Preservation and National Memory

 A person's memory is one of the most important functions of the brain, and one of the most integral functions of history.  Memory actively engages a person with the past in a ways that books or exhibits may not.  People have strong emotions attached to people, places, and points in time stemming from their own personal database.  This weeks readings focused on the various aspects of memory in the historical context.

One of the common themes of the books and article was how does memory affect perception, recollection, and understanding of the past?  This was interesting because more often than not your recollection of the past can be completely different from the reality of it.  Historians interpret the past instead of remembering it, which makes a significant difference when doing public history. This dynamic between memory and history explained in different arguments. In Memorial Mania, she explores the relationship between people and memorials, she argues that monuments and memorials in many ways represent the emotions of past event in the same way a memory would. A monument can almost become a substitute for an actual memory, because of the emotions it can evoke from people that see it.  It is also personal in sense that everyone may have a different perspective from viewing it.  Similarly Public History and the Study of Memory, differentiates  a personal perception from the consensus view of the past.  Glassberg explored some interesting question as to how the consensus perceptions are established?  Those views could extremely contrast a personal perception of it. How can you incorporate both into public history? The connection between memory and history is most important to public historians, because of their obligation to engage the community. The way people remember events and how historians interpret them have to compromise.