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In this, the first of two episodes about cultural monuments, Danny Anderson is joined by Jay Eldred and Jordan Poss. The three discuss the indeterminacy of symbols in collective memory. From the Confederate Flag to the erasure of dissent in Stalin’s Soviet Union, we explore the controversies inherent in our cultural monuments.

Topics discussed:

Memento Park in Budapest
The problem with Rhodes in Britain
College Campus protest culture
The Confederate Flag
Jay gets philosophical
The lack of unified memory
White Pride
Jordan: Vexologist
Italians and the American Confederate Flag
KKK and local power
The Confederate Flag, the Swastika and “controlling the brand”
Confederate Flag(s) and their history
Monuments not an Aristotelian process
ISIS, Rome and the Damnation of memory
Stalin and making “history”
The Crusades: Churches into Mosques, Mosques into Churches
Should we even remember?
Memory as Mourning
In Praise of Forgetting

Suggested Reading

Books:
In Praise of Forgetting by David Rieff
Why Study History? by John Fea
The Monuments Men by Bret Witter and Robert M. Edsel
Nations Divided: America, Italy, and the Southern Question, by Don H. Doyle
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Online Reading:
Who Are Public Monuments For? http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2016/06/who-are-public-monuments-for/
America’s War On The Confederacy Is Really A War On The Past. http://thefederalist.com/2016/05/24/war-on-the-confederacy-is-a-war-on-the-past/
A God Who Remembers by Elie Weisel. http://www.npr.org/2008/04/07/89357808/a-god-who-remembers
Hope, Despair, and Memory – Elie Weisel’s Nobel Lecture upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-lecture.html
To Be a Historian is to Speak Over Gravesides by Chris Gehrz. https://pietistschoolman.com/2016/04/25/to-be-a-historian-is-to-speak-over-gravesides/

Video:
Rod Serling’s Deaths-Head Revisited Narration. https://youtu.be/2WwyvTY7M4w

“Wernher von Braun,” Tom Lehrer