Commemoration, Conflict, and the Classical Tradition: The Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery

Friday, September 23 2016 3:30 pm

UWM Mitchell Hall 158

Workshop in Ancient Mediterranean Studies

Dr. Bronwen Wickkiser, Associate Professor of Classics, Wabash College
“Commemoration, Conflict, and the Classical Tradition: The Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery”

Friday, September 23, 2016, 3:30 pm
UWM Mitchell Hall Room 158

In 1910 the United Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned sculptor Moses Jacob Ezekiel to design and execute a monument memorializing Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. In this workshop, Dr. Wickkiser will survey the design that Ezekiel chose, which includes classicizing elements; the location of the monument within a highly contested landscape of memory; and the life of Ezekiel himself, a Jew who fought for the Confederacy and remained throughout his life a passionate advocate for religious freedom. She will suggest that the Confederate Memorial offers a useful, albeit discomfiting lens through which to question regional stereotypes (North vs. South), to consider overlap and potential conflict between the ideals of religious and civil liberty, and to reflect on the history of racial and ethnic oppression in the United States well beyond the Civil War.

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Presented by the Workshop in Ancient Mediterranean Studies

Supported by the departments of Anthropology, Art History, History, and the program in Classics within the department of Foreign Languages and Literature at UWM.