Later he claimed that electric and oil companies were at the root of WWII, and that the U.S. Naval warships, "the symbol of American power and the symbol of our dispossession.I decided they could not pay me enough" (Osorio 5). One presenter specifically wrote about turning down a job offer when he realized that his office would overlook a fleet of U.S. The authors/presenters equate this to Japan's almost total amnesia and denial about its own war atrocities (Fujitani, White, Yoneyama, 9, 23). military and its veterans constitute an imperialistic, oppressive force which has created and perpetuated its own mythology of liberation and heroism, insisting on a "pristine collective memory" of the war. In both the required preparatory readings for the conference, as well as the scholarly presentations, I found the overriding messages to include the following:ġ. In my thirty years as a professor in upper education, I have never witnessed nor participated in a more extremist, agenda-driven, revisionist conference, nearly devoid of rhetorical balance and historical context for the arguments presented. According to PowerLine, copies of the letter have also been delivered to members of the NEH council and NEH chair Jim Leach.Īs one of twenty-five American scholars chosen to participate in the recent National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Workshop, "History and Commemoration: Legacies of the Pacific War in WWII," at the University of Hawaii, East-West Center, I am writing to ask you to vote against approval of 2011 funding for future workshops until the NEH can account for the violation of its stated objective to foster "a mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups" (NEH Budget Request, 2011). Don Manzullo, Blake documents conference details and asks him to vote against NEH funding for future events. In a letter addressed directly to her Illinois congressman, Rep. Professor Blake is now reportedly calling on Congress to implement better oversight over the NEH. Professor Penelope Blake, a veteran professor of Humanities at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill., was one of 25 American scholars chosen to attend the workshop, but was reportedly disheartened to find the conference "driven by an overt political bias and a blatant anti-American agenda." Drawing directly upon interviews with many key combatants: museum administrators, community activists, curators, and scholars, Displays of Power authoritatively analyzes these episodes of America struggling to redefine itself in the late twentieth century.In July, the National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored a workshop on "History and Commemoration: The Legacies of the Pacific War in WWII" for college professors in Hawaii. Some of these exhibitions challenged standard narratives, while others were faulted for failing to do so. These include shows about ethnicity, slavery, Freud, the Old West, and the dropping of the atomic bomb by the Enola Gay. Dubin examines the most controversial exhibitions of the 1990s. Exhibition controversies are similar to "tagged genes": They are markers for critical conditions, but not the cause of them. But today, pressure groups frequently mobilize either to force their own perspective upon museum walls, or to prevent opposing opinions from being expressed.
In the past, museums glorified wealth and validated authority. The Postmodern Exhibition: Cut on the Bias, or Is Enola Gay a Verb? Battle Royal: The Final Mission of the Enola Gay - 7. A Matter of Perspective: Revisionist History and The West as America - 6.
War of the Words: Psychoanalysis and Its Discontents - 5. "The Troubles" in the New World: The Uncivil War over Gaelic Gotham - 4. Crossing 125th Street: Harlem on My Mind Revisited - 3. Introduction: Museums as Contested Sites - 2.
New York : New York University Press, c1999. Displays of power : memory and amnesia in the American museum / Steven C.