Americans are living in an age of frenzied memorial making, argues University of Texas at Dallas art and cultural historian Erika Doss.  We saturate the public landscape with memorials to every conceivable cause, aggrieved group, or unsung hero.  What do memorials tell us about Americans and America today? In Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America,…

Staring down at the distorted and barely recognizable remains of her fourteen-year-old son is Mamie Till supported by her financé Gene Mobley who gazes directly at the camera.  This September 1955 black and white photo of Emmett Till and his family was named by Time Magazine in 2016 as one of the 100 most influential…

Beginning in 1880s Africans Americans became the targets of a lynching craze that claimed thousands of lives.  In Beyond the Rope: The Impact of Lyching on Black Culture and Memory, University of Oklahoma historian Karlos K. Hill argues that narratives are key to understanding not just what drove the lynching craze but how African Americans…

Cambodia has often been cast as a broken, amnesiac nation, unable to confront the memory of the horrors it experienced during the Khmer Rouge era.  How did these assumptions justify the establishment of transitional justice mechanisms such as the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)?  In what ways were the therapeutic claims of…

The system of enforced prostitution by the Japanese military went unpunished and unexamined for decades after the Asia-Pacific War.  International recognition only began in 1991 when Korean survivor Kim Hak-sun spoke out in graphic detail about her dark past.  In Systemic Silencing: Activism, Memory, and Sexual Violence in Indonesia, University of Melbourne historian Kate McGregor…

In May 1980 the city of Gwangju in South Korea erupted in violence.  Shocked by the brutal suppression of student protests against the threat of renewed dictatorship, the citizens of Gwangju, South Korea’s six largest city, seized weapons, formed their own army, and liberated the city from government control. The euphoria created by this victory…

In 1964 the military seized power in Brazil, overthrowing the democratically elected government of João Goulart.  The military ruled Brazil for the next 21 years relying on increasingly repressive measures to retain its grip on power.  The most infamous decree, Institutional Act Number 5, known simply as AI-5, empowered the government to imprison and torture…

The wars that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia stretched across the 1990s unleashing a level of destruction and human devastation not seen in Europe since World War II.  The repercussions of the conflict were profound and can still be felt today.  Over 130,000 died and another 4 million fled their homes.  The predominantly Muslim…

The partition of British India was a two step process.  First in 1947, Pakistan and India became independent nations.  For over the next twenty years, however, a very uneasy relationship existed between the two culturally and linguistically very different wings of Pakistan—East and West Pakistan.  In 1971 war broke out leading to the creation of…

What made the Punjab particularly susceptible to violence at the time of partition was that it was one of the most militarized regions of British India.  The Punjab had historically contributed a disportionate percentage of the soldiers of British India.  Well over half of all recruits from British India during World War I and World…