Engaging with the Past: Graphic Novels and Public History

Our Reading

Engaging with the Past: June Meeting

A small selection of the regular reading group (and one newbie – Padmini Broomfield – freelance oral historian and heritage consultant) who weren’t otherwise on holiday, met in June to discuss Graphic Novels. The topic was suggested by Katy Ball (Portsmouth City Museum) after she came across an interesting Manga book commissioned by the British Museum; Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure by Hoshino Yukinobu.

It was noteworthy that most of the graphic novels we discussed (which were by and large, bestsellers) dealt with difficult histories; The Holocaust, war, slavery. Is there something about the medium that lends itself to broaching subjects which are largely considered ‘unrepresentable’ in one way or another? About the space between storyteller and artist that the author(s) takes? Or, perhaps, the possibility for multiple narratives? Whilst there is an intertextuality of words and images, some pages have no text at all, the reader interprets images, or a single image – does this allow the ‘space’ difficult and traumatic histories perhaps need in their representation? Or is this more closely connected to autobiography? To the life and family experiences of authors like Spiegelman and Sacco? Or – more cynically – are these subjects which will mean the genre is taken more ‘seriously’? We considered criticisms of the the abundance of historic Holocaust imagery, is the metaphor in Maus a way to re-imagine The Holocaust in a new way?

Are non-fiction texts still ‘Graphic Novels’? The Inhuman Traffick text we considered is described by the authors as a Graphic History. The text deals with the transatlantic slave trade but, interestingly, is as much a book about doing history as representing it. There are primary documents and guides at the back, making the text a sort of graphic-novel-history-comic-textbook-source-book. The use of image as story also teaches important skills in analysis on its own. The ‘story’ in Inhuman Traffick ends at the National Archives at Kew, culminating by ‘showing the strings’ of how we do history.

Can graphic novels themselves be thought of as ‘exhibitions’ of a sort? In their arrangement, and the way we ‘read’ them; through their use of juxtaposition and intertextuality? This media relies on the intertextuality of words and images, in much the same way that museum exhibitions do – there seems a natural creative affinity between the two that is worth exploring. As much as the Yukinobu manga engaged with artefacts from the British Museum in its narrative, could museums utilise graphic novels in their own exhibitions, as ways of creating alternative ‘narratives’? Proposals to present research and history projects in graphic novel format have been met with some suspicion and confusion in the past. We were left intrigued by what a museum exhibition as a graphic novel would look like (co-created/curated by an artist already working in this genre), taking on board some of the representational ideas and methods of the graphic novel in arranging and designing an exhibition.

TWITTER RESPONSES / FURTHER READING

‏@cath_fletcher

@jessicammoody Jonathan Walker wrote a postmodern history book with graphics called Pistols! Treason! Murder! Worth a look.

‏@smidbob

@jessicammoody Pride of Baghdad also a useful one for reflecting on recent history

‏@lottelydia

@jessicammoody ooh I love Maus and Palestine (Sacco): also Abina and the Important Men, and want to read the Suffragette GN as well.

‏@smidbob

@jessicammoody They’ve got a bunch of folks who specialise in it at Chichester. Hugo (on TinTin), but also his PhD students

‏@lottelydia

@jessicammoody and yes Persepolis is brilliant. I also like Dykes to Watch Out For but its more of a cultural artefact than history book.

‏@smidbob

@jessicammoody Ooh, also relevant: I went to a great thing with Davodeau at the Institut Francais. They’re really good for serious BD events

Padmíní B‏@guptgargi

@jessicammoody RT:“@GdnCulturePros: #OpenComics: untold stories – share your comics and graphic art http://dlvr.it/Bf3wdC #arts #culture”

Reading:

Graphic Novels:

Art Spiegelman, Maus (Penguin 1996)
Joe Sacco, The Fixer (Drawn & Quarterly, 2003)
Rafe Blaufarb and Liz Clarke, Inhuman Traffick (Oxford University Press, 2014)

Articles:

Special Issue of Rethinking History, ‘History in the Graphic Novel’ http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rrhi20/6/3
Michael Cromer and Penney Clark, “Getting Graphic with the Past: Graphic Novels and the Teaching of History” Theory & Research in Social Education Vol. 35, Iss. 4, 2007

Engaging with the Past: Ghost Stories

One of York’s many ghost walks

Engaging with the Past Reading Group: May Meeting.

