Preface:

Monuments, museums, and heritage are all critical parts of the world that we create around us. These are the things that de-fine who we are today, where we have come from, and where we are going. We use them to teach young people about both the past and how we understand the present social and cul-tural systems. In recent years, social, racial, and economic justice movements have pushed us to rethink the function of monuments, museums, and heritage. In this seminar, we reconsidered the ways we represent our colonial past. Here in Philadelphia, the city grappled with monuments of Frank Rizzo and Christo-pher Columbus, and with collections of human remains at the Penn Museum. How can heritage and the commemoration of the past force us to think about the present and the future? How can monuments and museums change meanings over time? And how can our heritage landscape better represent who we are today – including both our history and our aspira-tions for the future?