I'm a Ph.D. student in art history, and I'm working on my dissertation. I study soldier monuments, and the way they seemingly came out of nowhere in the wake of the Civil War. We see them all the time now, in all of our hometowns, so much so that for many of us they have all but lost their meaning, but we need to keep in mind that before the Civil War, nobody anywhere in the world was spending so much time making bronze statues of the common man. This is a pretty radical change, and it's at the heart of my dissertation.
Over the next months and years, I'm going to use this blog to help me to think more deeply about my project and about sculpture in general, because I've been having a little trouble getting my head around it lately. I'm hoping to write every day. Post lengths will vary. Sometimes they'll be about soldier monuments, sometimes about war, sometimes about things that interest me in the nineteenth century, and sometimes about public art in general. I hope at least some of them are worth reading.
This is Charlie. He is my fieldwork buddy, sometimes-photographer, GPS operator, and soon-to-be husband. He comes into stories a lot.
So, that's where I will leave it for now. I know, kind of an inauspicious first post, but all projects must start somewhere (sort of how I feel about my dissertation!).
first comment. i win!
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