Remembering and Forgetting Wars: Memorialization of the Global War on Terrorism in the US

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.378

Keywords:

War, Memorial, Cultural Memory, Military, Remembrance, Commemoration, Forgetting, Soldiers, Terrorism

Abstract

This paper offers an insight into the efforts made by war memorial organizations to remember those who served in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and how the war is manifested in US cultural memory. To exemplify the ways the war is already being remembered by smaller communities and what upcoming plans to memorialize the GWOT in a nation-wide context look like, several memorials are analyzed according to the emotions they elicit and how these influence the memorials’ narratives. The article is concluded by examining which elements of the memorials’ war narratives are highlighted, and which are omitted.

Author Biography

  • Kristina Seefeldt, University of Freiburg

    Kristina Seefeldt holds an MA degree in British and North American Cultural Studies from the University of Freiburg, Germany. Currently, she is a doctoral student in English and American Studies at the University of Freiburg. Her PhD project is focused on rescue heroes in the US Armed Forces and their depiction in movies. She analyzes films such as Forest Gump (1994) by Robert Zemeckis, Hacksaw Ridge (2016) by Mel Gibson or The Last Full Measure (2019) by Todd Robinson. She is a research assistant and school project coordinator at the Research Center 948 "Heroes – Heroizations –Heroisms" in Freiburg focusing on “Heroes in Education. School Settings and Transfer of Academic Knowledge”. Her research interests include heroes and heroisms, masculinity studies, military and war studies, as well as film and audience studies.

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Published

2023-08-31

Issue

Vol. 24 No. 1 (2023)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Kristina Seefeldt

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.

How to Cite

“Remembering and Forgetting Wars: Memorialization of the Global War on Terrorism in the US”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, Aug. 2023, pp. 125-46, https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.378.

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