Document Type
Thesis
Publication Date
12-13-2024
Disciplines
Cultural History | History | Political History | United States History
Advisor
Shannon Smith and Greg Schroeder
Abstract
On the morning of September 11th, 2001, four United Airlines flights took off on the East Coast bound for California. Each plane carried passengers, crew, and...undetected hijackers. With four hijacked planes, two crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, one crashed into the Pentagon, and the other crashed into a rural field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. September 11th, 2001, has become known as 9/11 — the day many of us would never forget. Those old enough to remember seeing the loss of buildings and bodies unfold live on television on that day created individual memories of 9/11. But what about the memory of 9/11 for those born after 9/11? How do future generations understand the tragedy of that day? To produce the memory of 9/11 for future generations, three national memorials were planned to be constructed at each site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks: Ground Zero (Lower Manhattan, New York), the Pentagon (Arlington, Virginia), and a rural field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Questions over ownership of the memorial’s design were at stake: What will get built at these two sites of memory? Who gets a say in what elements and symbols are emphasized? What does the memory of 9/11 mean at Ground Zero and Shanksville and how are they different? Ultimately these questions were shaped by the division in cultural power: official (governmental, state apparatus) vs vernacular (ordinary citizens, and most prominently...the families of 9/11 victims). In this way, my analysis offers a new perspective into the memory of 9/11 from two dichotomies at the spatial (Ground Zero vs Shanksville) and cultural level (vernacular vs official). Through my analysis, my paper contextualizes these dichotomies of memorialization and the role that ideas of national identity and security, space and ownership, and political power played in projecting a blend of official and vernacular 9/11 memories.
Recommended Citation
Mundt, Emily, "The Politics of 9/11 Memory at Ground Zero and Shanksville: How Two National Memorials were Debated, Negotiated, and Created" (2024). History Student Work. 6.
https://digitalcommons.csbsju.edu/history_students/6