Presented at 2014 War Memories Conference, Rennes France. Archival research of the Anna Coleman Ladd Red Cross File located in the Smithsonian Institute's Art of the American Archives in Washington D.C. Submitted for publication review.

1. Annotating Time and Place:
Mapping Collective and Cultural Memory of the Great War
Presented by: Susan Rauch | susan.rauch@ttu.edu
PhD Student, English Technical Communication and Rhetoric
Conference: War Memories | Rennes, France | June 2014
The Anna Coleman Ladd Papers:
American Red Cross Studio for
Portrait-Masks File,
1914-1925 (Smithsonian Archives
of American Art)
| Lubbock, Texas

2. Research Questions
1. Are the Ladd Papers File representative of
collective social and cultural memory?
2. Through annotation of the file, can we collectively
extract and construct alternative narratives of
Ladd’s memory during the Great War
3. Can annotated artifacts, such as those found in
the Ladd Papers File, accurately represent social
and cultural memory, the “floating gap” between
memory and history?

3. Background: Anna Coleman Ladd’s
Red Cross Studio for Portrait Masks (Paris, France)
Prosthetics, Process, and Photos:
 False versions of wartime
recovery, material mementos for
the public?
 To creatively make an
argument?
 Testimony to subject
photographed?

4. Places of Memory:
Social Frameworks (Practices)
 Placeholders
 Collective vs. Cultural Memory
 Mneumonic Communities
 Collective Remembrance:
Where artifacts are collectively stored

5. Places of Memory:
Reconstructing the Past
Monuments and
Commemorative Sites
Collective identities could be rooted in the
archived memory of historical “truths.
~Blouin and Rosenberg

6. Monuments and
Commemorative Sites

7. Places of Memory:
Reconstructing the Past
Printed Materials

8. Printed Materials: News Clippings

10. Places of Memory:
Reconstructing the Past
Notes & Letters of
Correspondence

11. Annotations: (see
handout)
Only notebook’/journal
in archive that details
war.
References “Journey to
Zone around Verdun”
Until the Armistice 11
Nov 1918, the Verdun
Sector remained an
active battle zone.
Notebook

12. Annotations:
Entries unclear: Payments to or
from the names on the lists?
Notes a type of plaster, which could
mean payment for materials.
A Miss Wood’s name appears
more than once in the notes.
The bottom page also notes a
Munitions-Worker bronze.
Notebook & Correspondence

13. Correspondence
Ministry of War Republic of France
Deputy Secretary of State (Health Service)
Office of the Assistant Secretary of State
November 15, 1918
ORDER OF MISSION
--------------------------------------------------------------
Ms. Ladd, the American Red Cross,
owner of Work Permit No. 3821, is invited
with the consent of Mr. General Commander
of the Army of the North and Northeast, a
visit to Nancy [crease/illegible text] place
various mutilated the face may receive
special masks she directs the production.
The military authorities are invited to give
him all necessary facilities for carrying on his
journey, as was the outward and return.

14. Sketches by Ms. Ladd
Notebook: Sketches

15. Notes & Writings: Guest Book
Always hold the
memory of a
woman; dreaming in
the candlelight. By
day, sad faces, find
their comfort in her
touch, a harassed
world does ____ to
her gifts of love. And
finds strength in her
passionate
patriotisms. But- I
hold the memory of
a woman ____ in
the candlelight.
Diana P. Blair

16. Places of Memory:
Reconstructing the Past
Poetry

17. Poetry: Unauthored

18. Poetry: Unauthored
FOR WHOM I FORGET (Pour qui j'oublie)
On your heart I'm putting my weary heart
For so much grief oppresses me
I would like to sleep in your arms
In the softness of your caress.
I would like to sleep for a long time
And dream that the night is short
To appease my sweet torment
It is necessary that you take away my dream.
May your kisses come very slowly
To brush away my closed eyelids,
Do not talk, our mournful hearts
Agonizing over the same things.
We have the same worry
We have had the same dream
I know that you also weep
As your face is only a lie.
Be silent, be silent – do not tell me
Our love is a madness
Simply open your arms to me
So that I love you – and that I forget.

19. Additional Miscellaneous File
Artifacts

20. Final Thoughts and Theories:
Why “her” story is so elusive

21. QUESTIONS?

22. References Consulted
• Boyarin, J. (1994). Remapping memory: The politics of timespace, 1.
• Feo, K. (2007). Invisibility: Memory, Masks and Masculinities in the Great War. Journal of
Design History, 20(1), 17-27.
• Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory. University of Chicago Press.
• Hewer, C. J., & Roberts, R. (2012). History, culture and cognition: Towards a dynamic
model of social memory. Culture & Psychology, 18(2), 167-183.
• Rowlinson, M., Booth, C., Clark, P., Delahaye, A., & Procter, S. (2010). Social
remembering and organizational memory. Organization Studies, 31(1), 69-87.
• Sherman, D. J. (1994). Art, commerce, and the production of memory in France after
World War I. Commemorations: The politics of national identity, 186-211.
• Smithsonian Institution. Collection of the Anna Coleman Ladd Papers,1881-1950.
Retrieved from http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/anna-coleman-ladd-papers-
10600/more#section_series_7
• Kansteiner, W. (2002). Finding meaning in memory: A methodological critique of collective
memory studies. History and theory, 41(2), 179-197.Blouin Jr, F. X., & Rosenberg, W. G.
(2011). Processing the past: contesting authority in history and the archives. Oxford
University Press.
• Winter, J. (1998). Sites of memory, sites of mourning: The Great War in European cultural
history (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press.