Moving Statues: A Conversation of the Global South

The Willson Center for Humanities and Arts presents an extraordinary panel discussion and a presentation by photographer and video artist Christo Doherty on Wednesday, April 10 at 6 p.m. in the Georgia Museum of Art:

Doherty [associate professor and deputy head of the Wits School of Arts of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg] will present on his recent research and photographs concerned with the removal of statues and monuments from South Africa’s apartheid era, followed by a conversation with American scholars whose work has explored related issues in the U.S. 

The panelists for the conversation are Valerie Babb, the Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities in African American Studies and English at Emory University; Malinda Maynor Lowery, associate professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina; and Akela Reason, associate professor and director of the Museum Studies Certificate Program in the history department of UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. Sheffield Hale, president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center, will serve as moderator.

Doherty has researched the mysterious disappearance of a memorial to the Irish Volunteer Brigade, which fought with the Afrikaners against the British Empire in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, amid the 2015 protests of the Rhodes Must Fall movement, which demanded the removal of monuments to John Cecil Rhodes and other apartheid-era figures of the oppressive white minority regime in South Africa.

Welcome to our distinguished visitors - and a warm welcome back to our former UGA colleague Dr. Babb. Societal changes that take place before us in real time are fraught and can be difficult to perceive. This exploration of Doherty's work illuminates a crucial period of South Africa's history as well as offers a guide for considering and understanding societal transitions more broadly.

The event is associated with the Global Georgia Initiative research group in Global Studies of the American South, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Photo of the Anglo-Boer War Memorial at the South African National Museum of Military History in Johannesburg via Wikimedia commons.