The Toppling of Þorfinnur: Vandalism as Dialogue and Direct Action
Figure 1. Head of Þorfinnur Karlsefni, 2018 Source: CBS Philly In the early hours of Oct 2nd, 2018, unidentified parties beheaded a one-hundred-year-old bronze sculpture of the Norse explorer Þorfinnur Karlsefni and hurled it into the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. Weighing thousands of pounds and standing more than seven feet tall, the statue of Þorfinnur was discovered the next day, completely submerged. The only evidence was a single crowbar located near the scene. Because the Philadelphia Eagles were scheduled to play the Minnesota Vikings that same week, some wondered if a zealous football fan had targeted the statue. But those well-versed in the history of the left-wing activist movement in Philadelphia inferred a deeper significance to the dramatic toppling of Þorfinnur. Since 2007, the white supremacist group the Keystone State Skinheads, or Keystone United, have held annual rallies in Fairmount Park on Leif Erikson Day (an obscure holiday […]
Continue ReadingSound, The Second-Line, and the Politics of Post-Katrina Memory
In January of 2006, thousands of displaced New Orleanians returned to their sunken city from a variety of locales. They came from as close as Baton Rouge and as far as Portland, Oregon. Following a strange diaspora, an extension of forced exile caused by inadequate and disorganized evacuation plans sponsored by the city following Hurricane Katrina, it was, for many, their first return to New Orleans following the storm[i]. This homecoming served as catalyst for what some considered to be the true beginning of the rebuilding effort: participation in a second line parade. The All-Star Second Line drew over eight thousand attendees, filling city blocks that had been more or less abandoned since the previous summer[ii]. For the sake of brevity, I won’t rehearse the long histories of the jazz funeral and the second line parade here. I am much less interested in developing an understanding of how they have […]
Continue Reading“Do Not Forget your Dying King”: Oliver Stone’s JFK and Popular Memory
John F. Kennedy Tribute Memorial, Fort-Worth, Texas “Do not forget your dying king,” District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) pleads to the jury at the end Oliver Stone’s JFK, reinforcing the Camelot aura long associated with President John F. Kennedy. Stone’s interpretation of Garrison’s efforts to convict a businessman with conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy remains as divisive now as when the film was released in 1991. Although the fierce debates over the historical accuracy of the film provide a fascinating glimpse into the power of movies to inform audiences of their history, JFK has rarely been interpreted as a memorial to President Kennedy. While Michael Hogan argued that books and thousands of statues, murals and roads deified Kennedy across the world[i], Oliver Stone’s JFK stands as perhaps the greatest reflection of how the post-Second World War generation of Americans remembered Kennedy, and offers a unique insight into how historical […]
Continue ReadingThe Exhibit That Bombed: The Enola Gay Controversy and Contested Memory
In March 1994, a heated argument erupted over a planned exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. The exhibit, scheduled to open in the spring of 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, would focus on the legacy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The centrepiece of the exhibit was supposed to be the restored Enola Gay, the airplane which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The exhibit generated an outcry amongst veterans, members of Congress, and others who felt that it depicted the Japanese as victims in World War II and questioned the morality behind the decision to drop the atomic bomb. After five rewrites and nearly a year of intense argument between the museum, veteran organisations, and Congress, the exhibit was cancelled and replaced with a drastically scaled down and less graphic exhibit. Unlike other instances […]
Continue ReadingWRAP for USSO – Serena Williams: Race, Representation and Feminism
Each year the University of Winchester invites undergraduate students to apply to participate in the Winchester Research Apprenticeship Programme (WRAP). An extra-curricular scheme, WRAP provides students with the opportunity to work with academic staff on ‘live’ research projects lasting up to four weeks. This reflective piece shares a case study WRAP project from our American Studies programme which aimed to contribute to the enhancement of an existing final year module, entitled: ‘African American History and Culture’.
Continue ReadingVisualising the Americas: Kent’s Third Annual Americanist Symposium, Keynote Addresses
What happens when you attempt to condense thousands of words, and years of research, into a single image? This was the challenge put to attendees of the Kent Americanists Symposium in June 2019 – to find and share the single image through which an entire wider discussion could be accessed.
Continue ReadingSymposium Panel Review: ‘Visualising the Americas: Kent’s Third Annual Americanist Symposium’, The University of Kent, Keynes College, Monday 3rd June, 2019.
From pre-colonised American Indian art to contemporary graffiti murals, the Americas have a rich and varied visual history. This one-day symposium, co-organised by three PhD candidates at the University of Kent – Ellie Armon Azoulay, Sarah Smeed, and Megan King – invited panellists and speakers to focus on one particular image or object as a catalyst for exploring larger themes, trends and figures.
Continue ReadingSocial Disorder: Publics, 1968, Amateur photography and Vivian Maier
This essay is the fourth in our series, ‘Literature, Visual Imagery and Material Culture in American Studies’. The series seeks to situate literature, visual imagery and material culture at the heart of American studies, and will explore the varying ways in which written and non-written sources have been created, politicised, exploited, and celebrated by the diverse peoples of the United States and beyond. You can find out more information here.
Continue Reading‘Let Us March On’: Lee Friedlander’s Civil Rights Photography and the Revolutionary Politics of Childhood Publics
This essay is the second in our series, ‘Literature, Visual Imagery and Material Culture in American Studies’. The series seeks to situate literature, visual imagery and material culture at the heart of American studies, and will explore the varying ways in which written and non-written sources have been created, politicised, exploited, and celebrated by the diverse peoples of the United States and beyond. You can find out more information here.
Continue ReadingMexican Migration in the Fiction of William Attaway
This essay is the first in our series, ‘Literature, Visual Imagery and Material Culture in American Studies’. The series seeks to situate literature, visual imagery and material culture at the heart of American studies, and will explore the varying ways in which written and non-written sources have been created, politicised, exploited, and celebrated by the diverse peoples of the United States and beyond. You can find out more information here.
Continue Reading