Americans are memorializing events and people in new ways, according to Carole Blair, associate professor of American studies at UC Davis. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial marked the start of a new trend in how individuals remember, says Blair, who has spent nearly a decade studying the political and cultural significance of the rhetoric of memorial art and architecture. Other later works such as the Civil Rights Memorial, the Astronauts Memorial and the Memorial AIDS Quilt also illustrate the trend. "Today's monuments all use the names of the dead as a principal symbol," Blair says. The memorials become eloquent "voices" of public declaration and advocacy, according to the professor who is teaching and studying this year at the UC Davis Washington Center in Washington, D.C.
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Susanne Rockwell, Web and new media editor, (530) 752-2542, sgrockwell@ucdavis.edu