IN-PERSON London Heritages. Section A

Abstract

We are living in a time of rising ethnic nationalism across the globe – a reaction to demographic multiculturalism, the economic failures of neoliberalism, and new contexts for migration. While we can understand migration is part of the arc of human experience, migration also stands as a threat to contemporary ethnic nationalist projects. This paper explores how heritage and nostalgia work with and against each other on the terrain of collective memory in experiential cultural texts that document both national heritage and migration. Drawing on communication and cultural studies approaches to collective memory, the paper analyzes programs from two U.S.-based institutions: first, the California State Park System, with foci on Mexican heritage at Old Town San Diego State Historic Park, and Chinese immigrants at Angel Island State Park; and second, the Tenement Museum in New York City. Both offer expressions of heritage that include the experiences of migrants and their contributions to U.S. states and cities, but both are complicated by ethnic nationalism, both past and present. The California State Park system includes three parks that were established in the early twentieth century to support the idea that California was a white state; and the Tenement Museum must negotiate its story of 19th Century European immigrants with our current nostalgic political conjuncture that celebrates white immigrants and cultural assimilation. In conclusion, these will be brought into dialogue with European sites Maritime Greenwich (Brexit) and the Port of Marseille (National Rally) to extend the conversation.