“What Our Monuments (Don’t) Teach Us About Remembering The Past”: Q&A with Jennifer Allen

August 24, 2017
WAMU 88.5 American University Radio based in the Washington, D.C. metro area recaps the events in Charlottesville, VA including an interview with History Professor and University of Virginia alum Jennifer Allen.  
 
“As the debate rages over what role Confederate monuments do — and should — play in commemorating U.S. history, Jennifer Allen says we can learn a lot from Germany.
 
Allen is an assistant professor of German history at Yale University, and she specializes in something called memory politics.
 
She also attended the University of Virginia, located in Charlottesville, where violent clashes earlier this month over a statue of Robert E. Lee brought this debate back into the national spotlight.
 
The way people understand history, Allen says, is constantly evolving. And the discussions about monuments and the Confederacy, she says, are an opportunity for the U.S. to reimagine its relationship to the past.”
 
Read the full interview at wamu.org.