Postgraduate Course: Critical Heritage: Politics of the Past (Online) (EFIE11438)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Futures Institute |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
| Course type | Online Distance Learning |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | *Programme Core Course: Cultural Heritage Futures (MSc)*
Please Note:
This course is only available to students enrolled on the Cultural Heritage Futures (MSc) degree programme.
This course will offer an introduction to notions of critical heritage and critical heritage studies, highlighting the political underpinnings of the ways in which we think of and 'curate' the past. This is a core module for the masters programme, and designed to offer a deep engagement with critical heritage as a field of research and practice. |
| Course description |
The course will be organised in five blocks, covered over the course of the five weeks of contact time in the course, that constitute the corner stones to start making sense of heritage today, for researchers or practitioners.
First it will propose theoretical approaches to and definitions of heritage, providing students with a background in the core principles and discussions that have shaped critical heritage studies.
Second, it will discuss the 'birth' of heritage and the use of the past to frame invented traditions relevant to state formation and the forging of 19th century ideas of nation. This will engage, too, with elements of heritage activism within the politics of nationalisms.
Third, it will discuss heritage and liquid modernity, its presences and absences in the context of globalisation and the interconnected Web, incorporating an engagement with digital media as spaces of heritage data activism.
Fourth, it will focus on heritage, sustainability and the Anthropocene. This will include a focus on contemporary heritage, and a foray into heritage, sustainability and the climate crisis.
Fifth, it will explore the theme of 'hidden' stories, bringing to the fore discussions regarding heritage interpretation and management in the light of intersectionality, decolonial, and ethics of care theories.
Students will have a rich learning experience. They will learn through a combination of: mini lectures followed by group discussion; individual reading; supervised group activities; individual research and knowledge exchange as well as creative communication of research findings. Students will have the opportunity to reflect on case studies of their choice in the pre-intensive, and to choose from a range of given case studies for supervised group activities during the intensive. Case studies will cover a range of heritages from different cultural and geo-political contexts. Guest lecturers will be invited, to enhance interdisciplinary teaching and offer students the opportunity to connect with key heritage professionals in academia and beyond.
Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) - Online Hybrid Course Delivery Information:
The Edinburgh Futures Institute will teach this course in a way that enables online and on-campus students to study together. 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 note that their interactions may be recorded and live-streamed. There will, however, be options to control whether or not your video and audio are enabled.
You will need access to a personal computing device for this course. Most activities will take place in a web browser, unless otherwise stated. We recommend using a device with a screen, physical keyboard, and internet access.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2026/27, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 10,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 10,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
176 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
This course embraces an assessment for learning philosophy, which will be explained to students from the outset.
Assessments are seen as means of scaffolding and facilitating learning throughout the course. In line with this ethos, the assessments are designed as follows:
1) Group Presentation (30%)
Students will work in pairs/groups to give a presentation on a heritage case study that identifies and foregrounds hidden perspectives on that heritage.
This assignment will develop skills that will be later used in the second assessed component of the module.
The presentation will take place in week 3, allowing time for feedback to be acted upon ahead of the submission of the second piece of coursework at the end of the module.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 1, 2, 3, 4
2) Photo Essay (70%)
Maximum word count: 1,200 Words, plus 5 photographs/drawings with captions.
Through additional research, students will produce a photo essay exploring the 'hidden' perspectives on a heritage 'thing', building on skills developed in Component 1.
The visual component, including the presentation of the photos and use of captions, is a key component of the assignment, reflecting the requirements of heritage communication practice.
Learning Outcomes Assessed by Component: 1, 2, 3, 4 |
| Feedback |
Feedback on any formative assessments may be provided in various formats, for example, to include written, oral, video, face-to-face, whole class, or individual. The Course Organiser will decide which format is most appropriate in relation to the nature of the assessment.
Feedback on both formative and summative in-course assessed work will be provided in time to be of use in subsequent assessments within the course.
Feedback on the summative assessment will be provided in written form via Learn, the University of Edinburgh's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Formative Feedback Opportunity:
Formative feedback is ongoing feedback which monitors learning and is intended to improve performance in the same course, in future courses, and also beyond study.
Feedback will be provided throughout the teaching activities: by answering questions after the mini-lectures, through discussions and by interacting with students during the teaching blocks.
In addition, focused formative feedback is included through the course of the sessions.
During these sessions, students will present and receive feedback on the group activity they conducted and which constitutes the starting point for their summative assessment. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a critical understanding of heritage and its development as a notion and as a field of research and practice.
- Conduct both individual and collaborative research into the forms and values that heritage can have in offline and online environments, in different personal, socio-cultural and geo-political contexts.
- Evaluate and address visibilities and invisibilities expressed by the ways in which heritage is interpreted and performed, reflecting critically on the role of digital technologies and the interconnected web in platforming or hiding certain voices and stories.
- Communicate the outcomes of critical evaluations of heritage meanings and values to an interested adult public audience creatively.
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Reading List
Essential Reading:
Allen, R. 2010. Heritage and Nationalism. In R. Harrison (ed.) Understanding the Politics of Heritage, pp. 197-231. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Boccardi, G. 2015. From Mitigation to Adaptation: A New Heritage Paradigm for the Anthropocene. In: From Mitigation to Adaptation: A New Heritage Paradigm for the Anthropocene, 87-98. De Gruyter, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110415278-008.
