85600 - Geography of Cultural and Intercultural Heritage

Learning outcomes

The course unit deals with the analysis of the role that cultural heritage has played and still plays in the building and functioning of the modern nation state. The issue of the so called “places of the memory” became, in the late Eighties of the last century, a mainstream topic, as they were introduced in the scientific debate by the French historian Pierre Nora about the difference between history and memory. The places of memory and their identification with the notion of heritage have become in modern age more important than before, because it speeded up the processes of consumption of the “traditions". Cultural heritage is also frequently a territory of strong conflicts, representing, sometimes in a hostile way, the fetish of the national patriotism. An exemplary case is provided by the meanings and ways the landscapes have been imagined and represented from Renaissance onwards. Another exemplary case was the “invention” of the classical tradition which preceded Italian and European Renaissance. Recent dramatic events about Palmira’s partial destruction show how even this “pidgin” translation of the cultural heritage hides its potential use as a weapon. The course unit will pay particular attention to the different ways adopted by the European and extra-European national authorities for conserving and managing their cultural heritages, highlighting the need for a sort of "geographic" and "ethnographic" sensibility in dealing with different local cultures and administrative traditions. By the end of the course unit, students are able to correctly identify the relationships between places and culture formations, and to interpret them through the complex cross-scalar framework of globalization processes which affects local development.

Course contents

THE STUFF HERITAGE IS MADE ON. MEDIA AND HERITAGE MAKING

 

The course aims at bringing to the fore an underlying issue, being at the heart of the debate around “heritage”, specifically when “tradition” and “identity” stances are involved.

Since the late 80’s, the geographical and historical analyses shed a new light on what heritage means, not only relativizing it – putting it in its spatial and temporal contexts – but also placing it in the larger framework of the evolutionary path of humans in their mutual relationships with the Earth. In this sense, heritage is now seen not just as a “humanistic” matter, but pertaining to a bio-culturalstandpoint.

Still, some inconsistencies remain, above all in the recourse to binary oppositions, like “nature/culture”, or “tangible/intangible”, and so on.

Adopting the landscape as a model suitable for overcoming such inconsistencies, the course will allow the students to:

• acquiring a substantial knowledge of the main issues at stake in the current debate over heritage, especially as regards the bio-cultural perspective;
• delving into the fundamental role of media (in the widest sense) in building specific “environments” constituting the “sensitivity-in-common” from which cultures, then heritages, come.

The course will address the following main topics:

• What is “heritage”? Spatial and temporal dimensions of it.
• Social and political uses of heritage
• The heritage as consumption and its economic impact
• Heritage and scale
• “Mediality” and the building of sensitivity
• Mediarchy and the "modulation of presence" as a challenge to our critical judgement
• Managing “in-between worlds” for a mindful heritage

Readings/Bibliography

B. Graham, G. Ashworth, J. Tumbridge, A Geography of Heritage. Power, Culture, and Economy, London, Routledge, 2016.

Y. Citton, Mediarchy, Cambridge, Polity, 2019.

Teaching methods

Course will be taught through a mixture of formal lectures and discussion in classroom. Its aim will be to facilitate interaction between the lecturer and students and to stimulate debate among students.
Class attendance is critical to take advantage of a way of learning not feasible through homework, and it turns out to be crucial in order for the student to adequately satisfy exam requirements.

Assessment methods

The exam consists of an oral examination on the entire syllabus. The aim of the interview is to assess the methodological and critical skills acquired by the student. While there is a single bibliography, given the importance of class attendance for an appropriate training process two grading scales are employed: for attending and non-attending students.

ATTENDING STUDENTS

Attendance and participation count for 15% of the final grade.

In particular, it will be assessed the ability of the student to participate actively in class, also using multimedia and collaborative tools provided within the course; such capacity, if combined with the achievement of a coherent framework of the topics developed during the lessons , the application of critical sense and suitable means of expression will be considered and evaluated with the maximum grading = A (27-30 con lode).

Attendance, if joint to a predominantly mnemonic acquisition of course's contents and discontinuous language and logical skills will be assessed in a grading range from good (B = 24-26) to satisfactory (C = 21-23).

Attendance, with a minimum level of knowledge of the course contents, combined with training gaps or inadequate language and logical skills, it will get as grade ‘barely passing' (D = 18-20).

The absence of a minimum level of knowledge of the course contents, combined with inadequate language and logical skills and training gaps, it will produce a fail (E) grading, even in spite of an assiduous attendance.

NON-ATTENDING STUDENTS

Non-attending students will be assessed primarily on the ability to use literature made available, in order to properly expose the contents of the course. This ability, when combined with the achievement of a coherent framework of the course's themes, the application of critical sense, and suitable means of expression will be considered and evaluated with the maximum grading = A (27-30 con lode).

A predominantly mnemonic acquisition of course's contents along with discontinuous language and logical skills will be assessed in a grading range from good (B = 24-26) to satisfactory (C = 21-23).

A minimum level of knowledge of the course contents, combined with training gaps or inadequate language and logical skills, it will get as grade ‘barely passing' (D = 18-20).

The absence of a minimum level of knowledge of the course contents, combined with inadequate language and logical skills and training gaps, it will produce a fail (E) grading.

Teaching tools

Multimedia tools

Office hours

See the website of Mario Angelo Neve