Author: Mike Wallace
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781566394451
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
This is a book about why history matters. It shows how popularized historical images and narratives deeply influence Americans' understanding of their collective past. A leading public historian, Mike Wallace observes that we are a people who think of ourselves as having shed the past but also avid tourists who are on a "heritage binge," flocking by the thousands to Ellis Island, Colonial Williamsburg, or the Vietnam Memorial.Wallace probes into the trivialization of history that pervades American culture as well as the struggles over public memory that provoke stormy controversy. The recent imbroglio surrounding the National Air and Space Museum's proposed Enola Gay exhibit was reported as centering on why the U.S. government decided to use the A-Bomb against Japan. Wallace scrutinizes the actual plans for the exhibit and investigates the ways in which the controversy drew in historians, veterans, the media, and the general public.Whether his subject is multimillion dollar theme parks owned by powerful corporations, urban museums, or television docudramas, Mike Wallace shows how their depictions of history are shaped by assumptions about which pasts are worth saving, whose stories are worth telling, what gets left out, and who is authorized to make the decisions. Author note: Mike Wallace is Professor of History at John Jay College, City University of New York. He is the co-author, with Edwin G. Burrows, of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory
Author: Mike Wallace
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781566394451
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
This is a book about why history matters. It shows how popularized historical images and narratives deeply influence Americans' understanding of their collective past. A leading public historian, Mike Wallace observes that we are a people who think of ourselves as having shed the past but also avid tourists who are on a "heritage binge," flocking by the thousands to Ellis Island, Colonial Williamsburg, or the Vietnam Memorial.Wallace probes into the trivialization of history that pervades American culture as well as the struggles over public memory that provoke stormy controversy. The recent imbroglio surrounding the National Air and Space Museum's proposed Enola Gay exhibit was reported as centering on why the U.S. government decided to use the A-Bomb against Japan. Wallace scrutinizes the actual plans for the exhibit and investigates the ways in which the controversy drew in historians, veterans, the media, and the general public.Whether his subject is multimillion dollar theme parks owned by powerful corporations, urban museums, or television docudramas, Mike Wallace shows how their depictions of history are shaped by assumptions about which pasts are worth saving, whose stories are worth telling, what gets left out, and who is authorized to make the decisions. Author note: Mike Wallace is Professor of History at John Jay College, City University of New York. He is the co-author, with Edwin G. Burrows, of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781566394451
Category : Antiques & Collectibles
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
This is a book about why history matters. It shows how popularized historical images and narratives deeply influence Americans' understanding of their collective past. A leading public historian, Mike Wallace observes that we are a people who think of ourselves as having shed the past but also avid tourists who are on a "heritage binge," flocking by the thousands to Ellis Island, Colonial Williamsburg, or the Vietnam Memorial.Wallace probes into the trivialization of history that pervades American culture as well as the struggles over public memory that provoke stormy controversy. The recent imbroglio surrounding the National Air and Space Museum's proposed Enola Gay exhibit was reported as centering on why the U.S. government decided to use the A-Bomb against Japan. Wallace scrutinizes the actual plans for the exhibit and investigates the ways in which the controversy drew in historians, veterans, the media, and the general public.Whether his subject is multimillion dollar theme parks owned by powerful corporations, urban museums, or television docudramas, Mike Wallace shows how their depictions of history are shaped by assumptions about which pasts are worth saving, whose stories are worth telling, what gets left out, and who is authorized to make the decisions. Author note: Mike Wallace is Professor of History at John Jay College, City University of New York. He is the co-author, with Edwin G. Burrows, of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for History.
