Meaning in Marble: Civil War Monuments and American Identity

Date: Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010 Time: 7:00-8:30 p.m. (EST) Registration Deadline: Nov. 4, 2010

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The Civil War caused Americans to re-imagine themselves and their nation. Countrymen once again, however uneasily, Northerners, Southerners, and growing populations in the West had to figure out the meaning of the War and the meaning of citizenship in a nation that now included four million new citizens who had once been enslaved. Public monuments were central to this effort. The decades after the War constitute the greatest era of monument building in our history. In metal and stone those monuments are still with us—generals, soldiers, freedmen. What did they mean to the people who erected them? What did they say about the country the War created? What do they say to us today? To encourage the use of monuments in instruction, participants will be asked to submit photos of local Civil War memorials for possible analysis in the seminar. Leader: Kirk Savage, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Pittsburgh

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