Having taken an Easter break in April, the group met in May to discuss Ghost Stories. The topic was inspired in part by the research of Dr Karl Bell http://www.port.ac.uk/centre-for-european-and-international-studies-research/members/dr-karl-bell.html in the University of Portsmouth’s History Department. Karl’s research looks at ghosts, legends and the supernatural as cultural history. Looking at the topic of ghost stories in the context of a cultural heritage and public history reading group was also in part prompted by having lived in ‘ghostly’ places. The image above is of one of the city of York’s many ghost walks which theatrically occupy the cobbled streets in the evenings. In this context, some initial questions were posed: to what extent can we consider ghost tours a kind of public history? After all, they often recount particular pasts, and are connected to specific moments in history. Similarly, can we consider such tours and ghost stories more generally as ‘heritage’? Ghost tours engage with and are intimately connected to the urban landscape, touch or construct local identities – relating as they do the places and their pasts.

Karl Bell’s work on nineteenth century ghost stories in Portsmouth was particularly relevant to this last question. Here, ghost stories of the nineteenth century can be seen as challenges to dominant civic narratives of progress, stories of the mundane, the domestic ordinary, haunting in the face of a growing grand naval heritage in the city. However, does this also mean they could be about continuity, rather than challenge? Recounting acts of loss and brutality which both pre-date and continue beyond the emergence of such grand narratives of civic pride and naval might? We questioned the (understandable) desire to see ghost stories as rebellious, always challenging dominant narratives, like guerrilla public history. However, and relating this to ‘heritage’, public history and tourism, if we consider nineteenth century ghost stories to be (as Bell argues) in part about modernity, should we consider the emergence and popularity of the later twentieth century ghost tour to be about post-modernity?

In relation to tours, why are some places considered more ‘ghostly’ than others? Is Portsmouth a place of ghosts like York or Edinburgh? And if not, why not? Is this about port town transience, the coming and going of people over time – do ghosts need stability? How do ghost stories feed into a ‘sense of place’? How do they (or don’t they) connect people to their environments? This doesn’t seem to be something which is straightforwardly positive or negative – the ambiguity of ‘hauntings’ in part might reflect ongoing translucent relationships people have through the telling and retelling of ghost stories. In this sense, is it more appropriate to consider ghost stories as anti-public history? About NOT knowing the ‘facts’?

The connection ghost stories forge to particular histories and places is perhaps telling, though necessarily fragmentary. York has ghost stories relating to its Roman history, to the plague, to Victorian slums. If ghost stories reflect trauma in the abstract, it is perhaps of little surprise that they emerge in relation to ‘traumatic’ histories; mass murder, genocide, slavery. Ghost stories might be considered a response to awkward silences surrounding these dissonant histories, reactions to repression and institutional amnesia. Hauntology and the ‘spectral turn’ in academia is a way of exploring this conflicted process, and engages well with the complexities and contradictions of such topics. Can Hauntology be usefully applied within heritage studies? A way of developing more complex, and indeed contradictory, understandings of ambiguous engagements with the past, place, and the present (indeed ‘future’)?

TWITTER RESPONSES / FURTHER READING

From Dr Karl Bell’s Supernatural Cities project (can be found here http://www.port.ac.uk/centre-for-european-and-international-studies-research/research-projects/supernatural-cities/)

‏@imaginetheurban May 28

Supernatural Cities retweeted Jessica Moody

An enjoyable discussion about urban haunting, memory, narratives & the ambiguous ontology of ghosts. Thanks Jessica!