Gotham
Author: Edwin G. Burrows
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199729107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1412
Book Description
To European explorers, it was Eden, a paradise of waist-high grasses, towering stands of walnut, maple, chestnut, and oak, and forests that teemed with bears, wolves, raccoons, beavers, otters, and foxes. Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe. In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant's despotic regime, Indian wars, slave resistance and revolt, the Revolutionary War and the defeat of Washington's army on Brooklyn Heights, the destructive seven years of British occupation, New York as the nation's first capital, the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Erie Canal and the coming of the railroads, the growth of the city as a port and financial center, the infamous draft riots of the Civil War, the great flood of immigrants, the rise of mass entertainment such as vaudeville and Coney Island, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the birth of the skyscraper. Here too is a cast of thousands--the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Clement Moore, who saved Greenwich Village from the city's street-grid plan; Herman Melville, who painted disillusioned portraits of city life; and Walt Whitman, who happily celebrated that same life. We meet the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Boss Tweed and his nemesis, cartoonist Thomas Nast; Emma Goldman and Nellie Bly; Jacob Riis and Horace Greeley; police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt; Colonel Waring and his "white angels" (who revolutionized the sanitation department); millionaires John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, and William Randolph Hearst; and hundreds more who left their mark on this great city. The events and people who crowd these pages guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America, and a book that will mesmerize everyone interested in the peaks and valleys of American life as found in the greatest city on earth. Gotham is a dazzling read, a fast-paced, brilliant narrative that carries the reader along as it threads hundreds of stories into one great blockbuster of a book.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199729107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1412
Book Description
To European explorers, it was Eden, a paradise of waist-high grasses, towering stands of walnut, maple, chestnut, and oak, and forests that teemed with bears, wolves, raccoons, beavers, otters, and foxes. Today, it is the site of Broadway and Wall Street, the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, and the home of millions of people, who have come from every corner of the nation and the globe. In Gotham, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace have produced a monumental work of history, one that ranges from the Indian tribes that settled in and around the island of Manna-hata, to the consolidation of the five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. It is an epic narrative, a story as vast and as varied as the city it chronicles, and it underscores that the history of New York is the story of our nation. Readers will relive the tumultuous early years of New Amsterdam under the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant's despotic regime, Indian wars, slave resistance and revolt, the Revolutionary War and the defeat of Washington's army on Brooklyn Heights, the destructive seven years of British occupation, New York as the nation's first capital, the duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton, the Erie Canal and the coming of the railroads, the growth of the city as a port and financial center, the infamous draft riots of the Civil War, the great flood of immigrants, the rise of mass entertainment such as vaudeville and Coney Island, the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and the birth of the skyscraper. Here too is a cast of thousands--the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Clement Moore, who saved Greenwich Village from the city's street-grid plan; Herman Melville, who painted disillusioned portraits of city life; and Walt Whitman, who happily celebrated that same life. We meet the rebel Jacob Leisler and the reformer Joanna Bethune; Boss Tweed and his nemesis, cartoonist Thomas Nast; Emma Goldman and Nellie Bly; Jacob Riis and Horace Greeley; police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt; Colonel Waring and his "white angels" (who revolutionized the sanitation department); millionaires John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont, and William Randolph Hearst; and hundreds more who left their mark on this great city. The events and people who crowd these pages guarantee that this is no mere local history. It is in fact a portrait of the heart and soul of America, and a book that will mesmerize everyone interested in the peaks and valleys of American life as found in the greatest city on earth. Gotham is a dazzling read, a fast-paced, brilliant narrative that carries the reader along as it threads hundreds of stories into one great blockbuster of a book.
What's Happened to the Humanities?
Author: Alvin B. Kernan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400864526
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
This volume of specially commissioned original essays presents the thoughts of some of the most distinguished commentators within the American academy on the fundamental changes that have taken place in the humanities in the latter part of the twentieth century. In the transformation of American higher education from the university to the "demoversity," the humanities have become a less and less important part of education, a matter established by a statistical appendix and elaborated on in several of the essays. The individual essays offer close observations into how the humanities have been affected by declining academic status, by demographic shifts, by reductions in financial support, and by changing communication technology. They also explore the effect of these forces on books, libraries, and the phenomenology of reading in the age of images. When basic conditions change, theory follows, and several essays trace the appearance and effect of new relativistic epistemologies in the humanities. Social institutions change as well in such circumstances, and the volume concludes with studies of the new social arrangements that have developed in the humanities in recent years: the attack on professionalism and the effort to transform the humanities into the social conscience of academia and even of the nation as a whole. Cause and effect? Who can say? What the essays make clear, however, is that as the humanities have become less significant in American higher education, they have also been the scene of unusually energetic pedagogical, social, and intellectual changes. The contributors to the volume are David Bromwich, John D'Arms, Denis Donoghue, Carla Hesse, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lynn Hunt, Frank Kermode, Louis Menand, Francis Oakley, Christopher Ricks, and Margery Sabin. Included is a substantial introduction by Alvin Kernan and an appendix of tables and figures showing baccalaureate and doctoral degrees over the years in various types of schools. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400864526
