Goucher College 2018-2019 Undergraduate Catalogue 
    
    Nov 21, 2024  
Goucher College 2018-2019 Undergraduate Catalogue PLEASE NOTE: This is an archived catalog. Programs are subject to change each academic year.

CPEC 209 - Ghosts in Our Midst: Confronting the Past at Historic Sites, Monuments, and Memorials (4 Cr.)


Over the past few years, monuments, memorials, and historic sites have become controversial areas in American life. They have become flashpoints for tensions over race, gender, church and state relations, politics, and our understanding of the American past. This course intends to examine this development and consider the reasons for its emergence at this time. Among the questions it will explore are: What role do monuments, memorials and historic sites play in American life? How do we deal with older monuments, memorials, and historic sites when contemporary memory, values, and society have all changed? How do we deal with the problem of monuments, memorials, and historic sites that have either lost meaning or become offensive to modern sensibilities? Through field trips, readings, and in-depth research, students will study these sites of memory in order to understand them from a variety of perspectives. Students will then design new ways of interpreting them for contemporary audiences. Ultimately, this course aims to promote meaningful and well informed dialogue between the past and present at historic sites and at the sites of monuments and memorials. Restricted to first-year and sophomore students, and others with permission of instructor. Students are limited to one CPE course per semester. Offered Spring 2019 and every other year. Sheller.