The push to remove controversial statues around the United States gained momentum from the 2020 protests against the police murder of George Floyd. Statues associated with racist causes—most notably the Confederacy—toppled in cities large and small across the nation, and the movement spread to Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, and South Africa.
In Philadelphia, protesters focused on memorials to former police commissioner and mayor Frank Rizzo, and Christopher Columbus.
For landscape historian Jared Farmer, the historic iconoclasm of 2020 shows how arguments over the past are really arguments about the future, and provided a jumping off place for a new history course he taught in the fall: American Monuments: Designs for the Future.
“My goal was for students to understand this is a much bigger issue than Confederate monuments and to give them some historical understanding of the moment that they lived through,” Farmer says. “I want them to gain a sense of hope and possibility that monuments can be so much more than bronze statues of white guys on horses,” he says.
The course started with the making of the U.S. memorial landscape in the 19th century, and ended with a deep dive into Philadelphia’s memorials, past and present, and students’ visions for local monumental futures.
The class was affiliated with the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Paideia Program, which serves as a hub for civic dialogue in undergraduate education at Penn. SNF Paideia courses offer an interdisciplinary civic education that highlights the role that civil discourse, dialogue across difference, and wellness play in cultivating integrated citizenship within the Penn community.
“A lot of Penn students don't know much about Philadelphia history, and living on and around campus can be a bubble,” Farmer says. “I wanted them to come away knowing about the city where they chose to spend a formative part of their life. All Penn students ideally should leave here knowing something about Philadelphia, and that citizenship component of the class really lines up with the Paideia program.”
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