Tarika Sankar, University of Maryland, College Park
Proposal Type: Panel
Seeking: Additional Presenters, General Feedback and Interest
Abstract: “A Room of Her Own: An Altar for My Mother” is an installation by Chicana author Sandra Cisneros located within the American Stories exhibit at the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. The altar is constructed in the style of an ofrenda, or offering, traditionally made on the día de los muertos, a Latin American holiday honoring deceased family members. Ofrendas are altars typically decorated with candles, flowers, photos of the deceased and some of their personal belongings. Though Cisneros’s mother, Elvira, never completed a high level of formal education and remained a housewife and mother all her life, she was intellectual and creative and enjoyed reading and visiting museums. Cisneros describes the altar as “a homenaje (a homage) to a self-educated woman…who never fulfilled her own sueños (dreams)” and intends that the altar remember her mother as “a dynamic, cre ative being…with her own life apart from her family and children.” In this installation, Cisneros challenges the typical dichotomy that shapes public memory of women, who are either remembered as trailblazing figures with public lives that enacted traditionally male roles, or as a mass of generally undifferentiated, unnamed housewives and mothers. “A Room of Her Own” makes the personal political by asserting that an ordinary woman is worth public commemoration as an independent, unique individual. The site’s impressive scale and location within a major national museum, juxtaposed with the highly personal, domestic materials that comprise the altar, make a powerful statement that women need not be public figures nor a collective entity of domestic women to deserve a place in the “American story.”
Seeking: I am seeking other panelists alongside whom I could present my paper on this public memory site created by Sandra Cisneros. I am looking for panelists who have done projects about/relating to women in public memory, particularly women of color, feminist critical theory and historiography, and public heritage sites dedicated to women in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, a region rich with public memory sites but lacking in those for women. I am hoping to participate in a panel that would discuss and address any/all of these issues.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to share contact information for other people the proposer should reach out to, please get in contact directly: Tarika Sankar,tarika.sankar[at]gmail.com
If you have general ideas or feedback to share please feel free to use the comments feature below.
All feedback, and offers of assistance, should be submitted by July 3, 2015.
Related Topics: Feminist critical theory, Memory, Museums/Exhibits