From one of our undergraduate History students:

‏@padraigtzn

@jessicammoody for some good ghost fiction, you should read Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series. Good mythology and history

TOPIC: Ghost Stories

READING:

Bell, Karl. “Civic Spirits? Ghost Lore and Civic Narratives in Nineteenth Century Portsmouth” Cultural and Social History Vol 11 No 1. 2014
Inglis and Holmes. “Highland and Other Haunts: Ghosts in Scottish Tourism” Annals of Tourism Research Vol 30 No 1, 2003
Baptist, Karen. “Re-enchanting Memorial Landscapes: Lessons from the Roadside” Landscape Journal 32:1 2013
Sterling, Colin. “Spectral Anatomies: Heritage, Hauntology and the ‘Ghosts’ of Varosha” Present Pasts 6 (1), 2014

PRESENT: Jessica Moody, Karl Bell, Eilis Phillips, Dan McCabe, Brad Beaven, Carolyn Hughes, Wendy, Katy Ball, George Malcolmson, Ollie, and maybe some ghosts…

LOCATION: The Kings Street Tavern

FOOD: Popcorn

SPOOKY PROPS: Headstone shaped reservation sign…total Christmas Carol moment.

NEXT TIME: The group will meet again Wednesday 24th June. The theme will be Graphic novels, comic books, and public history.

NEWS! Engaging with the Past and Being Human

I am very happy to announce that the Engaging with the Past reading group will be hosting a special event this November as part of the University of Portsmouth’s successful application to host a series of Being Human* events.

The University of Portsmouth will be hosting a number of different events and activities under the theme of “Port Cities: Narratives of Migration”. As part of this, on Tuesday 17th November the Engaging with the Past reading group will host a special event at Somerstown Community Centre (‘The Hub’), where invited guest speaker Eithne Nightgale will discuss her research on Migration Museums and Port Cities. There will be refreshments provided and this will be followed by our traditional reading group in the pub (Kings Street Tavern). All welcome.

More details will be posted closer to the time.

Jessica

*Being Human is a national festival of the humanities and is run by the School of Advanced Study, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.

For more information visit http://beinghumanfestival.org/being-human-programme-2015/

Engaging with the Past: Heritage Film Revisited

Engaging with the Past: March Group Meeting

In March, the group met to discuss “Heritage Film Revisited” – a topic suggested by group regular and University of Portsmouth Lecturer Dr Rob James, whose research focuses on historic film.

As is customary, we began by querying the term ‘Heritage Film’ itself – what is heritage film exactly? How does this differ to ‘Historical Film’? Or, indeed, costume drama, period film etc. What is ‘heritage’ doing in Heritage Film? If we take current theorisations of heritage as a point of departure – is Heritage Film also about the present in the same way ‘heritage’ is? However, isn’t all film about the ‘present’ in which it is made? It was suggested that whilst this may be the case, in Heritage Films you can “see the strings”, the intentions are more, not less obvious.

We queried whether we can consider Carry On films as Heritage Films – or whether there is something about the comedy genre which makes this more of an anti-Heritage Film genre? Similarly, where is TV in this debate? Can we say Heritage TV and mean roughly the same thing as Heritage Film? Critics have tended to focus on film, is TV just too different an industry to compare; due to authors, branding, serialisation etc? Interestingly, when the discussion strayed into talk of Game of Thrones, there was criticism that this was too off topic because GoT is ‘made up’ – but then all Heritage Film is also ‘made up’, tied intimately as much of it is to literature. However this raised a key issue – is there ultimately an elitist focus on ‘the canon’ – only some literature (despite the fact that most literature is about the past even if it is about yesterday…) can be adapted into a Heritage Film? Is Trainspotting Heritage Film? Or, taking in board more recent developments in heritage studies terminology, perhaps Dissonant or ‘Dark’ Heritage Film?

