Sacred Relics
Regular price
€45.99
18th-century england
A01=Teresa Barnett
abraham lincoln
americana
antiques
association items
Author_Teresa Barnett
battlefield remains
Category=GLZ
Category=NHK
collectibles
confederacy
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
founding fathers
george washingtons hair
historical figures
historiography
keepsakes
material possessions
museum collections
plymouth rock
popular engagement
preservation
private collection
prominent people
relic-collecting tradition
reliquaries
souvenirs
united states history
us civil war
Product details
- ISBN 9780226059600
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 19 Sep 2013
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A piece of Plymouth Rock. A lock of George Washington's hair. Wood from the cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born. Various bits and pieces of the past - often called "association items" - may appear to be eccentric odds and ends, but they are valued because of their connections to prominent people and events in American history. Kept in museum collections large and small across the United States, such objects are the touchstones of our popular engagement with history. In Sacred Relics, Teresa Barnett explores the history of private collections of items like these, illuminating how Americans view the past. She traces the relic-collecting tradition back to eighteenth-century England, then on to articles belonging to the founding fathers and through the mass collecting of artifacts that followed the Civil War. Ultimately, Barnett shows how we can trace our own historical collecting from the nineteenth century's assemblages of the material possessions of great men and women.
Teresa Barnett is director of the UCLA Center for Oral History Research, where she has worked for twenty years. She lives in Los Angeles.
