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OverviewIn the past few decades, thousands of new memorials to executed witches, victims of terrorism, and dead astronauts, along with those that pay tribute to civil rights, organ donors, and the end of Communism have dotted the American landscape. Equally ubiquitous, though until now less the subject of serious inquiry, are temporary memorials: spontaneous offerings of flowers and candles that materialize at sites of tragic and traumatic death. In Memorial Mania, Erika Doss argues that these memorials underscore our obsession with issues of memory and history, and the urgent desire to express—and claim—those issues in visibly public contexts. Doss shows how this desire to memorialize the past disposes itself to individual anniversaries and personal grievances, to stories of tragedy and trauma, and to the social and political agendas of diverse numbers of Americans. By offering a framework for understanding these sites, Doss engages the larger issues behind our culture of commemoration. Driven by heated struggles over identity and the politics of representation, Memorial Mania is a testament to the fevered pitch of public feelings in America today. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Erika DossPublisher: The University of Chicago Press Imprint: University of Chicago Press Dimensions: Width: 16.90cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 23.10cm Weight: 0.690kg ISBN: 9780226159416ISBN 10: 0226159418 Pages: 480 Publication Date: 14 May 2012 Audience: General/trade , General Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Manufactured on demand We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier. Table of ContentsReviewsMemorial Mania is an important and much-needed book, one that complements the existing literature on memorials with richness and originality, and also forges new territory. Doss's excellent and highly polemical critique of its resurgence furthers one of American studies' most noteworthy traditions. --Michelle Bogart, Stony Brook University<br><br>--Michelle Bogart, Stony Brook University I believe Memorial Mania will appeal to a wide audience - both inside and outside academia - given the quality of the writing and the presentation of the material.... It is a sign of the quality of Erika Doss's work that I am left wanting more. (Anthropology Works) What makes Erika Doss's book so valuable is that it reveals the range, complexity, and depth of emotion produced by memorial acts. (American Quarterly) Author InformationErika Doss is professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame and the author of Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism, also published by the University of Chicago Press, among other titles. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |