AR327-5-AU-CO:
Heritage, Colonialism, Decolonisation
2024/25
Philosophical, Historical, and Interdisciplinary Studies (School of)
Colchester Campus
Autumn
Undergraduate: Level 5
Current
Thursday 03 October 2024
Friday 13 December 2024
15
11 April 2024
Requisites for this module
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
BA T711 Latin American Studies (Including Year Abroad),
BA T721 Latin American Studies (Including Placement Year),
BA T731 Latin American Studies,
BA T7N3 Latin American Studies (Including Foundation Year),
BA T7M8 Latin American studies with Human Rights (Including Foundation Year),
BA T7M9 Latin American Studies with Human Rights,
BA L994 Global Studies with Latin American Studies,
BA L995 Global Studies with Latin American Studies (Including Foundation Year),
BA L996 Global Studies with Latin American Studies (including Placement Year),
BA L997 Global Studies with Latin American Studies (including Year Abroad),
BA L990 Global Studies and Latin American Studies,
BA L991 Global Studies and Latin American Studies (Including Foundation Year),
BA L992 Global Studies and Latin American Studies (including Placement Year),
BA L993 Global Studies and Latin American Studies (including Year Abroad)
This module explores how ideas about heritage are historically entangled with colonialism and its forms of knowledge. During the module, we will discuss the ways in which the fields of knowledge that have defined heritage—archaeology, anthropology, architecture, and preservation—have often been inseparable from colonial rule. We will also discuss the possibilities for decolonising heritage.
The module will provide a broad historical background to the development of heritage, examining heritage’s connections with colonialism across global time and space. Teasing out these links, we will grapple with the very material ways in which this process has played out. Likewise, we will begin to understand the material possibilities for decolonising heritage.
The aims of this module are:
- To provide an introduction to the links between heritage and colonialism.
- To understand the historical nature of those links across the globe.
- To understand how some of those links continue to endure.
- To ask whether heritage can ever be decolonised, how, and why.
Level 5:
By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:
- Understand the relationship between heritage and colonialism across time and space.
- Describe, analyse and interpret the historical links between heritage and colonialism.
- Write in an informed manner on the relationship between heritage and colonialism and to form an argument relating to various aspects of the topic.
- Think about the place of heritage in the contemporary world, using wider scholarly and theoretical literature to understand heritage’s relationship with colonialism today.
Transferable skills
By the end of the module, students should also have acquired a set of transferable skills, and in particular be able to:
- Define the task in which they are engaged and exclude what is irrelevant.
- Seek and organise the most relevant discussions and sources of information.
- Process a large volume of diverse and sometimes conflicting arguments.
- Compare and evaluate different arguments and assess the limitations of their own position or procedure.
- Write and present verbally a succinct and precise account of positions, arguments, and their presuppositions and implications.
- Be sensitive to the positions of others and communicate their own views in ways that are accessible to them.
- Think laterally and creatively (i.e., to explore interesting connections and possibilities, and to present these clearly rather than as vague hunches).
- Maintain intellectual flexibility and revise their own position based on feedback.
- Think critically and constructively.
The main objective of this module is to provide students with a solid grounding in the way that colonialism has shaped—and continues to shape—heritage and its connected practices. Doing so, students will begin to grapple with the consequences of this connection. They will also start to think through ways in which heritage work might (or might not) be decolonised.
During the module, students will be introduced to a global range of case studies connected to these historical issues. They will also discuss examples of decolonial heritage work, examining how and why the contemporary heritage world has sought to deal with these issues.
Indicative syllabus:
- Discussing colonial heritage
- Imperial plunder
- Colonial high noon/the rise of the ‘heritage sciences’
- Anti-colonial heritage
- The Cold War and decolonisation: the development of World Heritage
- The rise of intangible heritage: a new settlement?
- Repatriation and restitution
- The heritage of colonialism
- Decolonial heritage?
This module will be delivered via:
- Nine one-hour lectures by the module leader
- Nine one-hour seminars, in addition to an optional trip to a relevant museum outside the University of Essex.
There will be one Reading Week. The seminars will consist of a combination of contributions from students and classroom discussion. Students will read weekly assignments and additional readings. The module will also be available on Listen Again. Detailed information about the learning and teaching methods will be available in the outline on the Module Directory and from the full module description.
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One Tool of "Critical Thinking” That’s Done More Harm Than Good | Department of History (no date). Available at:
https://history.stanford.edu/news/one-tool-critical-thinking-thats-done-more-harm-good.
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Sengupta, I. (2015) ‘Culture-keeping as State Action: Bureaucrats, Administrators, and Monuments in Colonial India’,
Past & Present, 226(suppl 10), pp. 153–177. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu026.
