32113

SoSe 19: Commemoration and Controversy: Public Art in the United States

Laura Rhonda Katzman

Information for students

Please register at: culture@jfki.fu-berlin.de with your name, matriculation number, study program, zedat email address or email address of home university, and type of exchange program (if applicable). Deadline for registration is April 8, 2019. Self-enrollment in Campus Management and Blackboard is not possible. A final list of participants will be published in the first session of the course on April 10. close

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This seminar examines the artistic, social, historical, political, and philosophical issues in public art at critical moments in the history of the United States, from the early Republic to the present day. We will investigate the nature of public art, its uses and functions, as well as civic and official attitudes towards art in the public sphere. Particular attention will be given to issues of censorship, propaganda, and the “culture wars” that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, as they relate to on-going, heated debates over government support of the arts. Many of our sessions will focus on commissioned monuments and memorials, looking at the ways in which Americans remember, articulate, and memorialize their past. Given the highly contentious debates that have exploded in recent years around Confederate monuments and Civil War commemoration, we will probe the multi-faceted national discussion about America’s slave history and the legacy of racism in contemporary U.S. culture. As Berlin is a city with a renowned memorial culture, cross-cultural comparisons between German and American public monuments will be an essential part of this seminar, as will field trips to iconic memorials in the German capital. ----- Please register at: culture@jfki.fu-berlin.de with your name, matriculation number, study program, zedat email address or email address of home university, and type of exchange program (if applicable). Deadline for registration is April 8, 2019. Self-enrollment in Campus Management and Blackboard is not possible. A final list of participants will be published in the first session of the course on April 10. close