Again, this brought us back to ‘heritage’ in this terminology. Does the term itself, as a tool of analysis do anything useful? Does it in fact obscure much of the production, how films are made? Is the term restrictive, a “lazy grab” which is out of date – limited to its time of emergence in the context of the 1980s, its politics and specific debates about ‘heritage’ more broadly? Does this mean that Heritage Film is now History? It is important to remember that Heritage Film is a critical term, not an industry one; it is not technically a ‘genre’ as such, but a creation of its critics. In this way, it is much the same as the ‘Heritage Industry’ term which emerged around the same time, and should be treated with the same due caution.

However, the term Heritage Film itself conveys elitist assumptions perpetuated by such critics; there is an assumption that audiences of so-called Heritage Film are ‘middlebrow’ and, indeed, middle class. However this is an assumption which is rarely supported with research (with the exception of Claire Monk’s work – in Readings below). In this way studies of Heritage Film also mirror developments in the field of Heritage Studies, which has also in recent years turned to consider ‘audience’, engagement, and affect. However, scholarship on Heritage Film, which mirrors much from the Heritage Debates of the 1980s, follows similar lines of critique, with an apparent focus on a Heritage Film being the domain of a largely conservative, specifically gendered (largely considered to be female in interest), and with a focus on the Edwardian period or earlier – and, of course, the enduring assumed connection with the country house and aristocracy as the pinnacle of what ‘heritage’, and thereby Heritage Film, is.

As with all phrases, language and terms which deploy the politicised word-bomb of ‘heritage’, we must ask; whose heritage? The ‘heritage’ considered is here largely white, male, middle or upper class and heterosexual. When homosexuality is shown, it is largely from a heteronormative perspective, still ‘aristocratic’ and ‘Othered’. We ended our group with a discussion of Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights, noted for the casting of a black Heathcliffe. Whilst largely critically acclaimed, Galpin draws attention to the auteurism in Arnold’s film, the place and influence of the director on the film. However, perhaps auteurism is a useful term for heritage more broadly; it draws attention to the influence of people and away from inanimate things at the focus of ‘heritage’. The auteurism of Arnold’s Wuthering Heights was seen to be a part of its authenticity – another key, yet problematic term. There is an ‘authenticity’ sought within Heritage Films, and keenly interrogated by audiences; yet, as Galpin suggested, this authenticity is judged against a ‘cultural memory’. For example, in films depicting Tudor England, houses may have contained artefacts from the century before, antiques, but in adaptations the fixtures and fittings, so often the focus of debate around ‘Heritage Film’ are culturally, if not necessarily temporally, ‘authentic’. However, ‘authenticity’ itself has changed in meaning in recent years. There is a focus of an ‘authenticity’ around experience, an ontological authenticity, reflected perhaps in Wolf Hall’s ‘authenticity’ to the themes of Hilary Mantel’s novel. The change in cultural engagements with ideas such as ‘authenticity’ is a phenomena reflected in developing adaptation, which is reflected in broader understandings of ‘heritage’. Here, whilst Heritage Film may be considered to be about adaptation, so too is ‘heritage’ about adaptation, about change.

SELECTED TWITTER RESPONSES TO TWEETSTORM #EngagingwtPast:

On anti-Heritage Film…

‏@ProfDaveAndress

@jessicammoody What about *This Is England*, or *Pride* as ‘heritage films’ of the 80s? Or dear old Ken Loach & the Spirit of 45…?

On Auteurism…

‏@Sarah_May1

.@jessicammoody some researchers have a distinctly ‘auteur’ approach to their heritage writing and presentation

‏@jessicammoody

@Sarah_May1 Don’t we all in some ways? (No ‘death of the researcher’…) But are there ‘signature’ exhibitions etc?

‏@jessicammoody

@Sarah_May1 Need to look into auteur theory more to articulate this better! But interesting possibilities I think.

