Bidding Farewell to Confederate Statues: Landscape, Politics, and American History

Authors

  • Ari Helo University of Helsinki

Keywords:

Confederate statues, Historical memorials, Civil War, Cultural History, Southern history, American history

Abstract

In 2015 there emerged a nationwide campaign to remove all Confederate memorials commemorating white supremacy of “the old South” from public parks and city centers in the United States. Given that fighting racism and fascism is not equivalent to fighting monuments, one can ask if an attack on dead slaveholders and famous American Confederate generals is worth a large-scale cleansing of the American cultural landscape. Questioning some of the rationales of the campaign is not about defending these statues. If people democratically so decide, they may well get rid of any historical memorials they find ethically offensive. This essay deals with the issue as it pertains to the American cultural landscape

Author Biography

Ari Helo, University of Helsinki

Ari Helo is a Senior University Lecturer in North American Studies at the University of Helsinki. Helo’s books and scholarly articles have been published in Britain, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, and the United States. He has recently finished his third monograph, History, Politics, and the American Past: Essays on Methodology (Routledge, 2020). He can be reached at ari.helo@helsinki.fi.

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Published

2020-05-01

How to Cite

Helo, A. (2020). Bidding Farewell to Confederate Statues: Landscape, Politics, and American History. American Studies in Scandinavia, 52(1), 121–142. Retrieved from https://rauli.cbs.dk/index.php/assc/article/view/6520

Issue

Vol. 52 No. 1 (2020)

Section

Articles