B8821 - Semiotics of Cultural Heritage: Landscapes, Museums and Urban Spaces (1) (LM

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, the student will have learned to look at cultural heritage from a critical perspective, as a discursive object and as a semiotic process. By combining analytical tools from narrative-discursive, cultural and spatial semiotics, the student will acquire tools that enable him/her to critically analyze urban spaces, landscapes and museums as places of expression of cultural heritage.

Course contents

The course aims to define a semiotic perspective for the study of Cultural Heritage and its processes of construction, translation, negotiation, and transmission. From the viewpoint of discourse semiotics and cultural semiotics, Cultural Heritage will be considered as a semiotic construct located at the intersection of multiple discursive domains and oriented toward the production of a shared mnemonic landscape, yet marked by internal tensions and fault lines that make it a site of confrontation between different axiologies and cosmologies. Particular attention will be devoted to urban space as a privileged setting of Cultural Heritage and to the so-called dissonant heritage.

Readings/Bibliography

Mandatory readings

 
Lorusso, A.M. (2015) Cultural Semiotics. For a Cultural Perspective in Semiotics. Palgrave Macmillan [chapters 3 & 4]

Marrone, G. (2022), Introduction to the Semiotics of the Text, DeGruyter Mouton [chapters 3 & 4]

Hobsbawm, E. (2012). “Introduction: Inventing Traditions”. In E. Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (Eds.), The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-14

Lotman, Y. (1990) Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture, Indiana University Press (selected chapters).

Assmann, A (2011) Cultural Memory and Western Civilization. Functions, Media, Archives (selected chapters).

Tunbridge, J.E.; Ashworth, G.J. (1996) Dissonant heritage: the management of the past as a resource in conflict. J. Wiley, 1996 (Chapter 1-2)

Smith, L. (2006) Uses of Heritage. Routledge. [chapters 1 & 2]

Dissonant/difficult heritage
Violi, P., Demaria, C. (Eds.) (2023) Reading Memory Sites Through Signs. Hiding into landscape, Amsterdam University Press (Introduction by Violi and Demaria and chapters by Pezzini and Mazzucchelli)

Panico, M. (2024) Nostalgic Effects: The Case of DDR Museum in Berlin, from Space for Nostalgia, Palgrave

Urban heritage
Gottdiener, Lagopoulos (1986) The City and the sign : an introduction to urban semiotics (chapters by Greimas, Eco and Barthes)

Bellentani, Panico, Yoka (2024) Semiotic Approaches to Urban Space: Signs and Cities, Edward Elgar (chapter by Mazzucchelli)

A selection of relevant semiotic writings will be provided by the teacher and uploaded in Virtuale.

Teaching methods

Frontal lectures and class discussions/presentations.

Assessment methods

Oral exam aimed at assessing the competence of the student in discussing the main theory of cultural heritage studies applying semiotic approaches and categories.

Teaching tools

Multimedial equipment of the lecture room. Slides and other teaching materials.

Office hours

See the website of Francesco Mazzucchelli