Bonacchi, C. and Krzyzanska, M. 2019. Digital heritage research re-theorised: ontologies and epistemologies in a world of big data. International Journal of Heritage Studies 25(12): 1235-1247. DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2019.1578989.
Harrison et al. 2020. Heritage Futures. Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices. London: UCL Press [Chapters 2 and 7].
Knudsen, B. and C. Andersen. 2019. Affective politics and colonial heritage, Rhodes Must Fall at UCT and Oxford. International Journal of Heritage Studies 25(3): 239-258.
Sterling, C. and R. Harrison. 2020. Introduction: Of Territories and Temporalities. In: Deterritorializing the Future: Heritage in, of and after the Anthropocene, edited by R. Harrison and C. Sterling, pp. 19-54. London: Open Humanities Press.
Recommended Reading:
Basu, P. and F. De Jong. 2016. Utopian Archives, Decolonial Affordances: Introduction to Special Issue. Social Anthropology 24 (1): 5-19.
Bonacchi, C., Altaewel, M. and M. Krzyzanska. 2018. The heritage of Brexit: Roles of the past in the construction of political identities through social media. Journal of Social Archaeology 18(2): 174-192. DOI: 10.1177/1469605318759713.
Foster S. and S. Jones. 2008. Recovering the Biography of the Hilton of Cadboll Cross-Slab. In A Fragmented Masterpiece. Recovering the Biography of the Hilton of Cadboll Pictish Cross-slab, edited by H. James, I. Henderson, S. Foster and S. Jones, pp. 205-284. Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Frost, S. 2019. A Bastion of Colonialism: Public Perceptions of the British Museum and its Relationship to Empire. Third Text 33(4-5): 487-499 https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2019.1653075.
Harrison, R. 2013. Heritage: Critical Approaches. London: Routledge. [Chapter 2; Chapter 3].
Harvey, D.C. 2003. 'National' Identities and the Politics of Ancient Heritage: Continuity and Change at Ancient Monuments in Britain and Ireland, c. 1675-1850. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 28 (4): 473-487.
Hobsbawm, E. and T. Ranger (eds). 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Introduction, pp.1-14]
Smith, L-J. 2006. Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge.
Turunen, J. 2020. Decolonising European minds through Heritage. International Journal of Heritage Studies 26(10): 1013-1028: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2019.1678051.
Waterton, E., Watson, S. and H. Silverman. 2017. An introduction to heritage in action. In: Heritage in Action, edited by H. Silverman, E. Waterton, and S. Watson, pp. 3-16. Cham: Springer.
Were, G. 2015. Digital heritage in a Melanesian context: authenticity, integrity and ancestrality from the other side of the digital divide. International Journal of Heritage Studies 21: 153-165. DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2013.842607.
Winter, T. 2015. Heritage and nationalism: an unbreachable couple? In: Palgrave handbook of contemporary heritage research, edited by E. Waterton S. and Watson, pp. 331-345. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
Further Reading:
Bonacchi, C. and M. Krzyzanska. 2019. Digital heritage research re-theorised: ontologies and epistemologies in a world of big data. International Journal of Heritage Studies 1-13. DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2019.1578989.
Brusius, M. 2020. '100 histories of 100 Worlds in One Object'. Conference report. German Historical Institute London Bulletin 42(1):103-111. Available at: https://www.ghil.ac.uk/publications/bulletin) https://www.theexhibitionist.org/.
Chakrabarty, D. 2009. The limate of History: Four Theses. Critical Inquiry 35: 197-222.
Farrell-Banks, D. 2020. 1215 in 280 characters: talking about Magna Charta on Twitter. In: European Heritage, Dialogue and Digital Practices, Critical Heritages of Europe, edited by A. Galani, R. Mason, and G. Arrigoni, pp. 86-106. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
Farrell-Banks, D. 2022. Affect and Belonging in Political Uses of the Past. London and New York: Routledge.
Harrison, R. 2010. Understanding the Politics of Heritage. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Harrison, R. 2013. Forgetting to remember, remembering to forget: late modern heritage practices, sustainability and the 'crisis' of accumulation of the past. International Journal of Heritage Studies 19(6): 579-595, DOI: 10.1080/13527258.2012.678371.
Harrison, R. 2015. Beyond 'Natural' And 'Cultural' Heritage: Toward an Ontological Politics of Heritage in The Age of the Anthropocene. Heritage & Society 8(1), 24-42.
Hicks, D. 2020. The Brutish Museum: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Restitution. London: Pluto Press.
Onciul, B. 2015. Museums, Heritage and Indigenous Voice: Decolonizing Engagement. Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge.
Peterson, D.R., Gavua, K. and C. Rassool (eds) 2015. The Politics of Heritage in Africa: Economies, Histories, and Infrastructures. London: Cambridge University Press and International African Institute.
Solli, B. et al. 2011. Some Reflections on Archaeology and Heritage in the Anthropocene. Discussion Forum. Norwegian Archaeological Review 44(1): 40-88.
Szerszynski, B. 2017. The Anthropocene Monument: On Relating Geological and Human Time. European Journal of Social Theory 20(1): 111-131. |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Critical Heritage,Heritage Values,Nationalism,Liquid Modernity,Globalisation,Insecurity |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Chiara Bonacchi
Tel: (0131 6)50 4040
Email: Chiara.Bonacchi@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Zoe Hogg
Tel:
Email: Zoe.Hogg@ed.ac.uk |
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