Edward Linenthal

Edward T. Linenthal is Professor Emeritus of History at Indiana University. A leading scholar of memorials, battlefields, and other sacred, public spaces, he has written extensively on the challenges of memorial processes at various national sites. He received his A.B. from Western Michigan University (1969), his M.Div from the Pacific School of Religion (1973), and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1979).

Linenthal served for several years as a Public Scholar for the National Park Service (NPS). Combined with his academic career and numerous publications, his expertise in the field of public history has given him a rich and varied perspective on both the inevitable challenges and the opportunities for meaningful education and healing at sites of traumatic memory.

FEATURED WORKS & CORE COMPETENCIES

Scholarship on the complexities of memorialization processes

Interpretation of public history sites at the intersection of memory, religion, and society

Author of numerous books chronicling the creation of public memorials, including:

Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields

Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum

The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory

Co-editor of books documenting contested history and vernacular responses to traumatic loss, including:

History Wars: the Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past

The Landscapes of 9/11: A Photographer’s Journey

As a historian/biographer of memorial processes, Linenthal brings a wealth of experience on how to navigate the complexities of commemoration and how to deal with and overcome unexpected impediments to public memorial initiatives.  He was a long-time consultant to NPS on interpretation of controversial historic sites and a Visiting Scholar in NPS’s Civic Engagement and Public History program.

A member of the federal advisory commission for the Flight 93 National Memorial, he also co-directed a Gilder Lehrman Teacher Seminar on "9/11 and American Memory." Linenthal, who has served as editor-in-chief of The Journal of American History, has traveled numerous times to Norway to join colleagues in developing memorial responses to the 2011 terrorist attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utøya.