ABSTRACT
Traditionally, memorialized landscape studies find that such spaces seek to control a normalizing narrative of history. However, most studies lack an analysis of these sites as places of personal attachment and transformation from the visitor’s perspective. This chapter partially fills this gap by assessing three commemorative landscapes (the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, Oklahoma City, and Syracuse University) that enable an affective relationship between visitor and landscape. The inclusion of both visitors and the embodied absence of the remembered at these sites enables visitors to witness tragedy, thus transforming the sites as important places for visitors and the legacies of the remembered.
