Memo to Museum Director Proposing an Exhibit that Captures what “Going Nuclear” meant to Americans in the 1940s. More Details Below

Objective: To practice thinking and writing critically about how the atomic bombs are remembered and shape culture.

You are an American Studies trained consultant hired by a museum looking to develop an exhibit to mark the anniversary of the Manhattan Project and capture what “going nuclear” meant to Americans in the 1940s. Please propose an interpretive framework for doing so (i.e., an argument for your exhibit), one that situates the Manhattan Project in what you take to be its most relevant
cultural and historical context[s].

The Task: Write a 3-4-page memo to the museum director that addresses the following questions and explains your reasons for
the decisions you have made about the exhibit:
How will you frame the exhibit, knowing what you know about the decision-making process in the 1940s and the consequent
debates and other discourse surrounding the bombs? What, in other words, is the argument of the proposed exhibit?
What is the title of your exhibit?
Why did you select the supporting documents you included? What argument do they make? What did you leave out?

Editorial Guidelines: (refer to these guidelines for all future assignments)
Your memo must use a 12-point serif font (e.g., Times New Roman). It must be double-spaced, with one-inch margins all around and no extra space between paragraphs. Number the pages of your work in the lower right-hand corner of each page.
Your memo does NOT need to be a certain number of paragraphs. (Free yourself from the constraints of the five-paragraph
essay format from high school!) Let the case you want to make about the exhibit and the bombs’ place in history and cultural
memory guide your memo’s structure.
Cite the book, article, or document using the “notes and bibliography” format of Chicago style.Cite the book, article, or document using the “notes and bibliography” format of Chicago style.

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