What role do public monuments, memorials, museums, and other artifacts play in shaping interpretations of the past? Who is represented in these memory artifacts, and how do they help nation-states maintain power? Whose bodies, voices, and values are silenced in public monuments? 

Guided by these questions, this course examines the rhetoric of public memory by focusing on how the past is constructed to serve the present. We’ll focus on questioning the practices of commemoration and memorializing, on interrogating the role of memory in creating group identity and examining the ways that memories are circulated. We’ll look at physical locations (e.g. monuments, memorial sites and museums, including those on and near our own campus), but also digital spaces (e.g. social media and film) and material artifacts (e.g. maps) to understand the ways that public memory functions. Ultimately, we’ll leave the course able to understand, observe, and analyze how public memories are constructed and circulated, and how they impact our identities, social collectives, and popular culture.