Date: Wednesday, September 18

Time: 6:00 - 7:30 PM

Location: East Gallery, Maison Française, Buell Hall

Join Susan Slyomovics to discuss her book, Monuments Decolonized: Algeria's French Colonial Heritage  

"Statuomania" overtook Algeria beginning in the nineteenth century as the French affinity for monuments placed thousands of war memorials across the French colony. But following Algeria's hard-fought independence in 1962, these monuments took on different meaning and some were "repatriated" to France, legally or clandestinely. Today, in both Algeria and France, people are moving and removing, vandalizing and preserving this contested, yet shared monumental heritage. 

In her book, Susan Slyomovics follows the afterlives of French-built war memorials in Algeria and those taken to France. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and interviews in both countries, she analyzes the colonial nostalgia, dissonant heritage, and ongoing decolonization and iconoclasm of these works of art. Her book offers a fresh aesthetic take on the increasingly global move to fell monuments that celebrate settler colonial histories.