RSVP for A Paradox of Memory: Memorial Union & UW-Madison's War Dead

media release: You are invited to attend this unusual lecture-luncheon: Visiting Scholar, Eliana Chavkin (U. of MN), discusses her research: A PARADOX OF MEMORY: Memorial Union & UW-Madison’s War Dead

Thursday, June 27, 2024, 11:30 A.M. – 12:30 P.M., Memorial Student Union, 800 Langdon Street, Room TBD

Free and open to the public; space is limited. Boxed lunches provided with R.S.V.P. by June 24

https://go.wisc.edu/3405e2

Hosted in partnership with the George L. Mosse Program in History

Chavkin’s dissertation project tells the story of America’s World War I memorials, which proliferated across the country in the years between the First and Second World Wars. She says, “In 1928, the University of Wisconsin-Madison dedicated Memorial Union to its students who had fallen in World War I and in the earlier wars of the United States. This in and itself was not unusual: memorial unions were dedicated in the 1920s on campuses across the country. What was unusual, however, was der Rathskeller, the German beer hall in the center of the building. Most of the men honored on the walls of Memorial Union had died fighting Germany. How exactly did the University square these two conflicted messages?” While in Madison, Chavkin will review oral history interviews with Porter Butts (longtime director of the Wisconsin Union) in the UW Archives to reveal the origins of the union idea and how that idea was made reality. She will also review student and local newspaper coverage of the event in the Wisconsin Historical Society Library’s holdings to see how the public responded to the Union’s dedication.