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Zusatztext "From her brilliant opening excursus of Pollock's 'Blue Poles' to her revelatory analysis of who remembers our contemporary wars, how, why, and to what aesthetic and political ends, Christine Sylvester's Curating and Re-curating the American Wars in Vietnam and Iraqis a stunning achievement. Lucidly written, powerfully argued, and beautifully illustrated, every insight of every chapter made me see these wars and their sites of memory as if for the first time. An exquisite 'tour de force' in every way." -- James E. Young, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Informationen zum Autor Christine Sylvester is Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, specializing in international relations, and professorial affiliate of the School of Global Studies at Gothenburg University. She has been the Swedish Research Council's Kerstin Hesselgren Professor for Sweden, recipient of an honorary degree in social sciences at Lund University, a Leverhulme fellow at SOAS, University of London, and a Humanities Institute fellow at the University of Connecticut. An International Studies Association eminent scholar of feminist theory and gender studies, she is also listed among Fifty Key Thinkers in International Relations. Her recent works related to this book include Art/Museums: International Relations Where We Least Expect It and War as Experience, as well as the edited books Masquerades of War and Experiencing War. Klappentext We have long saved--and curated--objects from wars to commemorate the war experience. These objects appear at national museums and memorials and in war novels and memoirs. Through them we institutionalize narratives and memories of national identity, power and purpose. This book asks whose vantage points on the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq are available, and where, for public consumption; it also considers whose war experiences are not represented, are minimized, or ignored in ways that advantage contemporary militarism. In looking at how professional curators, ordinary civilian "curators," and veteran and civilian writers exhibit the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq, Sylvester shows that war authority is widely dispersed and nonconsenual. By looking beyond official renditions of a war, scholars, policymakers, and other citizens are able to grasp war as a violent, rather than abstractly heroic, mode of politics. Zusammenfassung We have long saved--and curated--objects from wars to commemorate the war experience. These objects appear at national museums and memorials and are often mentioned in war novels and memoirs. Through them we institutionalize narratives and memories of national identity, as well as international power and purpose. While people interpret war in different ways, and there is no ultimate authority on the experiences of any war, curators of war objects make different choices about what to display or write about, none of which are entirely problematic, good, or accurate. This book asks whose vantage points on war are made available, and where, for public consumption; it also questions whose war experiences are not represented, are minimized, or ignored in ways that advantage contemporary militarism. Christine Sylvester looks at four sites of war memory-the National Museum of American History, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and selected novels and memoirs of the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq-to consider the way war knowledge is embedded in differing sites of memory and display. While the museum shows war aircraft and a laptop computer used by a journalist covering the American war in Iraq, visitors to the Vietnam Memorial or Arlington Cemetery find more prosaic and civilian items on view, such as baby pictures, slices of birthday cake, or even car keys. In addition, memoirs and novels of these wars tend to curate ghastly horrors of wars as experienced b...