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Book Description
This volume of specially commissioned original essays presents the thoughts of some of the most distinguished commentators within the American academy on the fundamental changes that have taken place in the humanities in the latter part of the twentieth century. In the transformation of American higher education from the university to the "demoversity," the humanities have become a less and less important part of education, a matter established by a statistical appendix and elaborated on in several of the essays. The individual essays offer close observations into how the humanities have been affected by declining academic status, by demographic shifts, by reductions in financial support, and by changing communication technology. They also explore the effect of these forces on books, libraries, and the phenomenology of reading in the age of images. When basic conditions change, theory follows, and several essays trace the appearance and effect of new relativistic epistemologies in the humanities. Social institutions change as well in such circumstances, and the volume concludes with studies of the new social arrangements that have developed in the humanities in recent years: the attack on professionalism and the effort to transform the humanities into the social conscience of academia and even of the nation as a whole. Cause and effect? Who can say? What the essays make clear, however, is that as the humanities have become less significant in American higher education, they have also been the scene of unusually energetic pedagogical, social, and intellectual changes. The contributors to the volume are David Bromwich, John D'Arms, Denis Donoghue, Carla Hesse, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Lynn Hunt, Frank Kermode, Louis Menand, Francis Oakley, Christopher Ricks, and Margery Sabin. Included is a substantial introduction by Alvin Kernan and an appendix of tables and figures showing baccalaureate and doctoral degrees over the years in various types of schools. Originally published in 1997. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Writing America
Author: Sarah Robbins
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 9780807745274
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
This practical volume addresses teachers' most immediate and constant wish to engage students in meaningful learning. Written by teachers affiliated with the National Writing Project, this engrossing collection presents examples of classroom-based community studies projects that showcase teachers' reflective practice in action, models for professional growth, collaborative staff development programs, and much more. It features: replicable projects emphasizing approaches to doing research and writing that are both engaging for students and academically rigorous; comprehensive curricular models for building energetic, public connections between the classroom and the larger community; chapters that connect the standards-based classroom work to teacher professional development and to emerging trends in American Studies and literacy instruction.
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 9780807745274
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
This practical volume addresses teachers' most immediate and constant wish to engage students in meaningful learning. Written by teachers affiliated with the National Writing Project, this engrossing collection presents examples of classroom-based community studies projects that showcase teachers' reflective practice in action, models for professional growth, collaborative staff development programs, and much more. It features: replicable projects emphasizing approaches to doing research and writing that are both engaging for students and academically rigorous; comprehensive curricular models for building energetic, public connections between the classroom and the larger community; chapters that connect the standards-based classroom work to teacher professional development and to emerging trends in American Studies and literacy instruction.
The Collective Memory Reader
Author: Jeffrey K. Olick
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195337417
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 517
Book Description
In the last few decades, there are few concepts that have rivaled "collective memory" for attention in the humanities and social sciences. Indeed, use of the term has extended far beyond scholarship to the realm of politics and journalism, where it has appeared in speeches at the centers of power and on the front pages of the world's leading newspapers. Seen by scholars in numerous fields as a hallmark characteristic of our age, an idea crucial for understanding our present social, political, and cultural conditions, collective memory now guides inquiries into diverse, though connected, phenomena. Nevertheless, there remains a great deal of confusion about the meaning, origin, and implication of the term and the field of inquiry it underwrites. The Collective Memory Reader presents, organizes, and evaluates past work and contemporary contributions on collective memory. Combining seminal texts, hard-to-find classics, previously untranslated references, and contemporary landmarks, it will serve as a key reference in the field. In addition to a thorough introduction, which outlines a useful past for contemporary memory studies, The Collective Memory Reader includes five sections-Precursors and Classics; History, Memory, and Identity; Power, Politics, and Contestation; Media and Modes of Transmission; Memory, Justice, and the Contemporary Epoch-comprising ninety-one texts. A short editorial essay introduces each of the sections, while brief capsules frame each of the selected texts. An indispensable guide, The Collective Memory Reader is at once a definitive entry point into the field for students and an essential resource for scholars.
