Making Heritage

Module code: MU7522

This module is concerned with heritage objects and subjects. In the first instance, the module considers material culture and specimens which are the physical things that fill our world and comprise heritage collections. This includes other things not necessarily or automatically thought of as ‘material culture’, such as landscape, buildings, the body, and things without physical reality, such as digital images.

You'll be examining what it is that these things have in common when they become the object of an interpretive process in a heritage setting. You'll do this by looking at the different ways in which we can think about and seek to understand them, and explore the issues that they raise. The module also considers ‘heritage subjects’, referring to the people who are in some way connected with what is being interpreted, even if they themselves are not directly discussed or represented.

Topics covered

• What is inclusive heritage?
• Heritage as a community development tool
• Objects and materiality
• Embodied ways of experiencing heritage
• Authenticity
• Heritage meanings and values
• Cultural property
• Working with source/originating communities
• Oral history, memory and reminiscence
• The poetics of heritage
• Sacred objects and sites
• Controversial, contested and difficult heritage