Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique

Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique (Springer 2021) has been selected as the recipient of the Gherardi Davis Prize for a significant contribution to vexillological research. The book explores how flags convey symbolic information about a society's origins, culture, self-image, and values. It investigates the identification of "identity" based on culturally specific color codes and images, the transmission of values over time and space, and the relationship between law and flags in their visual representations. The book challenges the idea of sameness and explores the complex color-coded sign system of particular flags and their meanings.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 697 pages
Publication date: 26 May 2022
Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The Flag Research Center at the University of Texas School of Law is proud to announce that Professor Hugh Brady, Director and Senior Fellow, has been selected as the recipient of the 2021 Gherardi Davis Prize for a significant contribution to vexillological research. The prize is presented for a body of work that explores flags as meaningful transmitters of significant symbolic information concerning the origins, culture, self-image, and values of a society.

The Flag Research Center, founded in 1962, is dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the human need to create and use symbols to express political, cultural, and social ideals through flags and flag-related material culture.

The book, Flags, Color, and the Legal Narrative: Public Memory, Identity, and Critique (Springer 2021), delves into the identification of "identity" based on culturally specific color codes and images that conceal assumptions about members of a people comprising a nation or a people within a nation. Flags narrate constructions of belonging that become tethered to negotiations for power and resistance over time and throughout a people's history. Bennet (2005) defines identity as "the imagined sameness of a person or social group at all times and in all circumstances." While such likeness may be imagined or even perpetuated, the idea of sameness may be socially, politically, culturally, and historically contested to reveal competing pasts and presents.

Visually evocative and ideologically representative, flags are recognized symbols fusing color with meaning that prescribe a story of unity. Yet, through semiotic confrontation, they also reveal the complexities and contradictions within societies. The book explores how flags are used to construct and contest identities, how they are deployed in legal and political contexts, and how they shape public memory and discourse.

The selection of Professor Brady's work for the Gherardi Davis Prize is a testament to his groundbreaking contributions to the field of vexillology. His work sets a new standard for research in the study of flags, which is essential for understanding the role that flags play in shaping societies and cultures.

We would like to extend our congratulations to Professor Brady on this well-deserved recognition, and we look forward to seeing more of his groundbreaking work in the future.

Weight: 1128g
Dimension: 235 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783030328672
Edition number: 1st ed. 2021