2021 Annual Lecture
Monuments and the Obligations of Memory
Speaker: Michele Moody-Adams Ph.D. (Columbia University)
Thursday May 6th 2021
Recording: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1U8PVdI4847BMpFdoF1tCKEsCmbw4pka4?usp=sharing
Societies preserve healthy collective identities when they can find continuity between the past and present, and hope for constructive connections between the present and their visions for the future. Creating and preserving the right kinds of public monuments and memorials can be a good way to meet this goal. But we have an obligation to remember the past in ways that do not limit our ability to move our society constructively into the future. This talk will consider examples of monuments and memorials that allow us to meet this obligation and several others- like Confederate monuments- that do not. It will also explore the implications of the Summer 2020 global campaign against certain monuments and memorials believed to embody symbolic oppression.