INCS 2019: MONUMENTS AND MEMORY
Ongoing public debate over politically charged public monuments reminds us how much is at stake in the shaping of cultural memory, whether through durable physical structures, portable or reproducible aesthetic works, or discursive representations. How were monumentality and the preservation of the past conceived in the nineteenth century? How might we reconceive our own ways of remembering the nineteenth century? We invite proposals for papers and panels that explore monuments in the broadest sense of the word—those from as well as those about the nineteenth century. We also welcome papers that consider the concepts of monumentality and/or memory as they pertain to humanistic disciplines and engage with nineteenth-century studies. Papers might nominate “monuments” (including scholarly ones) that are overvalued, under-appreciated, or ripe for dismantling; explore works, genres, or forms that encourage remembering; analyze nineteenth-century representations of or discourses about memory or monuments; consider the value of ephemera or the contested return to big ideas via digital means that outstrip human memory and cognition. Other topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Public monuments
- Antiques, relics, and ruins
- Monumental texts, paintings, musical compositions
- Monuments of conquest and empire
- Museums and museum studies
- Archives, records and record-keeping
- Monuments, mass production and mass consumption
- Countermonumentality and antimonumentality
- Post-historicist and presentist approaches to the past
- Canons and countercanons
- Crafting a national history
- Crafting global histories