The greatest democracy in history, a beacon of freedom, a selfless force of good in the world, these are all elements of American exceptionalism.  These are the ways Americans see their nation, its relationship to others, and its place in the world. But what happens when a sudden and unexpected catastrophe threatens this identity?  This…

In June 2004 a thirty-member multiracial task force known as the Philadelphia Coalition stood on the stage of the Neshoba County Coliseum before a crowd of a thousand people.  What was unique about the Philadelphia Coalition wasn’t that whites finally joined Neshoba County blacks in commemorating the lives and deaths of three young civil rights…

How can a wounded land become a source of healing, rejuvenation and renewal?  How can a former death strip become a lifeline connecting a painful past to the promise of the future?  Bates College Environmental Studies Professor Sonja Pieck explains how this is precisely what is happening with Germany’s Green Belt.  The Green Belt is…

During the Great Depression the capitalist system in the United States neared the point of collapse.  The stock market plunged to its lowest point in the century, the banking system was at risk of failing, and unemployment peaked at a quarter of the workforce.  Just as the country reached its economic nadir, Franklin Roosevelt‘s New…

Historian Georgiy Kasianov has authored, co-authored, and co-edited over twenty books on his native country of Ukraine.  I had the opportunity to speak with him in February 2024 about his book Memory Crash: The Politics of History in and around Ukraine 1980s-2010s.  Georgiy’s interest in the memory politics of Ukraine grew out of his own…

How can we work toward a greater degree of freedom and justice for all if our memories of the past are fundamentally different?  How can we pursue the general welfare and wellbeing of the people without common reference points?  This is the dilemma raised by the Make America Great Again slogan.  In Trump and the…

Under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. the 1960s civil rights movement achieved far reaching legal and political changes.  University of Southern California sociologist Hajar Yazdiha points out that not surprisingly a myriad of other disenfranchised and marginalized groups looked to the example and framed themselves as an extension of the work of King…

Despite the removal of scores of prominent monuments to the Confederacy the vast majority remain firmly in place.  For communities to make informed decisions about the future of these monuments they need to have a clear understanding of their past.  It was with this objective in mind that University of North Carolina at Charlotte historian…

With the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the US-Mexico War, Mexican Americans became the first non-white population to become US citizens.  University of Texas at San Antonio historian Omar Valerio-Jiménez reminds us that most Mexican American never enjoyed full citizenship rights.  In Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory and Citizenship, Valerio-Jiménez reveals how Mexican…

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,…