Listen to an audio recording of this program.

From Wounded Knee to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and from the Upper Big Branch mine disaster to the Trail of Tears, Marked, Unmarked, Remembered presents photographs of significant sites from United States history, posing unsettling questions about the contested memory of traumatic episodes from the nation’s past.

Focusing especially on landscapes related to African American, Native American, and labor history, the book reveals new vistas of officially commemorated sites, sites that are neglected or obscured, and sites that serve as a gathering place for active rituals of organized memory.

These powerful photographs by award-winning photojournalist Andrew Lichtenstein are interspersed with short essays by some of the leading historians of the United States. The book is introduced with substantive meditations on meaning and landscape by Alex Lichtenstein, editor of the American Historical Review, and Edward T. Linenthal, former editor of the Journal of American History. Individually, these images convey American history in new and sometimes startling ways. Taken as a whole, the volume amounts to a starkly visual reckoning with the challenges of commemorating a violent and conflictual history of subjugation and resistance that we forget at our peril.

After their talk, the author and photographer will sign copies of the book. Marked, Unmarked, Remembered: A Geography of American Memory will be available for purchase.

Download a PDF flyer for this program to post and distribute, and explore a Quick Guide about photography and photojournalism in the Newberry collection.

Alex Lichtenstein, current editor of the American Historical Review, is a professor of history at Indiana University. The author of many articles on labor, prison, and civil rights history, his previous work on photography is Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid.

Andrew Lichtenstein is a photographer, journalist, and educator from Brooklyn, New York. His first book, Never Coming Home, was published in 2007.

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Excuse our dust!!!

Beginning January 2018 the Newberry is undertaking renovation of much of the ground floor. Ruggles Hall will not be affected, but please check this link frequently for the latest conditions - which exterior doors are open or closed, where to find an accessible entrance, which restrooms are available, etc.