Please join us for American Studies’ first event to kick off the new year – Monuments to the Past / Structures of t
he Present — on Thursday, September 24 @ 12:00-1:30pm. Panel features Kelly Dennis, Kenneth Foote, Lewis Gordon, Micki McElya, and Cathy Schlund-Vials.
By their nature, monuments collapse the conceptual divide between past and present. They are visual artworks, often of distant vintage, that construct particular sites of memory. In so doing, the figures they marbleize manage to display, in the most quotidian realms, how the social structures of earlier eras continue to permeate everyday life in the here and now.
As a field, American Studies has long focused on the politics of historical memory. To this end, UConn American Studies brings together scholars from a range of disciplinary perspectives whose work engages this issue, the relevance of which is clearer now than ever. They will weigh in on the stakes of the ongoing battles over Confederate and colonial monuments, and address what new sites of memory – monumental or not – we should endeavor to create.
Please contact Chris Vials for more information.