Research Catalog

Title

Curating and re-curating the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq / Christine Sylvester.

Author

Sylvester, Christine, 1949-

Publication

• New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019]
• ©2019

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 222 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 25 cm

Summary

"Curating and Re-Curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq is about looking for war knowledge in unexpected places, such as war memorials, museum exhibitions, war cemeteries, and novels and memoirs. What one finds there can contradict the prescribed understandings of a particular war or, say, endorse the tendency to treat military personnel as heroes to be thanked. Especially when 'ordinary curators' display memories of their war experiences through the objects left at memorials and graves, or through the words they curate in war novels, the observer/reader gets a glimpse of actual lives lost, futures cut short and even some of the dull noncombat jobs military do in war zones. The main point is that war is a social institution and its experiences are plentiful and decentralized. Many scholars and other interested readers look for war in the decisions and movements of militaries and states, but this book's difference is that it focuses on how a variety of formal and informal war curators present the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq at a moment of American militarism"--

Subjects

• Memory > Social aspects
• Collective memory
• War and society
• Curatorship
• Memory > Social aspects > United States
• Collective memory > United States
• War and society > United States
• 1961-2011
• Curatorship > United States
• Iraq
• Social aspects
• United States
• War memorials > United States
• Military museums > United States
• War in literature
• War > Historiography
• Iraq War (2003-2011)
• Vietnam War (1961-1975)
• Vietnam War, 1961-1975 > Social aspects > United States
• Iraq War, 2003-2011 > Social aspects > United States

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-210) and index.

Contents

Introduction: Whose wars are on view? -- America's wars in Vietnam and Iraq -- Museums, memorials, and novels as sites of war knowledge -- The Smithsonian curates America's wars in Vietnam and Iraq -- Curating the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq at a memorial, cemetery, and a traveling tribute to veterans -- Bodies of war curate the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq -- Remembering, forgetting, curating, and re-curating war.

ISBN

• 9780190840556
• 0190840552

LCCN

2018058374

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries