Kirk Denton

The talk will begin with an overview of some of the key points of his book, "Exhibiting the Past", with attention to museum types and their particular political functions in the context of a postsocialist single-party state. The discussion will then shift to post-martial law Taiwan, the focus of his new book, and will look in particular at the National Museum of Taiwan History and its construction of a multicultural history for Taiwan. In juxtaposing exhibitionary culture in the PRC and Taiwan, the talk will highlight the differences, but also the similarities, in the politics of historical memory in these two places, which share cultural traditions but which have very different political systems.