Universität Wien
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080062 UE Course: Cultural Heritage - Theory and Methodology (2023S)

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 8 - Kunstgeschichte und Europäische Ethnologie
Continuous assessment of course work
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

Language: German

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

Dear all, I will upload readings on Moodle. It is important to do the readings before the class. (Also the very first class!) So we can discuss them, as this will be a very important part of the teaching. Thanks.

  • Saturday 04.03. 10:00 - 16:00 Seminarraum 2 d. Inst. f. Kunstgeschichte UniCampus Hof 9 3F-EG-20
  • Saturday 22.04. 10:00 - 16:00 Seminarraum 2 d. Inst. f. Kunstgeschichte UniCampus Hof 9 3F-EG-20
  • Saturday 13.05. 10:00 - 16:00 Seminarraum 2 d. Inst. f. Kunstgeschichte UniCampus Hof 9 3F-EG-20

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

This seminar aims to give an overview of theories and methods in the field of critical heritage studies. The point of the seminar is to provide a forum to question and sharpen our research and writing skills. We will study texts and discuss contemporary issues regarding the presence of the past in both public and private spaces. We will consider different types of writing, as well as basic content about how to approach heritage and material culture studies. We will think about archives and forms for knowledge production and diffusion, including writing but also curating, for instance. Our methods will include a wide variety of perspectives, notably queer, feminist, and decolonial perspectives. We will also organize museum visits. Reading and discussion will be mandatory and essential parts of the seminar. As outlined in the syllabus, the outcome of the seminar can take different forms, from a classic research paper to a more creative project (see below). A research will be carried by the participants and should take a personal object, memory, or landmark into consideration as a starting point.

Assessment and permitted materials

Each student is expected to
- submit a written essay (approx. 12 to 15 pages, double-spaced) or a creative essay (see below) by the end of the semester (corresponds to 50% of the final grade)
- gives a presentation of approx. 20 minutes (corresponds to 25% of the final grade)
- reads the given literature and actively participates in the discussion (corresponds to 25% of the final grade)

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Option 1 is a 12 – 15-page research paper (double-spaced) that incorporates both primary and secondary sources into an original argument related to course themes but reflective of you own academic / creative interests. Using outside research and ideas from the class, investigate your research question(s) by developing a change over time narrative, using comparative case studies or working with broader theoretical concepts to tell us something new and historically significant. You must use at least 10 sources, at least 3 of which must be primary. Please submit a full bibliography with your paper and underline or highlight your thesis statement in the introduction to your paper.

Option 2 is a “creative” project that encompasses the same amount of research as the “traditional” paper, but presents those findings in new, public facing ways. Like the research paper, you will rely on at least 10 sources, at least 3 of which must be primary, and you must form an original argument. Your argument, though, can be presented visually, three-dimensionally, orally, virtually—the sky is the limit. Remember, per our discussions this semester, that objects of any kind hold a host of social, political, and cultural contexts within and around them. With this in mind, how might you create your own argument beyond academic writing? Projects can take the form of (for example) scientific illustrations or models, paintings, podcasts, exhibition proposals, maps, and so on.

Examination topics

- critical thinking
- historical perspective
- personal analysis
- argument
- creativity

Reading list

1. RESEARCHING

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Objects of Ethnography », Destination Culture. Tourism, Museum, and Cultural Heritage, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998, pp. 17-78.

Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things : Commodization as Process », in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 1986, p. 64-91.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith, “Introduction and chapter 1: Imperialism, History, Writing and Theory”, in Decolonizing Methodologies. Research and Indigenous People (1999), London and New York, ZED books, 2021 (third edition), pp. 1-47.

Laurajane Smith, “Intangible Heritage: A challenge to the authorised heritage discourse ?”, Etnologia, 2015, 133-142.

Shawn Wilson, extracts from Research is Ceremony. Indigenous Research Methods, Halifax and Winnipeg, Fernwood Publishing, 2008, selected pages.

2. WRITING

Margrit Berner, Anette Hoffman, Britta Lange (eds.), “Statt eines Vorworts: Stimmen” und Britta Lange “Sensible Sammlungen”, in Sensible Sammlungen. Aus dem anthropologischen Depot, Hamburg, Philo Fine Arts, 2011, pp. 1-40.

Gaston Gordillo, “Introduction,” Rubble. The Afterlife of Destruction, Durham, Duke University Press, 2014, pp.1-28.

Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts,” Small Axe, no. 26, vol. 12, 2, June 2008, pp. 1-14.

Achille Mbembé, “Introduction. The Ordeal of the World,” Necropolitics, Durham, Duke University Press, 2019, pp.1-7.

Paul B. Preciado, “Agoraphilia” and “Etymologies,” An Apartment on Uranus. Chronicles of the Crossing, South Pasadena, semiotext(e), 2019, pp. 143-145 and 156-158.

Ana Naomi de Sousa, Sonia Vaz Borges, “The House of the Students of the Empire in Lisbon,” Nov. 2, 2020. 
https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/pan-africanism/house-of-students-of-the-empire-in-lisbon-ana-naomi-de-sousa-sonia-vaz-borges

Subhadra Das and Miranda Lowe. “Nature Read in Black and White: decolonial approaches to interpreting natural history collections”, Journal of Natural Science Collections, vol. 6, 2018, p. 4-14.

Literaturverzeichnis


Lucia Allais, “Integrities: The Salvage of Abus Simbel,” Grey Room, 50, Winter 2013, pp. 6-45.

Tina M. Campt, A Black Gaze. Artists Changing How We See, Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2021.

Bridget R. Cooks, Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum, Boston, University of Massachussets Press, 2011.

Bridget R. Cooks and Jennifer J. Wagelle, Mannequins in Museums. Power and Resistance on Display, London, Routledge, 2023.

Huey Copeland, Bound to Appear. Art, Slavery, and the Site of Blackness in Multicultural America, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2013.

Huey Copeland und Frank Wilderson, “Red, Black, and Blue: the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the National Museum of the American Indian,” Art Forum, September 2017.
https://www.artforum.com/print/201707/red-black-and-blue-the-national-museum-of-african-american-history-and-culture-and-the-national-museum-of-the-american-indian-70457

Joyce Green (ed.), Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (2007), Fernwood Publishing, Halifax and Winnipeg, 2017.
Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble. Making kin in the Chthulucene, Durham, Duke University Press, 2016.
Julie Nagam, Megan Tamati-Quennell, Carly Lane (eds.), Becoming our Future. Global Indigenous Curatorial Practice, ARP Books, Winnipeg, 2020.

Alice Procter, The Whole Picture. The colonial story of the art in our museums and why we need to talk about, Octopus Publishing Group, 2020.

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Tu 31.01.2023 10:50