Courses

What is the ​end​ of a monument, and when does it happen? On October 12th, 1992, on the quincentennial anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Caribbean, the Organización Campesina Emiliano Zapata marched into the city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas and knocked down the statue of Diego de Mazariegos. In subsequent reporting on the event, a participant named Mariano argued that the monument was a “symbol of the conquest, colonialism, exploitation, racism and plunder,” and that toppling the statue represented five centuries of popular, indigenous struggle against these forms of repression (cuartopoder.mx). Criticism of these spectacular instances of popular resistance often seize on their inability to destabilize the structural edifice underlying the material symbol, as if the monument were only the tip of the iceberg. As recent movements across Latin America and the US have rearticulated critiques of monuments as place markers for ideologies of settler colonialism, capitalism, anti-blackness and patriarchal notions of power, however, they have also intersected with movements against land theft, resource and labor rights, reproductive justice, abolition, and self-determination. In the process, these popular debates have engendered new ways of thinking about social space and other forms of monumentalism that claim to be reparative, critical, functional, or ephemeral in their engagement with local history, existing or destroyed monuments, and the built environment.

In this seminar, we will explore historical and contemporary issues around space, place, memory, and belonging, in order to understand what forms of cultural practice emerge through monumentalism. We will also examine how community actors, activists, writers, artists, and political figures engage with the spatial politics of memory, and actualize, complicate or attempt to dismantle legacies of settler colonialism, white nationalism and resource extraction. We will take as our point of departure an understanding of monuments and their meaning on the Columbia/Barnard campus, and in the City of New York more broadly. Then, we will consider a range of theorizations and interventions on monuments in Buenos Aires, Brazil, Chiapas, Ciudad Juárez, France, Ibadan, Lof Campo Maripe, Nassau, and beyond. Later, we will question the problem of aesthetics and the role of art discourse in determining the character or qualities of a monument. Finally, we will discuss possible relationships between archives, memorials, and monumentality. Our work in this course will involve paying close attention to the objectives and outcomes of monument projects and designing our own interventions to understand their stakes and implications. Not only will we understand the intentions o​ f different monument forms, but we will learn how to manipulate them to our own ends.

Students will build substantive skills like community engagement, essay writing, editing, time management, research, publication design and distribution that are crucial to understanding (and working in) the cultural field. Moreover, students will practice diverse research methodologies including but not limited to close-reading, interview, community-based and archival research that they can leverage to produce scholarship accessible to our communities outside of the classroom.