2nd Installment of Expose of the Museum of the Confederacy (MOC) published/ URL corrected Update: See link to all 4-installments

The 2nd installment of the expose of the MOC can be read at this URL:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/443/443_museum_confederacy_2_sebesta_guest_share.html


The 1st installment can be read at this URL:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/441/441_museum_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.html

I also recommend this web page on the MOC:

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2009/08/cleansing-history-confederacy-museum-and-trip-advisor-retouch-the-past.html

I am working on the 3rd installment and hope to have it finished this weekend. A lot of issues come up in the review of the MOC which needed critical and analytical treatment. I have been reading books like "Theorizing the Museum" edited by Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe and "Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe." I must have bought a dozen books or more.

As I was going over the 3rd installment I realized that there were issues beyond explicit and banal nationalism, but other issues on how museums are used to promote nationalism and how the MOC functions as a giant reliquary. Scholars contacted were supportive of my project and willing to make reading recommendations.

Even when my 3rd installment is done it will still need some review and editorial input by a colleague of mine. Then with revisions I will be submitting it to http://www.blackcommenator.com/. The 4th installment I think will be easy to finish up. Of course I never know until I start writing a piece, whether some aspect previously overlooked will be discovered requiring reading further analysis.

UPDATE:

This is the link to the blog posting with links to all four installments;

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/11/moc.html

Another critic of the Museum of the Confederacy.

Eric Muller wrote up his visit to the Museum of the Confederacy (MOC) and discusses the difficulty of deciding what his creepiest moment was while visiting.

http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2009/08/cleansing-history-confederacy-museum-and-trip-advisor-retouch-the-past.html

In talking to Mr. Muller over the phone he told me that the MOC sent him a letter which they labeled confidential so he couldn't reveal what they said to him. This is a pernicious practice of labeling letters confidential so that that contents are covered up.

Eric Muller is the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Development University of North Carolina School of Law.

I have requested that Mr. Muller share the essay with others who might be interested.

Update:

All four installments of the article on the MOC have been published and the free guest links are in this blog posting:

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/11/moc.html

"Civil War News" positively reviews "The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader."

A very positive review of "The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader" by Edward H. Bonekemper III in Civil War News.

http://www.civilwarnews.com/reviews/2011br/febmar/confedreader-sebesta-b021105.html

www.blackcommentator.com publishes my article on the Museum of the Confederacy. UPDATE: See link for all 4-installments

http://www.blackcommentator.com/ has published the first part of a four part article on the Museum of the Confederacy (MOC) I am writing. You can read online without a subscription at:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/441/441_museum_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.html

This first installment introduces the series and shows how the MOC has reverted to a Lost Cause shrine to the Confederacy headed up by a CEO who is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Though I show in the article it can be questioned if the MOC every really changed that much, but instead had two very differing faces, one for the public, one private.

Of particular interest to African American scholars would be the speech in which African American scholarship and opinion is held up to ridicule in a speech at the MOC right after the "Before Freedom Came" exhibit. In fact in this speech, the exhibit "Before Freedom Came" is praised an an antidote to the "Carol Moseley-Braun syndrome." This speech was by prominent neo-Confederate Ludwell Johnson III at the MOC upon being made a MOC fellow.

I am very pleased to be published on http://www.blackcommentator.com/ since it will allow me to become known by a new audience of scholars and intellectuals. Much of my work is helping out people with research and they don't know that I can help them if they don't know that I exist and what resources I have.

I have been monitoring the MOC for a very, very long time and have a very exhaustive collection of their materials. I just haven't had time to write up the material. Two other book projects and other writing projects have been delayed while I wrote up what I knew about the MOC.

It also turned out once I started writing up the MOC there really was a lot of material that needed to be brought to public light. So it became a very lengthy manuscript, that needed to be broken into installments. I didn't write up everything about the MOC since the manuscript was already over 26,000 words and I needed to get published and a writing project needs to have a finish. I think the four installments do give the reader a good understanding of what the MOC is and what it is doing.

However, like many writing projects, it has been an interesting intellectual journey. I have been reading about museums and their theoretical analyses, in particular nationalism and the museum.

UPDATES:

All four installments as they are published will be at this blog posting:

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/11/moc.html