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Event Details:
Each quarter, the Stanford Archaeology Center invites prominent archaeologists from around the globe to be in residence for a week as a Distinguished Lecturer. During their residency, the Distinguished Lecturer gives two lectures and interacts with faculty, postdoctoral scholars and students. Stanford Archaeology Center will host Prof. Dan Hicks from University of Oxford over two days (November 13 and November 14) for the Fall Quarter of this academic year.
This talk introduces some of the themes of Dan's forthcoming book, Every Monument Will Fall: a prehistory of the culture war (Penguin 2025). It begins with a simple historical question. How might we best describe the phenomenon through which art and culture was weaponised from the 1880s to the 1920s: from White supremacist statues in the streets to stolen objects in museums, and from the preservation of heritage to the founding of university departments of anthropology and archaeology. Joining the dots from the de-named Kroeber Hall at Berkeley to the unfallen figure of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford, the talk sets current ideas over a so-called 'culture war' in longer-term perspective. In doing so it presents a prehistory of a war on culture that began with what we might call 'White Fabulation' and continued into the 21st century, even in the seminar rooms and theory reading groups — far closer in fact than you might imagine.
Further Reading suggested by the Speaker
Hicks, Dan 2025. Every Monument Will Fall: a prehistory of the culture war. London: Hutchinson Heinemann
Hicks, Dan forthcoming. Tacit Archaeology (with Rebekka Ladewig). In Gavin Lucas and Assaf Nativ (eds) Shadow Archaeology: For other modes of archaeological worldmaking. London: Routledge.
Hicks, Dan 2021. Let’s Keep Colston Falling. Art Review.
Hicks, Dan 2021. Glorious Memory. In H. Carr and S. Lipscombe (eds) What is History Now? London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson., pp. 114-128.
Hicks, Dan 2020. Fallism and Restitution. (with Nicholas Mirzoeff). New African Magazine