HIST 252 | Monuments and Memory in US History

In recent years, the status of monuments and the ways the United States remembers its history in public have come under intense public scrutiny. Statues have been toppled and debates have erupted over the way history is taught and remembered in this country. At the same time, new and more inclusive histories have flourished that challenge whitewashed versions of American history. In this course, we explore how major events and topics in the broad sweep of U.S. history have been remembered, represented and contested, and what these reveal about who "we" are as a nation and as individuals with different identities. These may include: Indigenous histories and settler colonialism; the American Revolution; slavery; the Civil War, other wars and battlefields; LGBTQ histories; the histories of different ethnic communities; massacre sites and sites of gun violence; local, environmental and urban history; the Civil Rights Movement and other social and political movements. We will consider how power and narrative function in creating and curating histories, the relationship between history and memory, and the ways that memory and history have been both trivialized and weaponized. While actual monuments will be a focus of the course, we will also explore the memorialization of U.S. history in a number of other forms, such as murals and artistic representations; film, podcasts and public performances; and museums and public history sites. This course is not a history of the making of the United States. Instead, it invites students to participate in exploring how and why the history of the United States has been made in the ways it has been--and to participate in the always ongoing and contested remaking of that history.