93153 - ARCHAEOLOGY, MEDIA, AND THE PUBLIC (LM)

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

By the end of the course students will have an in-depth knowledge of the relationship between archaeological research, cultural heritage, media (meaning both traditional and new digital media) and the public. They will be critically aware of the strategies of communication and dissemination of archaeological knowledge adopted by the various people involved in the job of dissemination and enhancement. The knowledge acquired will make students proficient in assessing, monitoring and reporting in the media on communication activities relating to archaeology and the cultural heritage.

Contenuti

The perception of the public interest in archaeology has evolved considerably over time, channelled through different media employed to convey experienced knowledge and shape a common understanding of time and materiality. Being attentive and reflexive to issues of communication, narration and representation has become a crucial skill for contemporary archaeologists, not only to educate the non-specialised audience about the findings and specificities of the discipline but also as an incidental methodological and source of theoretical inspiration that can transform the social impact of a scientific project by fostering interdisciplinarity, community engagement, and policymaking. This course will provoke students to reflect on the ethical and political dimensions of archaeology in contemporary societies, the fast-growing challenges and opportunities posited by the introduction of digital technologies for the sharing and co-creation of archaeological narratives, and the multiple scales of imagination that compose critical heritage practices.

1. Introduce each other: Presentation of the course, discussion of research interests, list of readings and assignments

2. CRAFT: politics and ethics in contemporary public archaeology and heritage

The session deals with archaeological and critical heritage approaches that give an overall orientation to the topics explored throughout the course. Particular attention will be devoted to the theoretical development of public archaeology and the critical analysis of heritage discourses, tackling the authority of archaeologists in the circumstances of multiculturalism, postcolonialism, and globalization. This entails reflecting on disciplinary politics and ethics to evaluate what responsibilities lie in archaeological and heritage practices. This is never a neutral endeavor, but archaeology affects the public sphere as much as is affected by it.

3. REPRESENTATION: Archaeological imagination and the commodification of the past

A particular kind of visual political economy is embedded with archaeology and heritage practices. The lesson overviews how concepts and modes of representation have shaped perceptions of authenticity and social values, reinstating or challenging dominant hierarchies of knowledge production through archaeological imagination. This is also reflected in both the popularized images of archaeologists and heritage commodification. It is stressed the two-way direction of any attempt at visualizing the relationships of past and present, heritage and the public.

4. Laboratory: What does the news tell us about archaeology and heritage?

5. COMMUNICATION: from enlightening to sharing and participation

Even though communication is embroiled in the disciplinary development of archaeology, a reflexive interest in the subject has become significant in archaeological and heritage scholarship only in recent years. This session will be about communication of archaeological knowledge with particular emphasis on the relationships with print, audiovisual and digital media. The main models that have been proposed to describe archaeological communication will be discussed as well as the strengths and shortcomings of public outreach enhanced through digital platforms.

6. NARRATIVES: languages of archaeological heritage in practice

Narratives are the communicative outcome of the relationship between archaeology media and the public. This session will deepen into political discourses mobilized through archaeological practices and heritage imaginaries to contextualize the move towards multivocality, human rights and social justice as means to disrupt preservationist legacies and western aesthetic canon. On the other hand, the increased relevance of pseudo-archaeology and political populism calls for renewed self-aware attention as to where to draw the line between alternative narratives and misrepresentation.

7. Laboratory: heritage and pseudo-archaeology in social media

8. Focus on Archaeology and Cinema

9. COLLABORATION: spaces of knowledge and friction at different scales of community imagination

One of the most concrete manifestations of public-engaged archaeologies is the growth of community-based collaborative approaches. Those aim at creating a synergic implementation of democratic communication and multivocal narratives to empower communities’ decision-making and research design by representing a past that matters to them. Collaboration extends to widen public, expertise, and media. The pursuit of shared agency in archaeological investigation and heritage resource management acquires importance as an intermediate space of knowledge production. The frictions generated by this space are particularly relevant for assessing the development of public archaeology and critical when engaging with Indigenous peoples’ perspectives about memory and rights.

10. MEDIATION: archaeological ethnography and relational ontologies

Archaeology is an act of mediation connecting past and present realms of experience. In this lesson, we will discuss how an archaeological interest in the present steps forward as a complementary form of public engagement that aims at expanding political concerns rather than reproducing a consumable past for heterogenous audiences. Rethinking what matters in defining the links of archaeology with the public, we will look at how archaeological ethnography draws on material narratives to raise a critical voice in present societies. This reorients research along a past-present continuum but also reverberates into post-human understandings of the “social”, bringing future-oriented questions about the meanings and uses of archaeological heritage.

11. Laboratory: photography, video, material histories

12. Focus on participatory design, digital narratives and values-led communication

13. Digital Heritage and Slow Archaeology

This session will debate the ethical and methodological challenges of digital heritage research in relation to data access, elaboration and sharing. Digital media have contributed to the affirmation of multivocal narratives, collaborative methodologies and ‘symmetrical’ modes of engagement within archaeological and heritage practices. Critics underline the technological-driven experimentation in the field at the expense of situated research inquiry, the overall environmental impact of digital media infrastructures, the reconfiguration of political asymmetries and expert authority through digitization. The call for a ‘slow archaeology’ has emerged to reorient theoretical foundations and research objectives in line with critical approaches to heritage and digital humanities.

14. Laboratory: countermapping heritage

15. Individual/group presentations

 

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Francesco Orlandi Barbano