This site is a hypertextual extension to the project on Alan
Trachtenberg's
The Incorporation of America by the American Studies program at
the
University of Virginia. The overall purpose of the project is two-fold.
It explores the meaning and significance of what Trachtenberg reveals
to be
a creation of the public sphere in America's Gilded Age. I have taken
a
look at public art, specifically, confederate monuments created in this
time
period, as an entryway into a discussion of this emerging public
sphere.
My hope is that the project reveals some of the characteristics and
functions
of the public sphere in both the post - Civil War South and in general.
I also hope that it reveals the public sphere to be more than the world
of
parks and politics, but an ever-changing medium by which Americans seek
to
define themselves and their country.
This project also compliments Trachtenberg's discussion of the World's
Fair as an event which sought to define America in the post - Civil War
era. I wish to show that while the World's Fair sought to appeal to,
portray, and thereby create a nation unified through an amalgam of
culture, science, industry, and progress, an equally public and equally
sizable though localized movement in the South bore witness to the
differences that divided the country before the war and the differences
and division that continue as its legacy. In short, this widespread
movement of local Confederate monuments was a formidable opponent for
the World's Fair in the struggle to define America through the public
sphere.
Site Created and Maintained by Elizabeth Paul
January 18, 1999
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