The Challenge of Charlottesville: Race, Religion and Public Monuments
M. Shawn Copeland, md传媒国产剧 College
Patricia DeLeeuw, md传媒国产剧 College
Craig A. Ford Jr., 聽md传媒国产剧 College
Heather Cox Richardson, md传媒国产剧 College
Martin Summers, md传媒国产剧 College
Mark Massa, S.J., md传媒国产剧 College (Moderator)
Date:聽September 26, 2017
Co-sponsored with the聽md传媒国产剧 College History Department, the聽md传媒国产剧 College Theology Department聽and the聽African and African Diaspora Studies Program.
Abstract
This panel will aim to articulate a post-Charlottesville understanding of the role of public monuments; to discuss the historical, religious, societal, and racial significance of public monuments in America; and to stimulate a conversation about the responsibility of civil authorities to regulate the accuracy of historical narratives as recounted through public monuments.
Speaker Bio
M. Shawn Copeland聽is professor of systematic theology at md传媒国产剧 College. She has also taught at St. Norbert College, Yale University Divinity School, and Marquette University. Copeland is recognized as one of the most important voices drawing attention to issues related to the religious, cultural, and social experience of African American Catholics. She has written more than 100 articles, reviews, and book chapters on such topics as theological anthropology, suffering, freedom, gender, and race. Recent publications include聽The Subversive Power of Love: The Vision of Henriette Delille听补苍诲听Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race and Being; she is also the principal editor of聽Uncommon Faithfulness: The Black Catholic Experience. Copeland is a former convener of the Black Catholic Theological Symposium (BCTS), an interdisciplinary learned society of Black Catholic scholars; and a former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA). She received her Ph.D. in systematic theology from md传媒国产剧 College.
Patricia DeLeeuw聽began her career at md传媒国产剧 College in 1979 as an instructor in the Theology Department. At md传媒国产剧 College and at the Weston School of Theology she taught courses on the social and institutional history of Christianity, and she has written on the influence of Gregory the Great in the Middle Ages, early medieval pastoral care, and medieval religious and liturgical art. She has also held appointments as assistant dean of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, associate dean of the Morrissey Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University harassment counselor, and associate dean of faculties. From 1999 until 2017, DeLeeuw served as vice provost for faculties. She earned a B.A. from the University of Detroit, and holds the Licentiate in Mediaeval Studies from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. In June 2017, DeLeeuw retired from md传媒国产剧 College, after 37 years of dedicated service.
Heather Cox Richardson聽is professor of history at md传媒国产剧 College and teaches nineteenth-century American history at both the undergraduate and the graduate level. Her early work focused on the transformation of political ideology from the Civil War to the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt. It examined issues of race, economics, westward expansion, and the construction of the concept of an American middle class. Her history of the Republican Party,聽To Make Men Free聽(2014) examines the fundamental tensions in American politics from the time of the Northwest Ordinance to the present. She is currently working on an intellectual history of American politics and a graphic treatment of the Reconstruction Era.
Martin Summers聽is an associate professor of history and African Diaspora Studies at md传媒国产剧 College, where he regularly teaches courses on gender and sexuality in African American history, medicine and public health in the African diaspora, and the history of masculinity in the U.S. He is currently the director of the African and African Diaspora Studies Program. He has published scholarship on gender and sexuality within the African American community, including a monograph,聽Manliness and Its Discontents: The Black Middle Class and the Transformation of Masculinity, 1900-1930, which was awarded the American Historical Association-Pacific Coast Branch Book Award in 2005. Summers鈥 current book project,聽Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions: A History of Race and Mental Illness in the Nation鈥檚 Capital, is a social and cultural history of medicine which focuses on African American patients at Saint Elizabeths Hospital, a federal mental institution in Washington, D.C., from its founding in 1855 to the 1980s.
Event Photos
Event Recap
On September 26, a group of distinguished md传媒国产剧 College faculty discussed the role of public monuments in the wake of the violent clashes between white nationalists and counterprotestors in Charlottesville, Virginia the previous month.
Each panelist engaged the symbolism of public monuments and considered arguments for and against removing those which honored historical figures associated with slavery and racism.
The first issue discussed was the significance of public monuments. Professor of theology and African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS), Shawn Copeland, began her analysis with a historical fact: the majority of Confederacy-related statues were erected after the Civil War, between 1890 and 1920. Thus, in her estimation, these memorials attempt to reinstate normative anachronisms. Martin Summers, professor of history and AADS, also argued along those lines. In his view, a statue鈥檚 meaning is dynamic. While memorials can initially be concordant with social norms, they can soon become discordant with prevailing perspectives. Using her knowledge of the institutional history of Christianity, Patricia DeLeeuw, professor emerita of theology, considered the removal of Lee鈥檚 statue an 鈥渋conoclasm,鈥 like those of the Protestant Reformation. Overall, as moderator Mark Massa, S.J., added, these memorials prompt the onlooker to reconsider the United States鈥 civil religion and founding myth.聽
The panelists then shifted their attention to the arguments made by those who oppose the removal of Robert E. Lee鈥檚 memorial in Charlottesville. Such contentions criticize the withdrawal of Confederate statues as historical erasure.
In response, fifth year theological ethics doctoral candidate Craig Ford Jr. distinguished 鈥渢he past鈥 from 鈥渉istory.鈥 Whereas the former is objectively unchanging, the latter is subjective because it is an interpretation of past events. Ford noted that American history has seldom considered the plight of poor, undocumented, and non-white people; therefore, to topple Lee鈥檚 statue is to afford such marginalized communities the rare opportunity to influence dominant historiographies. An instructive model for grappling with such a harrowing past, DeLeeuw insisted, is Germany鈥檚 commemoration of the Holocaust.
The panelists also assessed the role of participatory democracy in the discourse on public memorials. Heather Cox Richardson, professor of history, stressed that the decision to erect, relocate, or remove a monument must originate in informed, open public debate. Such colloquia, Richardson urged, should work to construct a 鈥渘ew American past,鈥 one that borrows from liberation theology, theories of intersectional oppression, and Enlightenment principles.
Read More
Books
Knauer, Lisa Maya and Walkowitz, Daniel.聽Contested Histories in Public Space: Memory, Race, and Nation.聽Duke University Press Books, 2009
Articles
"Confederate Monuments Are Coming Down Across the United States. Here's a List."聽New York Times, August 28, 2017,聽
Cox, Karen L. "Why Confederate Statues Must Fall."聽New York Times, August 15, 2017,聽
Dubenko, Anna. 鈥淭he Right and Left on Removal of Confederate Statues.鈥澛New York Times, August 18, 2017,聽
Foner, Eric. "Confederate Statues and 'Our' History."聽New York Times, August 20, 2017,聽
鈥淪hould Confederate Era Statues be Removed?鈥澛The Telegraph,聽August 17, 2017,聽
鈥淯S Confederate Monuments: What is the Debate About?鈥澛础濒箩补锄别别谤补,听August 24, 2017,聽
"Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy."聽Southern Poverty Law Center, April 21, 2016聽
Other Resources
"Hate on the Rise." Panel discussion with Heidi Beirich, Jonathan Greenblatt, Wajahat Ali, and Matt Thompson at the Aspen Ideas Festival, August 15, 2017聽
In the News
聽NPR's Dwane Brown discusses the entwined pasts of the Confederate flag and Confederate Civil War monuments with聽University of Georgia history professor James Cobb.