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195337417
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 517
Book Description
In the last few decades, there are few concepts that have rivaled "collective memory" for attention in the humanities and social sciences. Indeed, use of the term has extended far beyond scholarship to the realm of politics and journalism, where it has appeared in speeches at the centers of power and on the front pages of the world's leading newspapers. Seen by scholars in numerous fields as a hallmark characteristic of our age, an idea crucial for understanding our present social, political, and cultural conditions, collective memory now guides inquiries into diverse, though connected, phenomena. Nevertheless, there remains a great deal of confusion about the meaning, origin, and implication of the term and the field of inquiry it underwrites. The Collective Memory Reader presents, organizes, and evaluates past work and contemporary contributions on collective memory. Combining seminal texts, hard-to-find classics, previously untranslated references, and contemporary landmarks, it will serve as a key reference in the field. In addition to a thorough introduction, which outlines a useful past for contemporary memory studies, The Collective Memory Reader includes five sections-Precursors and Classics; History, Memory, and Identity; Power, Politics, and Contestation; Media and Modes of Transmission; Memory, Justice, and the Contemporary Epoch-comprising ninety-one texts. A short editorial essay introduces each of the sections, while brief capsules frame each of the selected texts. An indispensable guide, The Collective Memory Reader is at once a definitive entry point into the field for students and an essential resource for scholars.
Teaching Public History
Author: Julia Brock
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469673312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
The field of public history is growing as college and university history departments seek to recruit and retain students by emphasizing how studying the past can sharpen their skills and broaden their career options. But faculty have often sought to increase course offerings without knowing exactly what the teaching and practice of public history entails. Public historians have debated the meanings of public history since the 1970s, but as more students take public history courses and more scholars are tasked with teaching these classes, the lack of pedagogical literature specific to the field has been challenging. This book addresses the need for a practical guide to teaching public history now. In eleven essays by esteemed public historians teaching at colleges and universities across the United States, this volume details class meetings, student interactions, field trips, group projects, grading, and the larger aims of a course. Each essay contains wisdom and experience for how to teach a public history course and why such classes are vital for our students and communities. Contributors include: Thomas Cauvin, Kristen Baldwin Deathridge, Jennifer Dickey, Torren Gatson, Abigail Gautreau, Romeo Guzman, Jim McGrath, Patricia Mooney-Melvin, Lindsey Passenger Wieck, and Rebecca S. Wingo.
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469673312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
The field of public history is growing as college and university history departments seek to recruit and retain students by emphasizing how studying the past can sharpen their skills and broaden their career options. But faculty have often sought to increase course offerings without knowing exactly what the teaching and practice of public history entails. Public historians have debated the meanings of public history since the 1970s, but as more students take public history courses and more scholars are tasked with teaching these classes, the lack of pedagogical literature specific to the field has been challenging. This book addresses the need for a practical guide to teaching public history now. In eleven essays by esteemed public historians teaching at colleges and universities across the United States, this volume details class meetings, student interactions, field trips, group projects, grading, and the larger aims of a course. Each essay contains wisdom and experience for how to teach a public history course and why such classes are vital for our students and communities. Contributors include: Thomas Cauvin, Kristen Baldwin Deathridge, Jennifer Dickey, Torren Gatson, Abigail Gautreau, Romeo Guzman, Jim McGrath, Patricia Mooney-Melvin, Lindsey Passenger Wieck, and Rebecca S. Wingo.
"Too Good a Town"
Author: Edward G. Agran
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1610754301
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
For fifty years, William Allen White, first as a reporter and later as the long-time editor of the Emporia Gazette, wrote of his small town and its Mid-American values. By tailoring his writing to the emerging urban middle class of the early twentieth century, he won his “gospel of Emporia” a nationwide audience and left a lasting impact on he way America defines itself. Investigating White’s life and his extensive writings, Edward Gale Agran explores the dynamic thought of one of America’s best-read and most-respected social commentators. Agran shows clearly how White honed his style and transformed the myth of conquering the western frontier into what became the twentieth-century ideal of community building. Once a confidante of and advisor to Theodore Roosevelt, White addressed, and reflected in his work, all the great social and political oscillations of his time—urbanization and industrialism, populism, and progressivism, isolationism internationalism, Prohibition, and New Deal reform. Again and again, he asked the question “What’s the matter?” about his times and townspeople, then found the middle ground. With great care and discernment, Agran gathers the man strains of White’s messages, demonstrating one writer’s pivotal contribution to our idea of what it means to be an American.
