I spent my spring break in Vienna, a city with statues and monuments aplenty, representing a time when Vienna was not just a cultural powerhouse, but also the heart of an empire. Ornate, imposing representations of the likes of Maria Theresa or Franz Joseph I, the individual figures who shaped Austria over the course of history, symbolize a complicated history of imperial power.
Being met with statues at every turn around the Ringstrasse caused me to reflect on how we go about public memorialization at home. In the United States, we’re having to consider more and more how our own history of slavery, westward expansion and white supremacy exist in public memory. These debates are perhaps most heated in the South, where communities debate over whether Confederate monuments ought to continue standing.
Even though the University of Michigan doesn’t have the same grand, imposing statues you might find all over Vienna, the issue of commemoration nevertheless remains an important consideration. From libraries to residence halls, the University certainly isn’t lacking in buildings named for U-M faculty spanning the institution’s history that begins as far back as 1817. As a result, the problematic aspects of national and institutional history sometimes become the baggage attached to a name honored on a building or a plaque…