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Full-Text Articles in Museum Studies
Making Memory, Making Meaning: Memorial Museums And The Participatory Audience, Hillary Kirkham
Making Memory, Making Meaning: Memorial Museums And The Participatory Audience, Hillary Kirkham
CGU Theses & Dissertations
This dissertation explores the relationship between memorial museums and visitors, reexamining the process of remembering traumatic events in United States history. My work examines this meaning-making dynamic in case studies of four memorial museums: The 9/11 Memorial Museum, The Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration, Manzanar National Historic Site, and Carthage Jail. By combining textual analysis of museums with data from visitor-produced materials such as guestbooks, letters, periodicals, and Instagram posts, I examine memorial museums' aims and rhetorical strategies while analyzing visitors' roles and contributions, illustrating how both guest and site collaborate to create memory and meaning. Drawing and …