American Monuments Now

In the past decade, public monuments in the United States have inspired rigorous, sometimes violent, debate. This seminar considers how America’s monumental landscape was constructed in the twentieth century and how it is changing in the 21st.  Through class readings, guest speakers and field trips, we will explore artists’ responses to public commissions and consider how these sculptures shape how people move through the spaces around them.  A spring break trip to Washington, D.C., Richmond, Virginia, and Montgomery, Alabama will give first-hand experience of some of the most recent responses to colonial history, slavery and its legacies, and war.