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 1610754301
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
For fifty years, William Allen White, first as a reporter and later as the long-time editor of the Emporia Gazette, wrote of his small town and its Mid-American values. By tailoring his writing to the emerging urban middle class of the early twentieth century, he won his “gospel of Emporia” a nationwide audience and left a lasting impact on he way America defines itself. Investigating White’s life and his extensive writings, Edward Gale Agran explores the dynamic thought of one of America’s best-read and most-respected social commentators. Agran shows clearly how White honed his style and transformed the myth of conquering the western frontier into what became the twentieth-century ideal of community building. Once a confidante of and advisor to Theodore Roosevelt, White addressed, and reflected in his work, all the great social and political oscillations of his time—urbanization and industrialism, populism, and progressivism, isolationism internationalism, Prohibition, and New Deal reform. Again and again, he asked the question “What’s the matter?” about his times and townspeople, then found the middle ground. With great care and discernment, Agran gathers the man strains of White’s messages, demonstrating one writer’s pivotal contribution to our idea of what it means to be an American.
Preserving Western History
Author: Andrew Gulliford
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826333100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428
Book Description
The first collection of essays on public history in the American West.
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826333100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 428
Book Description
The first collection of essays on public history in the American West.
The Enola Gay and the Smithsonian Institution
Author: Charles T. O’Reilly
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786484004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
On August 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, which ushered on the end of World War II. For the 50th anniversary of this major event in world history, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution produced an exhibit. A controversy erupted, however, over the exhibit's historical authenticity. Veterans, for example, complained that the museum displayed a misrepresented version of history. After concisely covering the background of the Enola Gay and its mission, this study focuses on the controversy surrounding the museum exhibit. Issues covered include casualty figures, ethical questions, and political correctness, among others. The viewpoints of such groups as museum personnel, exhibit organizers, veterans, and historians are covered. Appendices offer information on content analysis of the National Air and Space Museum exhibit script, non-museum materials that were intended to complement the exhibit script, and the importance of full disclosure in research.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786484004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
On August 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, which ushered on the end of World War II. For the 50th anniversary of this major event in world history, the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution produced an exhibit. A controversy erupted, however, over the exhibit's historical authenticity. Veterans, for example, complained that the museum displayed a misrepresented version of history. After concisely covering the background of the Enola Gay and its mission, this study focuses on the controversy surrounding the museum exhibit. Issues covered include casualty figures, ethical questions, and political correctness, among others. The viewpoints of such groups as museum personnel, exhibit organizers, veterans, and historians are covered. Appendices offer information on content analysis of the National Air and Space Museum exhibit script, non-museum materials that were intended to complement the exhibit script, and the importance of full disclosure in research.
Heritage, Memory and the Politics of Identity
Author: Yvonne Whelan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317122267
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
The study of the cultural landscape has gained momentum in recent years, revealing new insights to geographers, archaeologists, sociologists and architects. The cultural landscape is often viewed as an emblematic site and thus a key player in the heritage process. This book explores the overlapping and often complex relationships between identity, memory, heritage and the cultural landscape. It provides an overview of new approaches in the study of these relationships, combined with evidence from Ireland, England, Scotland and the United States. These case studies demonstrate the significance of the past in the contemporary construction of identity narratives and draw attention to the powerful role of monuments and parades as sites of cultural heritage. The focus then shifts to the way in which heritage has become politicized for various ends, demonstrating the changing perception of particular heritage sites and buildings, and the role that this has played in constructing and reconstructing particular identities.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317122267
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
The study of the cultural landscape has gained momentum in recent years, revealing new insights to geographers, archaeologists, sociologists and architects. The cultural landscape is often viewed as an emblematic site and thus a key player in the heritage process. This book explores the overlapping and often complex relationships between identity, memory, heritage and the cultural landscape. It provides an overview of new approaches in the study of these relationships, combined with evidence from Ireland, England, Scotland and the United States. These case studies demonstrate the significance of the past in the contemporary construction of identity narratives and draw attention to the powerful role of monuments and parades as sites of cultural heritage. The focus then shifts to the way in which heritage has become politicized for various ends, demonstrating the changing perception of particular heritage sites and buildings, and the role that this has played in constructing and reconstructing particular identities.