Blunt instruments : recognizing racist cultural infrastructure in memorials, museums, and patriotic practices Cover Image

Book

Blunt instruments : recognizing racist cultural infrastructure in memorials, museums, and patriotic practices / Kristin Ann Hass.

Hass, Kristin Ann, 1965- (author.).

Summary:

"A field guide to the memorials, museums, and practices that commemorate white supremacy in the United States nd how to reimagine a more deeply shared cultural infrastructure for the future"-- Provided by publisher.

Monuments, museums, and everyday patriotic practices have made headlines for most of the twenty-first century, yet they are seldom look at together or understood explicitly as tools used by particular people in particular times and places to shape the culture in particular ways. Hass explore the complicated histories of sites of cultural infrastructure: memorials in parks, museums visited by school kids, and routine practices of patriotism. She unearths legacies of white supremacy and traces movements to reevaluate and resist countless sites that have been doing this work, and asks that we look for sites that actually work to tell us who we are, how we came to be, and who belongs in the country. -- adapted from jacket

Record details

ISBN: 9780807006719
ISBN: 0807006718
Physical Description: 247 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Publisher: Boston : Beacon Press, [2022]
Copyright: ©2022

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Introduction: White lies matter -- Section I: Memorials. Monumental basics -- The lost cause won -- 1776-1890: Fits and starts -- 1890-1920: The first memorial boom -- The lost cause keeps winning -- 1920-1980: Living memorials and dying cities -- 1980-2010: The second memorial boom in three acts -- 2010-present: Tumbling down and rising up -- Section II: Museums. Museum basics -- White temples emerged -- Pre-1870: Cabinets of curiosities and the first American museums -- 1870-1940: The first golden age of American museums -- White temples reshaped? -- 1965-2020: King Tut and Emmett Till : the old school blockbuster and the new permanence of "Negro buildings" -- The summer of 2020 -- Section III: Patriotic practices. Patriotic practices basics -- Allegiance got pledged -- 1776-1865: A fraught beginning -- 1866-1916: Patriotism from the ground up -- Allegiance got paid for -- 1917-1976: Federally mandated patriotism -- 2001-2021: Paid patriotism and outrageous refusal -- Conclusion: Remaking a made thing.