Humanities Division

“Because of slavery” is the correct answer to the question: Why did the slaveholding states go to war against the free states of the Union? MONUMENTS reckons with deceptive narratives implicit in the presentation of a defeated Confederacy — not as traitors and losers, but as objects of hero worship. The Old South lost the Civil War but won the nation's post-war reconciliation with monuments, movies, and textbooks that upheld white supremacy and perpetuated black subordination. Kara Walker’s art and Harryette Mullen’s poetry have in common an irreverent attitude toward oppressive systems and institutions, from the Lost Cause glorified in...