Set in Stone? Monuments, Memory and Public History

This is an online course offered in the spring/summer and open to current high school students.

The twentieth-first century has seen a radical reevaluation of public spaces worldwide. What and who is found in public spaces? Whose memory and history are on display? Whose experiences are absent or erased in these histories? Societies around the world have begun to confront these and many other critical questions about the history of their nations and how the past is portrayed and memorialized in everyday life. Monuments erected to celebrate past figures and events have, in this context, received closer scrutiny than ever before. It has become clear that our understanding of the past is neither fixed nor holistic. It should be no surprise then that the permanence of statues and monuments in our public spaces is not set in stone.

This course is designed to provide you with a historical perspective of the centrality of monuments and memory to nation building. The course walks you through an analysis of recent actions to bring down statues/monuments. The course is divided in three parts allowing for the scrutinization of the cultural importance of statues in the crafting of national memories, their place in public spaces, and the debate over their permanence after a society adopts a critical review of the past. 

Prerequisite: none