In post-Reformation (sixteenth- and seventeenth-century) Britain, the word "monument" could refer both to a written text or official legal document, or to a built commemorative structure, such as a funeral monument. The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, for instance, is a collection of texts forming a grisly martyrology meant to establish legitimacy for the Protestant church. At the same time, antiquarians rushed to preserve the inscriptions on funeral monuments that were in danger of permanent destruction by iconoclasts who sought to erase all material traces of England's Catholic past. 

How do these divergent meanings and histories of "monuments" influence the debates and conflicts over monuments that we witness today in the United States and abroad? (For examples, see the Thomas Jefferson statue at Mizzou, the Mothers of Gynecology in Montgomery, Alabama, or the Monument to Mary Wollstonecraft in London, UK.). On the one hand, monuments are spoken of as historical fact, and therefore authentic objects to be preserved, no matter how antiquated or distasteful their subjects may be. On the other hand, opponents note, the flip side of inscription is erasure, and monuments can equally be viewed as polemical expressions of oppressive ideologies that obscure and marginalize truth, rather than protect it. 

While the first part of this course will be grounded in the memorial culture of post-Reformation Britain, in the second part of the class, students may choose to continue work in that area, or to pursue research on a monument in a different period or part of the world. Readings will include early modern texts by John Foxe, Thomas Browne, Anne Clifford, George Herbert, Shakespeare, and Milton, in addition to more modern texts by Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin, and Natasha Trethewey. While the course will include a more conventional 10-12-page research paper in the student's area of choice, there will also be room for creative work in some of the weekly assignments. 

This course is not designed only for specialists in the early modern period, although it should provide valuable historical context for them. The course should also be of interest to anyone working in (or curious about) memory studies, memorial culture, the relationships among textual, visual and material culture, or historiography.