“How to put difficult knowledge on public display is one of the biggest

challenges for curators. It is also of major importance in contemporary

civic life: what should be said and shown in museums, and how? This raises

curating difficult
fascinating and complex intellectual and political questions. This book
exposes and tackles these brilliantly through excellent discussion of a
wide range of provocative cases. It should be read by anybody concerned
with the dilemmas of curating difficult knowledge.”
— Sharon Macdonald, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of
Manchester, UK knowledge

edited by erica lehrer, cynthia e. milton, and monica eileen patterson

Much of the literature on post-violent contexts addresses problems of
transitional justice, memory studies, and post-conflict reconciliation. This
volume inscribes an innovative domain of inquiry, situating itself creatively violent pasts in public places
amidst these discussions but building upon the literatures of museum and
heritage studies. The contributors (themselves practitioners, artists,
curators, activists, and academics) draw from a broad range of geographical
and theoretical material, and explore new ways of bearing witness vis-à-vis
curatorial practice, heritage work, and memorializing the past, to examine

curating difficult knowledge

the challenges and limitations of such endeavors.
Erica Lehrer is Assistant Professor in History and Anthropology–Sociology
at Concordia University in Montreal, where she also holds the Canada
Research chair in Post-Conflict Studies. She is author of Revisiting
Jewish Poland: Tourism, Memory, Reconciliation (2012), and has under-
taken experimental curatorial work on Jewish heritage and memory in
contemporary Poland.
Cynthia E. Milton is Canada Research Chair in Latin American History
and Associate Professor in the Département d’histoire at the Université
de Montréal, Canada. She is author of The Many Meanings of Poverty:
Colonialism, Social Compacts, and Assistance in Eighteenth-Century
Ecuador (2007) and co-editor of The Art of Truth-Telling about
Authoritarian Rule (2005). She is working on an edited book titled The
Arts of Truth-Telling in Post-Shining Path Peru.
Monica Eileen Patterson is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the History
Departments at Concordia University and the Université de Montréal,
Canada. Her teaching and research interests include colonial and
postcolonial southern Africa, anthropology and history, childhood,
violence, memory, and public scholarship. She is a co-editor of edited by
Anthrohistory: Unsettling Knowledge, Questioning Discipline (2011).
erica lehrer, cynthia e. milton,
Printed in Great Britain

ISBN 978-0-230-29672-5
90101
and monica eileen patterson
Cover illustration: Butcher Boys by Jane 9 780230 296725
Alexander (1985–6). Photograph by Eileen

palgrave macmillan memory studies

Costa.

www.palgrave.com

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