Following the Charleston Church Massacre in 2015, protest groups and municipalities across the United States have removed over 150 Confederate memorials. If toppling a statue is an exclamation point, challenging one interpretation of history, the empty spaces that remain leave us with a lingering set of question marks. Do monuments celebrate idealized figures, observe the tragedies of the past, or perhaps proclaim a referendum on the politics of the present? Not only have monuments come down, many have gone up: from George Floyd’s temporary memorial in Minneapolis to earthworks that elevate indigenous and to installations that tell hard truths with calls for peace and justice. In our course we will pursue this line of inquiry by toggling between the US and Germany—looking at Berlin, a city where the past is an unavoidable part of the landscape and the discourse is longstanding. Through public monuments, its streets tell a story of European urbanization, Germany’s Nazi past and present atonements, of people living in a divided East and West under communism and democracy, and ultimately of the spirt to endure. In undertaking these endeavors, we will come to better understand a city where intellectuals, architects and artists have converged to ask the defining question of our time: what is the past and how does it predicate our present sense of belonging?

Program Video