‏@Sarah_May1

@jessicammoody more visible in writing as far as I can see. But heritage work is always collaborative, like film, so that role interesting

On Carry On…

‏@KresySiberia

@jessicammoody ot but its amazing to me how carry ons have become historical during my life time, the streets, the phones, the wallpaper!

‏@KresySiberia

@jessicammoody “man in space” pub sign in C.O. at your convenience is near me , pub wanted 2 b “the yuri gagarin” but USSR disaproved pubs

On ‘authenticity’…

‏@FourRedShoes

@jessicammoody @Sarah_May1 Excellent point – ‘authenticity’ is culturally determined in time & space.

On lack of audience research…

‏@RobJames68

@jessicammoody Mirroring film history too, but thankfully there has been some progress in recent years

TOPIC: Heritage Film Revisited

READING:

Monk, Claire. “The British heritage-film debate revisited” in Claire Monk and Amy Sargeant (eds) British Historical Cinema: The history, heritage and costume film (London: Routledge, 2002)
Vidal, Belen. Heritage Film: Nation, Genre and Representation (London: Wallflower, 2012)
Galpin, Shelley Anne. “Auteurs and Authenticity: Adapting the Brontes in the Twenty-First Century” Journal of British Cinema and Television Vol 11 no. 1 (2014) 86-100

PRESENT: Jessica Moody, Rob James, Janet Delve, David Anderson, Ken Lunn, Ann Day, David Cleverly, Katy Gibbons, Fiona McCall, Sarah May, Eilis Phillips.

LOCATION: The King Street Tavern, Portsmouth

FOOD: Jacket Potatoes

CROCKERY: Heritage Cup

NEXT TIME: Wednesday 27th, the theme will be “Ghost Stories”.

Engaging with the Past: Zoos and Heritage

Engaging with the Past: February Group Meeting

The group met on Wednesday 25^th February to discuss the topic of ‘zoos’. This topic was partly prompted by the interests of one of the group regulars, Sarah May, who also co-authored one of the articles within the special issue journal we considered. Unfortunately, Sarah could not be present this month.

What was both interesting, surprising and in some senses incredibly obvious, was the prospect of thinking about zoos as a type of ‘museum’, with ‘exhibits’, some of which are in ‘cases’ and undergo curatorial choices in terms of particular representations. Additionally, Museums and Zoos both have parallel imperial histories, having been bound up with the promotion, representation and control of empire and colonial space. Both have historically exhibited the exotic ‘other’, through material culture or through ‘exotic’ animals, especially from the African continent. Both also have parallel nineteenth century contexts of ‘civilising’ public missions (see Helen Cowie’s research, below). Through curatorial choices in both institutions, such representation is also bound up with issues of control; through colonising the ‘wild’ or the ‘past’. Both the ‘wild’ and the ‘past’ are the creation of those with the power to represent them, through museum display or zoological interpretation, and such curatorial decisions are enacted in both spaces around their viewing publics – both zoos and museums exhibit ‘things’ (inanimate or alive) primarily for their visitors, from the perspective of being viewed. The artificial landscapes of zoos are perhaps more like theatres, for animals to perform being animals to humans.

However, zoos, like other examples of heritage, represents the particular ‘present’ in which they were created; the context and anxieties of their own time and changing social and political values. Whilst zoos may have historically been about displaying empire, power, entertainment and civilising missions, in the post-animal rights era, the focus is much more solidly on ‘conservation’ as justification for their continuation. However, perceiving zoos as institutions of conservation is itself a conception specific to later 20^th and early 21^st centuries, where will the focus shift to next? Whilst this relatively recent shift towards ‘conservation’ might appease some modern sensibilities surrounding the containment and display of animals, it nonetheless brings the connection between museums and zoos conceptually closer. Further, both zoos and museums have their *star* exhibits; their Mona Lisa’s, Turners, Pandas and Polar Bears. Like museums, such exhibits can be loaned or gifted for political, power and diplomatic reasons (the ‘diplomatic Panda’ move; think Parthenon sculptures being ‘loaned’ to a Russian Museum, point made by @greg_jenner). However, loaning is itself a power move, the power to loan is the power to rightfully own.

