For BC/CU ID holders, this event will take place in person in Sulzberger Parlor (3rd floor, Barnard Hall). For members of the general public, this event will be streamed to Zoom for virtual viewing. You will receive the link to join the Zoom in your confirmation email.

An urgent and fractious national debate over public monuments has erupted in America. Some people risk imprisonment to tear down long-ignored hunks of marble; others form armed patrols to defend them. Why do we care so much about statues? And who gets to decide which ones should stay up and which should come down?

Join us for a conversation with Barnard alumna Erin Thompson, the country’s leading expert in the tangled aesthetic, legal, political, and social issues involved in such battles to discuss all that protesting statues entails and to discuss her book, Smashing Statues, in which she traces the turbulent history of American monuments and its abundant ironies, starting with the enslaved man who helped make the statue of Freedom atop the US Capitol, to exploring the surprising motivations behind such contemporary flashpoints as the toppling of a statue of Columbus at the Minnesota State Capitol. Written with great verve and thoroughly researched, Smashing Statues gives readers the context they need to consider the fundamental question: Whose voices must be heard and whose pain must remain private?

Copies of Erin's book Smashing Statues will be distributed to the first 20 Barnard student in-person attendees.

SPARK is a series of provocations and conversations designed to ignite your thinking about change and how it happens. Through interviews, book talks, field trips, film screenings, and more, you'll get to know the women and nonbinary people leading change in a wide range of areas, and learn more about the hard, but important, work of building a better future. SPARK is open to all members of the Barnard community, including faculty, staff, alumnae, and friends of the college.

Funding for SPARK is provided by The Harnisch Foundation.

This event is presented by:

Barnard College provides reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities. If you need individual disability-related accommodations for this event in order to be able to attend, we encourage you to inform us in advance in order for us to accommodate you. Possible accommodations can include real-time captioning, ASL interpretation, Braille handouts, wheelchair accessibility and more. Specific individual requests can be made via our department's email: athenacenter@barnard.edu or by filling out the Event Accessibility Request Form.