Saturday, April 27, 2024
About this Event
3502 Trousdale Parkway, Los Angeles, CA 90089
Please join us for an international workshop, "Monuments Fall: Decolonizing Memory Spaces in The Western US and Europe’s East." The workshop, which takes place on April 26 and 27, seeks to put in conversation debates over monuments, public space and decolonization that have unfolded, sometimes in similar, sometimes in dramatically different ways in the United States and in Eastern Europe, following Black Lives Matter and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In both regions, current events have prompted a reexamination of the relationship public spaces, museums, and universities have to colonialism, heritage, and contested memories. This two-day workshop will bring together scholars from around the broader Los Angeles region and scholars of Eastern Europe to understand how these conversations have unfolded in both regions, and what might be learned by setting them in comparative perspective. How are certain monuments deemed colonial in origin? What kinds of strategies have been used to deal with colonial monuments? How do certain aesthetic, spatial, and representational techniques become signifiers of colonial power? And how can the fight over the fate of monuments in Eastern Europe inform the broader conversation over the decolonization of public space in the global North?
The program includes panels on politics and local organizing, museums, questions of indigeneity, urban spaces and capital, and the place of universities and scholars in these conversations. We hope faculty and graduate students interested in heritage, decolonization, indigeneity, public memory, art history, architecture, critical urban studies, studies of the SEEES region and of the US will be able to attend.
Keynotes:
Cynthia Prescott (University of N. Dakota)
"Contested US Pioneer Memory"
Mischa Gabowitsch (University of Vienna)
"Memorials to Red Army soldiers from 1989 to Russia's war on Ukraine"
Participants:
Bart Pushaw (U. of Tenn., Chattanooga)
Catherine Gudis (UC Riverside)
Carol Wise (USC)
Elizabeth Logan (Huntington-USC IOW)
Erica Morale (USC)
Joely Proudit (CSU San Marcos)
Unda Kaljundl (MIT / Estonlan Academy of Arts)
Miloš Jovanovic (UCLA)
Naomi Sussman (USC)
Rebecca Hall (USC Paclic Asla Museum)
Trudi Sandmeler (USC)
Vanessa Schwartz (USC)
Victoria Donovan (U. of St Andrews)
Wendy Salmond (Chapman U.)
For questions, please contact Aro Velmet at velmet@usc.edu . RSVP to attend at http://bit.ly/monumentsfall
We thank our multitude of sponsors for their generous help: Van Hunnick Department of History, the Visual Studies Research Institute, Political Science and International Relations, Center for International Studies, Levan Institute for the Humanities, Department of Slavic Studies, CHARM, Max Kade Center, Institute of California and the West, Dornsife Dean of the Humanities.
User Activity
No recent activity