Sometimes the links between zoos and museums overlap, the World Museum in Liverpool is legally both a zoo and a museum (with an aquarium and insect house). However, Cumberland Natural History Museum in Portsmouth removed some of its aquaria to avoid becoming classified as a zoo, due to the expensive overheads and staffing this would bring forth. Museums currently have enough financial problems being a museum, let alone anything else.

One of the most interesting themes to emerge from our reading was what the zoo as an artificial and imagined landscape could tell us, or reflect about the social, cultural and political context of their locations. This in particular came through in Tony Axelsson and Sarah May’s article “Constructed Landscapes in Zoos and Heritage”. Here, the imagined, ‘other’, landscapes of zoos reflected their own national and local contexts. Whilst an imagined ‘Africa’ is often central within European zoo landscapes, Dublin Zoo’s ‘African Plains’ section reflected a sense of Irish natural cultural heritage through a particular mythical ‘wilderness’ specific to Ireland, performed through the use masses of water and lakes. What’s also important here is the sense that the ‘wild’ and the ‘wilderness’ are themselves human constructions, specific to cultural contexts and varying between different places and people. However, as far as landscape is concerned, what is also significant is the extent to which zoos are historical landscapes as much as ecological ones.

Andrew Shapland and David Van Reybrouck’s article “Competing Natural and Historical Heritage: The Penguin Pool at London Zoo” looked at the changing significance of this enclosure. Built in 1934, The Penguin Pool is Grade 1 listed for its architectural significance, however it has been empty of penguins for some time since its construction is not suitable for them, and indeed was causing joint problems and arthritis in the penguins. However, the pool was listed for its significance of being an important example of Modernist design, a movement which holds functionality and purpose at its core. The Penguin Pool has, in many respects, lost this purpose having lost its penguins; its “penguinness”. There are plans to insert penguin statues in this space, or create ‘bionic penguins’ to create a visitor experience based on a penguin’s point of view. London Zoo has several such enclosures which have long since been deemed unsuitable for living animals, but are considered architecturally significant. Will they remain empty? Will London Zoo itself become a sort of Zoo Museum? Cataloguing the way humans represented animals in the 20^th Century? Is London Zoo to become the Pitt Rivers of Zoos? The listing of enclosures has frozen London Zoo – and means it cannot reinvent itself in the way other zoos have, keeping the focus on ‘exhibiting’ without changing social values, architectural conservation over wildlife conservation. We began by thinking about zoos as museums conceptually, and ended by considering London Zoo as a possible Zoo Museum, a Zooseum if you will.

Twitter responses:

@essiepett recommended looking at the history of the Johannesburg Zoo in relation to its philanthropic history and desegregation before apartheid.

There was much in the way of silliness surrounding “penguinness” from @lottelydia and @ProfDaveAndress

TOPIC: Zoos

READING: Special Issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies: “Zoos as Heritage: An Archaeological Perspective” Volume 14, Issue 1, 2008 (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13527250701711994#.VPRVQGVFCzk)

PRESENT: Jessica Moody, Katy Ball, Rob James and Thomas Rodgers

LOCATION: The Kings Street Tavern, Portsmouth.

FOOD: Carrot Cake.

DRINK: Yes.

Roundtable at SHS2015: ROUNDTABLE – Between Public History and Heritage: Making, sharing and debating the past in a global present

New abstract for Public History and Heritage roundtable at this year’s Social History Society Conference, March 31-April 2nd 2015.

