This module will provide the theoretical basis for understanding heritage from a range of cross-disciplinary perspectives. It will address the relationships between heritage, history and memory in theory and practice, exploring heritage on personal and collective scales, the politics of heritage, and the materiality of heritage sites and objects alongside intangible heritage in the form of testimony and stories. The module will explore the ways in which different understandings of heritage inform practice in the heritage sector, from community archives and heritage projects to museums, historic houses and palaces.
The module introduces students to the key theoretical and practical matters which are confronting heritage managers today. It begins with an exploration of how we use the term ‘heritage’ and what it has meant to men and women throughout history. This provides the basis for contextualising heritage management in relation to more recent technological, organisation, legal, and economic change. From there, we turn to confront the ‘politics’ of heritage. We ask why heritage came to the fore in ‘Western’ societies towards the end of the twentieth century and what this may say about the object of our study. We then ask ‘whose heritages’ are the most evident in the West and, by extension, whose have been, and continue to be, ‘hidden’. After Reading Week, we move away from the West to explore heritage in the Global South and postcolonial societies. Having shifted the lens to global heritage, the management of heritage in and after conflict across the world become our foci. Why is heritage so often the target of destruction? Can heritage really serve us in overcoming personal and collective trauma? The penultimate week shifts the focus once more to the local: specifically the multiple heritages which we encounter in East London. In the final week, students are asked to present on their Case Study Analyses.
