Memory and Monument Wars in American Cities New York, Charlottesville and Montgomery

This book is about the ways U.S. cities have responded to some of the most pressing political, cultural, racial issues of our time as agentic, remembering actors. Our case studies include New York City’s securitized remembrances at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum; Charlottesville’s Confederate monument controversies in the wake of the 2017 Unite the Right Rally; and Montgomery’s “double consciousness” at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Legacy Museum. By tracing the genealogies that can be found across three contested cityscapes—New York, Charlottesville, and Montgomery—this book opens up new vistas for research for communication studies as it shows how cities are agentic actors that can wage “war” on urban landscapes as massive actor-networks struggling to remember (and forget). With the rise of sanctuary cities against nativistic immigration policies, “invasions” from white supremacists and neo-Nazis objecting to “the great replacement,” and rhizomic uprisings of Black Lives Matter protests in response to lethal police force against persons of color, this timely book speaks to the emergent realities of how cities have become battlegrounds in America’s continuing cultural wars.

Chapter 1: Introduction: U.S. Cities’ Agentic Role in 21st Century Memory and Monument Wars

Marouf A. Hasian Jr. is Distinguished Professor and Co-Chair of communication at the University of Utah, USA. He is author of Restorative Justice, Humanitarian Rhetorics, and Public Memories of Colonial Camp Cultures (2014), and more than a dozen other books.

 

Nicholas S. Paliewicz is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Louisville, USA. He is co-author of The Securitization of Memorial Space and Racial Terrorism: A Rhetorical Investigation of Lynching (2019) and has authored essay in journals such as Argumentation and Advocacy, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, International Journal of Communication, and Environmental Communication.