Heritages Research III

Recommended Prerequisites

English skills at least B1 are essential.

Teaching Methods

The course is delivered through semi-formal lectures, seminars and discussion classes. The lectures and seminars involve lecturers from the course and external guests. Students are expected to participate actively in lectures and seminars and are motivated to undertake a considerable amount of self-directed learning. Lectures and seminars are structured on the basis of the reading of compulsory bibliography, which is the starting point for the active involvement of students in discussions.

Learning Outcomes

The course aims to discuss and analyse contemporary theory and practice in the field of preservation and social uses of heritage. It starts from the idea that is necessary to ensure that heritage policies benefit people as much as they benefit places and buildings. Thinking critically about the heritage implies problematizing, in particular, the contemporary perspectives of the concept of Culture from the different and diverse ways in which it is represented, re-signified, experienced and appropriated by various agents and at various contexts. The course focuses on heritage approaches that are bottom-up, underlining the ethnographic method, and that assume the community participation and involvement in heritage processes. It contributes to heritage processes that incorporate a wider range of perspectives and that are able to generate communities of knowledge and communities of practice.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

1. Heritage as a concept and as a practice, and its relationship with plural knowledge, experiences, territories and local communities

2.Heritagisation and museological processes: critical reading of the key concepts, including Culture, Nature, Power, Tradition, Identity, Community

3. Current trends in the use of heritage as a resource for the tourist and cultural industries and for sustainable development, reducing global and social inequalities

4. Agency processes and resilience strategies in heritage revitalization policies (cultural, natural, tangible, intangible, sound, visual, digital, etc. – heritage)

5. Critical discussion of collaborative, participatory, decolonial and inclusive methodologies in heritage studies, and of museological strategies for the repair, cultural restitution and repatriation of historical heritage.

Head Lecturer(s)

Manuel José de Freitas Portela

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Participation (including reading reports) 50%: 50.0%
Synthesis work: 50.0%

Bibliography

AKAGAWA, N & Smith, L. (eds) 2019, Safeguarding Intangible Heritage: Practices and Politics. London: Routledge

BENNETT, T. 2015, “Cultural Studies and the Culture Concept”, Cultural Studies, 29:4, 546-568

HAFSTEIN, V. 2018, Making Intangible Heritage. El Condor Pasa and Other Stories from UNESCO. Bloomington: Indiana University Press

HARRISON, R., et al (Eds.) 2013, Reassembling the Collection: Ethnographic Museums and Indigenous Agency. Santa Fé: School for Advanced Research Press

KIRSHENBLATT-GIMBLETT, B. 2004, Destination Culture. Tourism, Museums, and Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press

ORTNER, S. 2006, Anthropology and Social Theory. Culture, Power and the Acting Subject. Durham: Duke University

von OSWALD, M.; Tinius, J. (Eds) 2020, Across Anthropology. Troubling Colonial Legacies, Museums, and the Curatorial. Leuven: Leuven University Press

WEST, S. 2010, Understanding Heritage in Practice. Manchester/Milton Keyes: Manchester University Press.