Postgraduate Course: Sensing the Past: Intimacy and Heritage as an Ethical Practice (fusion on-site) (EFIE11319)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | History, Vanessa Agnew suggested, has taken an 'affective' turn. People do not only wish to understand the past; rather, they seek sensation - a quality of felt intimacy with what has gone before. Increasingly, this quality of intimacy is made possible through the use of digital technologies, which fuse material traces with virtual imaginaries to create hyperreal immersive environments that promise an authentic experience of past lives and events. This course critically explores such environments and experiences and their political and ethical implications. |
| Course description |
The course will focus on the ways in which heritage workers curate a sense of feeling with or for the past in the context of an 'experiential turn' in heritage practice, through which the public is invited to cultivate a sense of empathic connection to past events and peoples. Drawing on a diverse array of examples from museums, archaeological sites, historical re-enactments, films as well as more everyday encounters with the traces of past lives, students will be encouraged to critically consider the social and political implications of various forms heritage intimacies. At the core of this enquiry is a concern with heritage as a form of ethical practice through which we develop visions of future through a felt connection with, and care for, the past.
Students will explore the ways in which we cultivate a 'feeling' for the past, and the political and ethical issues raised by this emphasis on affect and experience, through a structured programme of learning that will combine short lectures, guided reading, project-work and discussions with peers. They will be introduced to the 'experiential turn' in heritage practice and notion of 'heritage intimacies', before turning to the question of how this feeling of intimacy is made possible by different forms of media that enable a sensory encounter with past lives and events and forms of 'prosthetic memory.' Particular emphasis will be put on virtual intimacy and extended forms sensory experience enabled by digital technologies. Addressing a series of examples drawn from museum practice, cinema, digital games and as well as more mundane encounters with the material traces of the past, they will be invited to critically reflect on the limits of such heritage imaginaries and their implications for cultivating a future-oriented ethical disposition on the basis of a felt relationship with the past.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - On-Site Fusion Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. This approach (our 'fusion' teaching model) offers students flexible and inclusive ways to study, and the ability to choose whether to be on-campus or online at the level of the individual course. It also opens up ways for diverse groups of students to study together regardless of geographical location. To enable this, the course will use technologies to record and live-stream student and staff participation during their teaching and learning activities.
Students should be aware that:
- Classrooms used in this course will have additional technology in place: students might not be able to sit in areas away from microphones or outside the field of view of all cameras.
- Unless the lecturer or tutor indicates otherwise you should assume the session is being recorded.
As part of your course, you will need access to a personal computing device. Unless otherwise stated activities will be web browser based and as a minimum we recommend a device with a physical keyboard and screen that can access the internet.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 20 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 4,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
84 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Summative Assessment:
The course will be assessed by means of the following assessment components:
1) 1500 Word Essay (100%)
One 1500 word essay which is developed and critically reflects on an exploration of an immersive or experiential heritage environment undertaken during the 'pre-intensive' phase of this course (and documented as 'research diary' taking the form of a blog). (LO 1, 2 & 3).
This summative assessment will be supported by formative work, taking the form of two posts added to their blog during the 'post-intensive' phase of this course. One identifying particular issues and problematics they may wish to explore in their summative assignment. The other, presenting an outline for their summative assessment. (LO 2, 3 & 4). |
| Feedback |
Students will receive formative feedback on the 'research diary' as well as their two post-intensive posts, including an outline of their essay, from their study groups.
Written feedback will be provided for the summative assessment, structured by feedback template that is clearly aligned to grade descriptors and the learning outcomes for the course. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding and appreciation of the 'experiential turn' in heritage practice.
- Develop an complex and innovative insight, predicated on self-directed research and reading, into the ways in which historical sensation and heritage experience are cultivated in practice, particularly with and through digital media and forms of augmented reality.
- Critically evaluate the possibilities but also the limitations of the cultivation of empathy and heritage intimacies particularly in relation to contentious heritage.
- Develop a facility for undertaking autonomous, collaborative and reflective project-work, based on real world material, which informs our understanding of ways and means of feeling with and about past lives and events.
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Reading List
Indicative Reading List:
Carretero, Mario, Brady Wagoner, and Everardo Perez-Manjarrez, eds. Historical reenactment: New ways of experiencing history. Berghahn Books, 2022.
Dudley, Sandra H, ed. Museum Materialities. Routledge, 2013.
Edwards, Elizabeth, Chris Gosden, and Ruth Phillips, eds. Sensible objects: colonialism, museums and material culture. Berg, 2006.
Hamilakis, Yannis. Archaeology and the senses: human experience, memory, and affect. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Smith, Laurajane. Emotional heritage: Visitor engagement at museums and heritage sites. Routledge, 2020.
Stylianou-Lambert, Theopisti, Alexandra Bounia, and Antigone Heraclidou., eds. Emerging technologies and museums: Mediating difficult heritage. Berghahn Books, 2022.
Tolia-Kelly, Divya P., Emma Waterton, and Steve Watson, eds. Heritage, affect and emotion: politics, practices and infrastructures. Routledge, 2016.
Wetherell, Margaret, Laurajane Smith, and Gary Campbell, ed. Emotion, affective practices, and the past in the present. Routledge, 2018. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Students will develop the following mindsets and skills while working to achieve the four Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) specified above and, in particular:
- Enquiry and lifelong learning (ILOs 1-4)
- Aspiration and personal development (ILOs 1-4)
- Outlook and engagement (ILOs 2,3&4)
- Research and enquiry (ILOs 2,3&4)
- Personal and intellectual autonomy (ILOs 1-4)
- Personal effectiveness (ILOs 2,3&4)
- Communication (ILO 4) |
| Keywords | Heritage,Materiality,Virtuality,Emotion,Affect,EFI,Level 11,PG,Cultural Heritage Futures |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr John Harries
Tel: (0131 6)50 4051
Email: j.harries@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Veronica Silvestre
Tel:
Email: Veronica.Silvestre@ed.ac.uk |
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