LSC 883 Introduction to Cultural Heritage Studies

What makes the past meaningful to individuals, communities, nations, and the world? How is cultural heritage mobilized globally to build identity and 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 the 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. The course therefore addresses enduring questions about the Human Condition, specifically how heritage is integral to the relationships we forge between the individual and society, people and the environment, and the physical and spiritual world.

Cross Listed Courses

ANTH 240 & HIST 240 & LSC 883