Memorials Matter: Emotion, Environment, and Public Memory at American Historical Sites by Jennifer K. Ladino (review)

How does the natural and built environment influence the emotional experiences of visitors to sites of public memory? This question is at the heart of Memorials Matter by Jennifer K. Ladino, an associate professor of English at the University of Idaho. During thirteen seasons as a ranger at Grand Teton National Park, Ladino developed an interest in understanding how the physical environment acts upon visitors in powerful, unruly, and unpredictable ways. Her latest work proposes a helpful means for theorizing and articulating the feelings, emotions, and subconscious affects shaped by the environment at memorial sites, especially those related to traumatic and contested histories.

In Memorials Matter, Ladino examines the affective atmosphere created at seven memorials across the American West—from Hawaii to Colorado, Arizona to South Dakota—all of which are managed by the National Park Service (NPS). The selection of a diverse variety of NPS-managed western memorial sites allows for Ladino to explore the intriguing and complex relationship between national identity, public memory, and the American West’s iconic landscapes. The environment, she convincingly argues, has a significant and largely as-yet unacknowledged influence on the visitor experience at memorial sites, at times working to enhance, challenge, echo, or disrupt the emotions of a place. It would be wise for scholars of public memory to give this more attention.

Through a seamless blend of affect theory and material ecocriticism, Ladino establishes a theoretical framework for exploring the affects created by both human and nonhuman forces at each memorial. She defines affect as “a corporeal ‘impression’ that is more immediate, more visceral, and less explicitly cognitive” (p. 12). In this reading, affect is, in essence, physiological—a gut reaction or subconscious response that often, but not always, finds eventual expression in emotions or feelings. Drawing from material ecocriticism’s emphasis on the agency of physical matter, Ladino concludes that matter—the built and natural environment—also possesses “affective agency,” or the “capacity to generate felt impressions on other bodies” (p. 16). How these impressions are shaped at each memorial, often unintentionally and in tension with the NPS’s interpretive goals at a given site, is the core focus of her work.

Each chapter of Memorials Matter mixes theoretical exposition with literary analysis and reflective first-person narrative. Ladino’s lucid prose, particularly when narrating her own experiences and affects, holds the reader’s attention throughout, bringing clarity and accessibility to complex ideas. Especially intriguing are her discussions of “affective dissonance”—“the unsettled state in which we experience more than one feeling at the same time”—and of feeling like an “affect alien,” or “a person whose emotions are out of synch with what’s expected” (pp. 22, 24). At Coronado National Memorial, for instance, Ladino finds the looming presence of Border Patrol creates a sense of anxiety, at odds with the memorial’s emphasis on cultural exchange. The tropical paradise surrounding the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument creates a similar dissonance for Ladino, seeming to clash with both the monument’s more militaristic exhibits and the somber contemplation intended by the USS Arizona memorial.

Yet emotions and affect are, of course, highly subjective, influenced by both personal predispositions and a range of uncontrollable factors (weather, traveling companions, travel fatigue, etc.). Thus perhaps the greatest strength of Memorials Matter is Ladino’s keen awareness of her own positionality, reiterated in every chapter, and her subsequent efforts to incorporate a broader and more diverse array of voices and experiences. In evaluating each memorial Ladino includes excerpts from a variety of literary texts and firsthand accounts, often by people of color whose views help to complicate or challenge the dominant affects at many sites. She also considers the “implied tourist” targeted by NPS brochures, waysides, and programming, and attempts to uncover a broader tourist perspective through the analysis of visitor surveys.

Curiously, Ladino arranges...