Reckoning: Art and Monuments in Europe and the Americas

Catalog description

In this course, we will examine how commemorative traditions in Europe and the Americas have been invented and contested since the nineteenth century. We will discuss why certain events in the past rather than others have been the object of commemoration; what these creations stood for originally; how their meanings have changed over the time; and the lessons, if any, these commemorative practices continue to teach us today. We also will examine the ways in which Europeans and Americans have protested, torn down old monuments, erected new ones, and turned to a wide variety of artistic forms to call into question stories about empire, fascism, communism, westward expansion and settler colonialism, enslavement, as well as military victory and loss. To answer these questions, we will focus on the history and theory of public monuments and sculpture, painting, commemorative sites, museum exhibitions, and film. The lecture topics will range from the Napoleonic Wars and Occupation, the American Civil War, German Unifications, National Socialism and Fascism, Holocaust Memorials and Museums, the Disappeared in Argentina, Spanish Civil War and Post-Francoism, Refugees and Migrants in the Mediterranean, as well as works by individual artists who have reflected on these historical events. Taught in English.