Monuments and Memorials
Choose a specific monument, memorial, or artistic tribute which alludes to a historical event or person, and write an analysis of the struggle for power that the monument represents.
In addition to analyzing the statuary itself, and the rhetorical appeals that it makes to viewers, the paper should include a discussion of the problem, or struggle, that is embedded in the statue’s existence. What is being contested here? Who is empowered by it, and who is disempowered? What story is it telling us about history?
Your choices include but are not limited to the following:
Specific Confederate Statuary in the US
Mt. Rushmore
Comfort Women Statue in Chinatown
Statuary of Junipero Serra
Crazy Horse
You can also choose to write about some other commemorative statue, holiday, or symbol, for example, celebrating Columbus Day, the renaming of a building, street, or school, or the commemoration/lack of commemoration, of a slave site or site of an atrocity.
If you choose something not on the list here, please get my permission before going on with your paper.
Note: the choice must include an element of power management, in other words, there needs to be a conflict inherent in the object.
Your paper will begin by describing the statue or memorial and the features in it from a rhetorical perspective, paying particular attention to Kairos – that is, when the statue was created, and how it may have subsequently changed.
Your goal in this essay is not only to demonstrate a clear and specific understanding of the ideas and arguments presented in the monument, but also to show you understand why the monument is a site of struggle. In addition, you need to assess the nature and validity those ideas and arguments and put those ideas into context with recent events, using facts and ideas you have gathered from your readings. This assessment should be based on careful discussion of specific elements from both the monument itself, and the texts we’ve read so far.
Your paper will use some outside research to do this, and must be cited in MLA citation.
Make sure you quote at least once from the Hua Hsa article, “The New Monuments America Needs” in order to frame, or contextualize, your thesis.
Here are some of the questions you may wish to answer about the monument. What is the purpose of the monument? How does it make its claim? What rhetorical strategies are in play to make that argument? What are its strengths and weaknesses, its most appealing and most unattractive elements?
