Episode 277 - Until You Know What You’re Looking For with Joy Giguere
Sometimes a chat with your local butcher can lead you down a very curious rabbit hole and that is exactly what happened to this week's returning guest, historian Joy Giguere, on this latest episode of the Ordinary Extraordinary Cemetery podcast. Some history is easy to miss until you know what you’re looking for. In the 1920s, a surge of organized intolerance swept through American towns. It showed up in parades, in politics, and in the way some communities marked their dead. This episode traces how that movement tried to make itself permanent, and what the grave markers left behind can still teach us today.
Joy has been looking at archival records, historical newspapers, and local histories to understand how extremism became normalized, and in some cases, has been engraved in stone.
This episode is heavy. It’s important. And it’s not ancient history.
Content note: This episode discusses historical racism and extremism in the 1920s. It is presented for educational purposes. We do not promote or glorify hate. This episode examines primary sources to understand how organized intolerance functioned in the 1920s.
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If you have come across grave markers such as we discuss in this episode and you would like to pass the information along to Joy for archival purposes, you can reach her at: jmg66@psu.edu
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Family Tales: A free printable, is now available! Gather 'round the table and dig into your roots! This interactive family history game is perfect for holidays, reunions, or just because. Ask, listen, and laugh your way through generations of stories and secrets. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UT_R56qEwNTIxIBrTy8KFyVmGnFOe7g8/view?usp=sharing
Professor
Dr. Joy M. Giguere is an associate professor of history at Penn State York where she teaches courses in US History, African American history, medical history, the history of technology, the history of death and mourning, and the Civil War era. Her research focuses on American commemorative culture, with particular emphasis on the rural cemetery movement of the 19th century and the public history and memory of the Civil War. She is the author of Characteristically American: Memorial Architecture, National Identity, and the Egyptian Revival (University of Tennessee Press, 2014) and Pleasure Grounds of Death: The Rural Cemetery in Nineteenth-Century America (forthcoming, University of Michigan Press).