ANTH 240 Politics of the Past: An Introduction to Cultural Heritage Studies
What makes the past meaningful to individuals, communities, nations, and the world? How is cultural heritage mobilized to build identity, social cohesion, develop tourist markets, encourage financial investment, and stake political claims? This course critically examines western relationships to the past tied to property and rooted in the colonial drive to plunder, collect, and catalogue, and how non-Western heritage frameworks both complement and challenge this conception. In addition to the tangible material remains of the past, the course also explores heritage's `intangible" dimensions, from folklore, music, dance and festivals to language, knowledge, and even landscapes. The focus is on how cultural heritage is embedded in everyday life and how the past is political, continuing to live on and be creatively reinterpreted in the present.
Cross Listed Courses
ANTH 240 & HIST 240