American Perspectives on the Palais de la Porte Dorée
Session 3 – “Layers of History: The Palais de la Porte Dorée as Palimpsest”
Thursday, September 24, 2026, from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m.
Discussion in English, with AI-generated automatic French subtitles.
Connection link:
https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/31090898319409?p=GYIigDZLlGPbsjxLHz
This third and final session concludes the series of conversations devoted to the challenges of interpreting the Palais de la Porte Dorée and to the critical work required around this monument inherited from France’s colonial history. Daniel Sherman’s research will help explore the different historical layers of the Palais, its institutional transformations, and the successive narratives it has embodied. Emmanuelle Sibeud’s work will provide a complementary perspective on how contemporary societies confront, reinterpret, and contest public monuments connected to the colonial past.
Invited scholar: Daniel Sherman is Lineberger Distinguished Professor of Art History and History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His books include The Construction of Memory in Interwar France (1999), French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire, 1945–1975 (2011; French translation, 2018), both winners of multiple prizes, and, most recently, Sensations: French Archaeology between Science and Spectacle, 1890–1940 (2025). He is also the editor or co-editor of several anthologies, including Museum Culture (1994), Terror, Culture, Politics: Rethinking 9/11 (2006), and Museums and Difference (2008)
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Discussant: Emmanuelle Sibeud is Professor of Contemporary History at Université Paris 8 and Director of IDHES Paris 8 (UMR 8533). She specializes in the intellectual and cultural history of colonialism, with research focusing on the production of knowledge and expertise on colonial societies, as well as processes of racialization and racism. Her recent work also examines colonial memory in the public sphere and contested monuments connect