Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places(Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies)

This volume inscribes an innovative domain of inquiry, bringing museum and heritage studies to bear on questions of transitional justice, memory and post-conflict reconciliation. As practitioners, artists, curators, activists and academics, the contributors explore the challenges of bearing witness to past conflicts.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations List of Maps Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Witnesses to Witnessing; E.Lehrer  & C.E.Milton PART I: BEARING WITNESS BETWEEN MUSEUMS AND COMMUNITIES 'We were so far away': Exhibiting Inuit Oral Histories of Residential Schools; H.Igloliorte The Past is a Dangerous Place: the Museum as a Safe Haven; V.Szekeres Teaching Tolerance through Objects of Hatred: The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia as 'Counter-Museum'; M.E.Patterson Politics of the Past: Remembering the Rwandan Genocide at the Kigali Memorial Center; A.Sodaro PART II: VISUALIZING THE PAST Living Historically through Photographs in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Reflections on Kliptown Museum, Soweto; D.Newbury Showing and Telling: Photography Exhibitions in Israeli Discourses of Dissent; T.Katriel Visualizing Apartheid: Re-framing Truth and Reconciliation through Contemporary South African Art; E.Mosely PART III: MATERIALITY AND MEMORIAL CHALLENGES Points of No Return: Cultural Heritage and Counter-Memory in Post-Yugoslavia; A.Herscher Defacing Memory: (Un)tying Peru's Memory Knots; C.E.Milton (Mis)representations of the Jewish Past in Poland's Memoryscapes: Nationalism, Religion and Political Economies of Commemoration; S.Kapralski Afterward: The Turn to Pedagogy: a Needed Conversation on the Practice of Curating Difficult Knowledge; R.I.Simon Index

About the Author :
ANDREW HERSCHER Teacher, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, USA HEATHER IGLOLIORTE Inuk Curator and art historian from the Nunatsiavut Territory of Labrador, Canada SLAWOMIR KAPRALSKI Faculty member, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland TAMAR KATRIEL Author and Researcher into the Occupied Palestinian Territories ERIN MOSELY Ph.D. Candidate in African Studies and History at Harvard University, USA DARREN NEWBURY Professor of Photography, Birmingham City University, UK ROGER SIMON Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto, Canada AMY SODARO Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the New School for Social Research, USA VIV SZEKERES Graduate in History and Education, London, UK.

Review :
'How to put difficult knowledge on public display is one of the biggest challenges for curators. It is also of major importance in contemporary civic life: what should be said and shown in museums, and how? This raises fascinating and complex intellectual and political questions. This book exposes and tackles these brilliantly through excellent discussion of a wide range of provocative cases. It should be read by anybody concerned with the dilemmas of curating difficult knowledge.' - Sharon Macdonald, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, UK