Chairs: Dr Alix Green and Dr Jessica Moody

Respondents: Professor Steve Poole (UWE), Dr Catherine Fletcher (Sheffield), Dr Edward Madigan (Royal Holloway) and Hannah Baxter (Glasgow)

‘Public history’ and ‘heritage’ are widely used interchangeably and without careful attention to the complex, contested and elusive – if not hidden – conceptual and practical difficulties they present. These terms matter. They affect how professionals in historical fields see themselves, their work, educational programmes – and each other; they therefore merit our serious attention. They also carry differing public understandings, images, symbolism – and power. How far does the space between these terms, and indeed their overlap or conflict, affect representations of and engagements with the past? What is at stake by calling one engagement ‘public history’ and another ‘heritage’?

For this roundtable, the chairs will put forward a case for engaging with these important conceptual and methodological issues, to which four scholars – with differing academic backgrounds and a variety of research interests connected with the public representation and engagement with the past – will respond.

Steve Poole (Professor of Modern History and Heritage, UWE) highlights how some of the space between ‘public history’ and ‘heritage’ relates to ‘self-recognition’: questions of identity and identifying. Issues of identity have inevitably led heritage managers, historians and experience designers into collaborative approaches to interpretation that highlight affect, immersion and experience. How can historians best respond to projects of this kind and how do they impact upon the nature of our own disciplines and disciplinarity?

Catherine Fletcher (Lecturer in Public History, University of Sheffield) reflects on her involvement in the recent BBC2/Company Pictures series Wolf Hall; some histories, such as the reign of Henry VIII, have assumed a powerful role in shaping national identity. They are often presented as fitting comfortably into a particular narrative of ‘national heritage’, but only by obscuring or eliding difficult aspects of the pasts in question. What role does or can public history have in disentangling and critically examining some of these narrative threads?

Edward Madigan (Lecturer in Public History and First World War Studies) questions how the representation of the Great War as ‘public history’ or ‘heritage’ impacts on engagements (scholarly and public) with this history, though public conceptions of ‘public history’ are, ironically or not, less well formulated or understood. He argues that having a clear grasp of terminology and language is crucial to understanding the contested history and heritage of the war, a history with its own set of complex emotional connections and responses.

Finally, Hannah Baxter (PhD student, University of Glasgow) contributes a different ‘disciplinary’ perspective and asks where ‘public archaeology’ sits within this debate? In her own work with community projects in York and Sheffield, she’s found ‘heritage’ to be a distinctly problematic term, which at times limits and shuts out particular connections to the past. However, there is a distinction here between ‘public archaeology’ (talks, events, open days) and ‘community archaeology’ (in theory far more collaborative), how do these distinctions relate to or differ from distinction made in history as a discipline?

This roundtable aims to interrogate the conceptual space between ‘public history’ and ‘heritage’, and indeed, the myriad of other terms which may emerge, drawing on the experiences, backgrounds, and research of the above contributors. We aim to debate the issues at stake by using such terms, thinking critically about our own practice, disciplines, and the impact and context of this in different public spheres.

Original abstract contributors responded to can be found here: https://engagingwiththepast.wordpress.com/2015/02/02/shs-roundtable-on-public-history-and-heritage-call-for-participants/

We welcome responses and questions from the Twittersphere and on this blog. Please tweet/post comments and questions and we’ll try and incorporate these into the roundtable discussion (time permitting!)

SHS Roundtable on Public History and Heritage – call for participants

Chairs: Dr Alix Green (Lecturer in Public History, University of Central Lancashire) and Dr Jessica Moody (Lecturer in Modern History and Heritage, University of Portsmouth)

We are seeking contributors to a Roundtable on public history and heritage at this year’s Social History Society conference (March 31st – April 2nd, University of Portsmouth – more information here: https://www.socialhistory.org.uk/conference).

Our abstract is set out below. If this is something you would like to contribute to, please email us (Jessica.moody@port.ac.uk and AGreen15@uclan.ac.uk) with a brief biography and an initial 100 word response to the issues/themes set out, or anything which relates to your own research and practice.

We require responses by Friday 13th February. Participants welcome from any discipline which ‘engages with the past’. Please email us with any questions or queries, or post a question on this blog.

