Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves explores how the history of slavery and its violent end was told in public spaces — specifically in the sculptural monuments that came to dominate streets, parks, and town squares in 19th-century America.
Looking at monuments built and unbuilt, author Kirk Savage shows how the greatest era of monument building in American history took place amid struggles over race, gender, and collective memory.
Savage is the William S. Dietrich II Professor of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.
He is the author of Monument Wars: Washington D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape (Princeton) and the editor of The Civil War in Art and Memory. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves probes a host of fascinating questions and remains the only sustained investigation of post-Civil War monument building as a process of national and racial definition, according to a review published in the Princeton University Press website.
Featuring a new preface by the author that reflects on recent events surrounding the meaning of these monuments, and new photography and illustrations throughout, this new and expanded edition reveals how monuments have only become more controversial with the passage of time.
