UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
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Item COMMEMORATIVE ACTIVISM: TRACING BLACK NATIONALISM THROUGH CONTEMPORARY CAMPAIGNS TO MEMORIALIZE U.S. SLAVERY, 1991-2017(2018) Fitzmaurice, Megan Irene; Parry-Giles, Shawn J; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While much of current public discourse focuses on the ways that black activists are working to desecrate or destroy racist memorials, there has been less discussion about the ways that lobbying to produce antiracist memorials can also serve as a form of protest. This study engages three case studies wherein black activist groups fought for the construction of slavery memorials in New York City, Philadelphia, and Richmond. These instances of commemorative activism are the focus of this study, wherein activists challenge existing commemorative culture by engaging alternative memorial practices. The underlying premise of this study is that these slavery memorials and the activists’ rhetoric resisted absent and/or distorted memories of slavery in their communities. This study analyzes the debates surrounding these memorials to demonstrate ways that the activists recirculated historical ideologies of black nationalism in their protest rhetoric. Specifically, the activists engaged themes of self-determination, black liberation, black power, and Pan-Africanism as they sought to challenge a commemorative culture rooted in white supremacy. This study accordingly situates commemorative activism as a contemporary strategy of resistance in the ongoing black freedom struggle. The black activists in this study fought to determine the commemorative landscape, liberate their ancestors’ memories from post-slavery containment, recover memories of black resistance from selective amnesia, and advance global solidarity surrounding memories of the slave trade and ongoing anti-black racism. This study also examines ways that the subsequent commemorations represent enduring repositories of black nationalist ideologies, challenging racist cultural attitudes embedded in the memorials’ environment. Through their form and function, these commemorations visualize the continued relevance of self-determination, black liberation, black power, and Pan-Africanism within post-slavery communities. These memorials ultimately reflect the beliefs of the activists who fought for their construction, revealing the radical potential of commemorative activism to challenge racist attitudes, structures, and landscapes.Item CARRY ON: AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE VETERANIST-COMMEMORATION OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR, 1917-1945(2015) Finkelstein, Allison Sarah; Giovacchini, Saverio; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The commemoration of the First World War deeply impacted American culture between 1917 and 1945, and incited a contentious debate about the best forms of military memorialization. All kinds of American women participated in commemorations alongside men, the government, veterans, and the military. Even more frequently, they took part in predominantly female memorialization projects, many of which aided veterans. Organizations composed of American women who believed they served or sacrificed during the First World War defined community service and veterans advocacy as forms of commemoration that they pursued in addition to, or sometimes instead of, more permanent forms of commemoration. In keeping with women's contributions to the war effort and their Progressive era service and reform activities, many American women pursued service-based commemorative projects to serve the nation in ways normally prohibited to them because of gender-based restrictions on their citizenship. This dissertation investigates how American women who served during the First World War commemorated the conflict during the interwar period and through the end of World War Two. It employs the term "veteranist-commemorations" to describe the service-based memorialization projects these women advocated, and designates these women as female "veteranist-commemorators." Rejecting traditional monuments, female veteranist-commemorators placed the plight of male and female veterans at the center of their memorialization efforts. Women's veteranist-commemorations did not solely address veterans of strictly defined military service, but included anyone who sacrificed during the war. Female veteranist-commemorators pioneered a new form of commemoration that revolutionized American memorial practices. Their actions forced Americans to re-think their commemorative practices and provided a new way to conceptualize the definition of a memorial. Through their outspoken support of veteranist-commemorations, these women promoted a type of commemoration that included intangible actions, human bodies, and ephemeral activities as crucial, defined parts of the memorialization process. In doing so, female veteranist-commemorators changed the course of American military commemoration, even though their memorialization methods did not gain as widespread acceptance as they hoped.Item Remembering Antietam: Commemoration and Preservation of a Civil War Battlefield(2005-03-11) Trail, Susan W.; Sies, Mary C.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Civil War memory has been the focus of a great deal of scholarship in recent years. A large percentage of this attention has been directed toward one battlefield--Gettysburg, which has come to represent remembrance of that conflict as a whole. This study of Antietam battlefield, however, reveals a very different commemorative experience than the one found at Gettysburg, suggesting a more nuanced Civil War memory at work in the United States than found by looking at Gettysburg alone. The Battle of Antietam remains, to this day, the single bloodiest day in American history. Yet, Antietam's location within the slaveholding, Union border state of Maryland resulted in a conflicted and ambivalent remembrance of that battle on the part of local inhabitants, the state, and national veterans' organizations. This ambivalence shaped the commemorative landscape at Antietam, and was reflected within it. The first objective of this study was to document the formation of the commemorative landscape at Antietam battlefield up to the 1960s, within the larger evolution of Civil War memory. A major factor in this landscape's development was the fact that, unlike other early battlefield parks, the federal government acquired very little land at Antietam. Paradoxically, this contributed greatly toward Antietam's successful preservation under present-day standards. The second objective was to define the local community's role in shaping the landscape at Antietam. Because it remained in private hands, community members exerted a great deal of influence over Antietam's commemorative landscape relative to other battlefields. In fact, elements within the Sharpsburg community consistently resisted or undermined the authority of those seeking to impose a commemorative overlay on Antietam battlefield. Situating Antietam battlefield within the larger discourse and politics of Civil War memory was the third objective. The complexity of remembrance at Antietam first manifested itself with the creation of Antietam National Cemetery, and the struggle between Maryland and the northern states over early memory of the battle. This contrasted with the clear message conveyed by Lincoln at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery, and set the stage for the different paths of remembrance taken by the two battlefields.