UC Berkeley

Memorials and the Cult of Apology examines how contemporary memorials have come to embody more than memory. It begins with a simple observation of the growing demand for apologies across the globe and the related proliferation of memorials that aim to atone for past injustices. In effect, apologies are being materialized into memorials, a phenomenon of global importance, which presents a major shift in national self-representation. In the broadest terms, my research is an intervention into the cultural history of the built environment. As the first scholarly work to address memorials as apologies, my dissertation builds an empirical and theoretical understanding of multiple aspects of apology and memorialization, of their material forms, the actors involved, and the diverse effects built apologies produce. It uses five representative case studies located in Berlin, Buenos Aires, and San Francisco, to develop this argument. Since memorialization is an inherently interdisciplinary topic, my work incorporates methods, readings, and theories from a vast array of humanistic disciplines, particularly postcolonial theory, Holocaust and human rights scholarship, and debates about justice, recognition, reparation, and morality. My archival and field research combines methods drawn from architectural history and the humanities ¬–close reading, literary interpretation, and storytelling–, which I apply to the formal analysis of built memorials and their urban contexts. This formal analysis is complemented with ethnographic interviews with designers, experts and site visitors, as well as participant observation of both commemorative events and what has been called ‘apology activism.’