Between public history and heritage: making, sharing and debating the past in a global present

Public history is a field with an increasingly global reach. The International Federation for Public History held its first conference in 2014, and the International Congress of the Historical Sciences will host its first public history roundtable in Jinan next year. ‘Heritage’ has in some senses always been both paradoxically more ‘local’ and more ‘global’ in outlook. The provision of international codes of conduct as set out by UNESCO and transnational policy guidance at times sitting awkwardly against the various contested understandings of the term, its practice, policies and limitations, which are mediated by far more regional, national, and local cultural codes, and, indeed, by history itself. Further, the academic field of Heritage Studies has developed immensely in the last few decades. It has developed globally, taking on a distinctly ‘critical’ tone in some spheres – the global Association of Critical Heritage Studies, which is now in its second year, holds an international conference every two years, this year in Canberra. Yet a global community of enquiry has yet to emerge to take on the debates about academic and professional identity, to engage with the blurring or elision of the conceptual space between public history and heritage, both academically and professionally.

Partly, this conceptual space is forged within and beside academic disciplines and their own boundaries. Whereas Public History can more easily be assigned lineage to History as a discipline – with roots in the historical method, albeit both inside and outside ‘the academy’, Heritage is academically far more eclectic. However, in ‘western’ contexts, Heritage’s relationship with archaeology, has traditionally tied its study to materiality, especially in the UK. This is itself a relationship forged within the crucible of the western ‘discourse’ of heritage, which Laurajane Smith (2006) has argued foregrounds ‘heritage’ as largely tangible, old, elite, white and male.

Generally, historians – whether they label themselves as ‘public’ or otherwise – are not looking to the history of these concepts in a way which may help us explore their meaning in the present. Does the coining of ‘public history’ in the US, and its subsequent import by the UK and elsewhere obscure a longer lineage of ‘history in public’ in those countries? If historians have acquired ‘public history’ as a label for their work outside the academy, what claim to, or involvement in, ‘heritage’ should they have? To what extent are we acknowledging and exploring the historical, political and social ‘baggage’ that accompany these terms? These are issues which the contributors to this panel, many of whom mediate the conceptual space between public history and heritage in their professional lives, will scrutinize.

Engaging with the Past: Cultural Heritage and Public History Reading Group

Engaging with the Past is a heritage and public history reading group based in Portsmouth which aims to discuss, debate and share ideas concerning ‘heritage’ through contemporary cultural production and the representation of the past – through management, public engagement, and various methods of dissemination. This remit covers any aspect of cultural heritage in theory and production, and the study and practice of public history across disciplines, between academia, public and professional bodies and organisations, and beyond. This includes, but is by no means limited to, issues and themes surrounding:

history, archaeology, identity, place and people
dissonant heritage and traumatic pasts
intangible heritage, creativity, music, art, literature
living history, performance and re-enactment
archives, museums and galleries
urban and rural tours, guides and walks
conservation, reconstruction and regeneration
local heritage and history projects
public art, memorialisation and commemoration
cultural tourism, travel and ‘historic cities’
theorising history and memory
the ‘use’ of the past in the present
storytelling and oral history
education, schools and informal learning
new ways of theorising heritage
new technologies and possibilities

It is hoped that this reading group can provide an opportunity for friendly debate and for ideas to be shared. The group is open to all: students, academics and professionals, and anyone with an interest in the many complex and fascinating issues surrounding how and why we use, represent and engage with the past in the present.

This group emerges and follows on from a similar group started in York in 2010.

If you would like any further information or would like to be added to the mailing list, please email Jessica Moody jessica.moody@port.ac.uk

Meetings are currently held once a month (around the 3^rd Wednesday, though check the mailing list for exact dates).

FIRST MEETING:

Wednesday 22^nd October, 7.30pm Venue TBC
THEME: Maritime Heritage and Waterfront Regeneration (please join mailing list for readings)

#EngagingwtPast

Replica Spoon: Ryedale Folk Museum, Ryedale, Yorkshire