Deutsches Haus at NYU presents “Pushing Columbus, Jefferson, Bismarck & Co. Off the Pedestal? Current Conflicts in Memory Cultures and the Politics of History” a public talk and conversation with Sabine Sielke (University of Bonn) and Marita Sturken (NYU). Statues of famous figures in world history are currently under severe attack; and this “iconoclasm” is by no means a new phenomenon. Yet while some activists promote the quick disposal of monuments honoring characters whose heroism appears questionable in hindsight and whose display is deemed to reaffirm racism, others fear that along with contested sculptures, our sense of history gets disposed and we become all too forgetful. This talk marks some of the frontlines of the so-called “culture wars” whose concepts and strategies get adapted from U.S.-American debates for historical contexts on foreign turf that cannot be compared.

Sabine Sielke is Chair of North American Literature and Culture and Director of the North American Studies Program and the German-Canadian Centre at the University of Bonn. Her publications include Reading Rape (Princeton 2002) and Fashioning the Female Subject (Ann Arbor 1997), the series Transcription, and 20 (co-)edited books, most recently Nostalgia: Imagined Time-Spaces in Global Media Cultures (2017), Knowledge Landscapes North America (2016), New York, New York! Urban Spaces, Dreamscapes, Contested Territories (2015), and American Studies Today: New Research Agendas (2014), as well as more than 140 essays on poetry, (post-)modern literature and culture, literary and cultural theory, gender and African American studies, popular culture, and the interfaces of cultural studies and the sciences.

Marita Sturken is Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, where she teaches courses in visual culture, cultural memory, and consumerism. Her books include Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (1997), Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (with Lisa Cartwright, 4th edition forthcoming 2025), Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism From Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (2007), and Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era (2022). She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow.

Date and Time: Tuesday, September 17, 6:00 to 7:30 PM

Location: Deutsches Haus at NYU, 42 Washington Mews, New York, NY 10003

More Information: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSckRb9O_Qg8YLpexEosjo8j8hoj1yn0RBxFW7qrD7A7l19DkA/viewform