Against the backdrop of two recent socio-political developmentsâthe shift from the Obama to the Trump administration and the surge in nationalist and populist sentiment that ushered in the current administrationâContested Commemoration in U. S. History presents eleven essays focused on practices of remembering contested events in Americaâs national history. This edited volume contains fresh interpretations of public history and collective memory that explore the evolving relationship between the U. S. and its past. The individual chapters investigate efforts to memorialize events or interrogate instances of historical sanitization at the expense of less partial representations that would include other perspectives. The primary source material and geography covered is extensive; contributors use historic sites and monuments photographs memoirs textbooks periodicals music and film to discuss the periods from colonial America through the Revolutionary and Civil Wars up until the Vietnam War Civil Rights movement and Cold War to explore how the commemoration of those eras resonates in the twenty-first century. Through a range of commemoration media and primary sources the authors illuminate themes and arguments that are indispensable to students scholars and practitioners interested in Public History and American Studies more broadly. . Language: English