“Memorial Mania: Issues of Commemoration and Affect in Contemporary America”

Release date: February 19, 2007 |

Memorials and monuments have been a conspicuous part of the American public landscape since Revolutionary times. Following September 11, America’s fascination with memorializing fallen soldiers, public figures, and terrorism victims has become more visible than ever.

Noted art historian Erika Doss will present “Memorial Mania: Issues of Commemoration and Affect in Contemporary America” on Monday, February 19 at 7 p.m. in Goucher College’s Kelley Lecture Hall. This free public lecture will underscore the frenzy surrounding memorialization and our national obsession with memory, history, and commemoration. Doss’s Goucher appearance is the 2007 Irwin C. Schroedl Jr. Lecture in the Decorative Arts and Material Culture.

Concentrating on September 11 memorials; recent war monuments; and issues such as fear, terror, security, and tribute, Doss considers how “memorial mania” has altered America’s contemporary public sphere and assumptions about national identity.

“Memorials, I argue, are the physical, visual embodiment of public affect: demonstrations and displays of particular public feelings and emotions,” explains Doss. “Their often-controversial construction reveals a certain degree of anxiety about who and what should be remembered, as well as how and where.”

Doss’s lecture is based on her recent research on contemporary American memorials and monuments, which will culminate in a book titled Memorial Mania: Self, Nation, and the Culture of Commemoration in Contemporary America.

A professor of art history at the University of Colorado, Doss has written several books, including Twentieth-Century American Art; Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith and Image; Spirit Poles and Flying Pigs: Public Art and Cultural Democracy in American Communities; and Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism.

Established in 1997 by former Goucher registrar and 1962 alumna Evelyn Schroedl in memory of her husband, the Irwin C. Schroedl Jr. Lecture in the Decorative Arts and Material Culture was created to bring prominent art personalities to Goucher’s campus.