Is it possible to separate the political message of a monument from its artistic or historic value? What should be done with statues that glorify racism and injustice? Recent debates over Confederate monuments across the United States have made these questions impossible to ignore. This seminar approaches these debates from a historical perspective. We will consider case studies from the French Revolution to the present, including Civil War statues, settler monuments in the American West, fascist monuments in Europe, and Soviet monuments after the fall of the USSR.