New Book by Humanities Action Lab Founder Shows How Public Memory Projects Can Combat Denial

Liz Ševčenko remembers growing up as a child of historians in Cambridge, Ma., with parents who were steeped in knowledge but remained silent about much of their own past, including her father, who rarely discussed his childhood in Warsaw during WWII. She noticed a similar dynamic among white liberals in her town: They deplored Southern racism but kept quiet about the kind in their own backyard. That pattern of denial, which Ševčenko has wrestled with her entire life, led her to what she calls a “cacophonous” way of doing history known as participatory public memory . . .