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Zetterstrom-Sharp, J. and Wingfield, C. (2019) ‘A “Safe Space” to Debate Colonial Legacy’,
Museum Worlds, 7(1), pp. 1–22. Available at:
https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/27384/.
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Betts, P. and Ross, C. (2015) ‘Modern Historical Preservation--Towards a Global Perspective’,
Past & Present, 226(suppl 10), pp. 7–26. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtu023.
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Irving, S. (2017) ‘A Tale of Two Yusifs: Recovering Arab Agency in Palestine Exploration Fund Excavations 1890–1924’,
Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 149(3), pp. 223–236. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1080/00310328.2017.1323294.
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Mirjam Brusius (2017) ‘The Field in the Museum: Puzzling Out Babylon in Berlin’,
Osiris, 32, pp. 264–285. Available at:
https://www-journals-uchicago-edu.uniessexlib.idm.oclc.org/doi/10.1086/694206.
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Riggs, C. (2016) ‘Photography and Antiquity in the Archive, or How Howard Carter Moved the Road to the Valley of the Kings’,
History of Photography, 40(3), pp. 267–282. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2016.1140325.
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MARIEKE BLOEMBERGEN, MARTIJN EICKHOFF (2011) ‘Conserving the past, mobilizing the Indonesian future: Archaeological sites, regime change and heritage politics in Indonesia in the 1950s’,
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, land- en volkenkunde, 167(4), pp. 405–436. Available at:
https://brill.com/view/journals/bki/167/4/article-p405_3.xml.
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Colla, E. and ebrary, Inc (2007b)
Conflicted antiquities: Egyptology, Egyptomania, Egyptian modernity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Available at:
https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25789.
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AGGREGATE (2012)
Governing by Design: Architecture, Economy, and Politics in the Twentieth Century. University of Pittsburgh Press. Available at:
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/universityofessex-ebooks/detail.action?docID=2039275.
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Lynn Meskell (2013) ‘UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention at 40: Challenging the Economic and Political Order of International Heritage Conservation’,
Current Anthropology, 54(4), pp. 483–494. Available at:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/671136.
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Kirshenblatt-gimblett, B. (2004) ‘Intangible Heritage as Metacultural Production1’,
Museum International, 56(1–2), pp. 52–65. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1350-0775.2004.00458.x.
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Gfeller, A.E. (2015) ‘Anthropologizing and indigenizing heritage: The origins of the UNESCO Global Strategy for a representative, balanced and credible World Heritage List’,
Journal of Social Archaeology, 15(3), pp. 366–386. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605315591398.
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‘ESCALA: Home: Welcome’ (no date). Available at:
https://www.escala.org.uk/home.
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Dwight Newman (2022)
Research Handbook on the International Law of Indigenous Rights. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. Available at:
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/universityofessex-ebooks/detail.action?pq-origsite=primo&docID=6966408.
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Stahn, C. (2022) ‘Beyond to Return Or Not To Return – The Benin Bronzes as Game Changer?’,
SSRN Electronic Journal [Preprint]. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4233448.
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Heba Abd el Gawad (2023) ‘Strategic Narcissism: A Lived Experience of “Decolonising”, Inclusion of and “Collaborations” with Indigenous Researchers’,
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie/Journal of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 148(2). Available at:
https://doi.org/10.60827/zfe/jsca.v148i2.1315.
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Meskell, L. and Isakhan, B. (2024) ‘Reconstruction across the Middle East: UNESCO and the rise of heritage INGOs’,
Contemporary Levant, 9(1), pp. 33–49. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1080/20581831.2024.2338681.
The above list is indicative of the essential reading for the course.
The library makes provision for all reading list items, with digital provision where possible, and these resources are shared between students.
Further reading can be obtained from this module's
reading list.
Assessment items, weightings and deadlines
Coursework / exam |
Description |
Deadline |
Coursework weighting |
Coursework |
2000-word Essay |
04/12/2024 |
100% |
Exam |
Main exam: Remote, Open Book, 24hr during January
|
Exam |
Reassessment Main exam: Remote, Open Book, 24hr during September (Reassessment Period)
|
Exam format definitions
- Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
- In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
- In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary,
for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.
Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.
Overall assessment
Reassessment
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Dr William Carruthers, email: william.carruthers@essex.ac.uk.
Dr William Carruthers
PHAIS General Office, Room 6.130, arugadmin@essex.ac.uk
Yes
Yes
Yes
No external examiner information available for this module.
Available via Moodle
Of 18 hours, 16 (88.9%) hours available to students:
2 hours not recorded due to service coverage or fault;
0 hours not recorded due to opt-out by lecturer(s), module, or event type.
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