Heartbreak Written on the Landscape: Public Memorials and Remembering the Attack on the World Trade Center

Monuments facilitate remembering or prevent forgetting, but who or what is being commemorated - thereby shaping public memory - is often a matter of contestation. Monuments and memorials are among the earliest media capable of bearing witness, communicating across generations an idea, value, person, event, or deed that is symbolized and venerated. Memorials are associated with places of mourning and institutionalized remembrance.