Boston Athenæum

September 29, 2016 at the Boston Athenæum. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island became the quintessential monuments of the immigrant experience during the Cold War. Public historians used both sites to promote the United States as a “nation of immigrants,” utilizing the latest sociological theories of immigration assimilation to construct a narrative that placed European immigrants front and center. While both monuments stressed individuals’ rights and American exceptionalism, they took different approaches. “Immigration on Display” will delineate those approaches and examine how these monuments worked to create a narrative that unified the nation under a common shared experience.