluded event, attended by political and military leaders, but largely ignored by the public. We argue that commemorative practices that fail to resonate with shared experiences in society and are at odds with national identities will have limited appeal and support.

Journal of Political and Military Sociology, 2007

“'The Sinews of Memory:’ The Forging of Civil War Memory and Reconciliation, 1865 – 1940", 2019

“The Sinews of Memory:’ The Forging of Civil War Memory and Reconciliation, 1865 – 1940,” explores the creation of historical memory of the American Civil War and, its byproduct, reconciliation. Stakeholders in the historical memory formation of the war and reconciliation were varied and many. “The Sinews of Memory” argues reconciliation blossomed from the 1880s well into the twentieth-century due to myriad of historical forces in the United States starting with the end of the war leading up to World War II. The crafters of the war’s memory and reconciliation – veterans, women’s groups, public history institutions, governmental agents, and civic boosters – arrived at a collective memory of the war predicated on notions of race, manliness, nationalism, and patriotism. In forging a specific memory of the Civil War, the aforementioned stakeholders in the process utilized veterans’ fraternal organizations, joint encampments of veterans, physical space, pilgrimages to sites of memory, and cultural products such as cinema to bind the former belligerent regions, both North and South, together. Out of the effort at reconciliation, a white, predominately middle-class, memory of the war emerged.

2011

In this chapter we focus on the debate over publicly-maintained racist monuments as it manifests in the mid-2010s Anglosphere, primarily in the US (chiefly regarding the over 700 monuments devoted to the Confederacy), but to some degree also in Britain and Commonwealth countries, especially South Africa (chiefly regarding monuments devoted to figures and events associated with colonialism and apartheid). After pointing to some representative examples of racist monuments, we discuss ways a monument can be thought racist, and neutrally categorize removalist and preservationist arguments heard in the monument debate. We suggest that both extremist and moderate removalist goals are likely to be self-defeating, and that when concerns of civic sustainability are put on moral par with those of fairness and justice, something like a Mandela-era preservationist policy is best: one which removes the most offensive of the minor racist monuments, but which focuses on closing the monumentary gap between peoples and reframing existing racist monuments.

Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 2008

Anthropological Quarterly, 2007