A
10:002 or 10:003 Unit ~ History, Memory, and Advocacy
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Formal Assignments
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In this 010:003 unit, students will explore debates over commemoration of the past through a case study of one particularly explosive controversy – that of the Smithsonian’s aborted plan to commemorate the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan near the end of World War II. The unit asks students to evaluate U.S. foreign policy at the end of this conflict, attempts to document it fifty years later, and debates of “historical revisionism” in general. In this unit, students will first be introduced to some of the recent scholarship on the decision to drop the bomb. After this context is established, students will turn their attention to the sequence of events that led to the cancellation of the 50th anniversary exhibit at the National Museum of Air and Space on the grounds that it was critical of US foreign policy. Students will deliver a speech in which they will outline their opinions about the role of public history in American democracy. Finally, students will examine the public debate that followed the cancellation of the exhibit. After reading a number of newspaper editorials on this debate, students will draft their own editorial. This unit gets to the heart of many of the concepts rhetoric coursework is meant to impart. In addition to introducing students to advocacy, this unit emphasizes audience and historical/cultural/political context. While the A-bomb controversy draws on students’ (hopefully!) already-held knowledge of a major event in American history, these texts disrupt the idea of dispassionate, “objective” knowledge. One advantage of this unit is that it draws on readings that are all available in one text: Hiroshima’s Shadow:Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, edited by Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz (1998 by Stony Creek, Connecticut: Pamphleteers Press) I have taught this unit before (in the fall of 2000) and found students to be very engaged with the material. Student evaluations described it as “refreshing”, “fun” and “interesting.” |