Dr. Michelle Tisdel
Sessions in which Dr. Michelle Tisdel participates
Saturday 4 June, 2016
Sessions in which Dr. Michelle Tisdel attends
Saturday 4 June, 2016
Heritage practices often lead to social exclusion. As an "Authorized Heritage Discourse" (AHD) (Smith 2006) may define what is considered to be heritage, a certain set of social values can come to exclude other values. By formulating heritage policies which reproduce the existing AHD government may further such exclusion. Every now and then AHDs are challenged, leading to what political scientists like Ross (2007; 2009) call "cultural contestations" between groups. These are surrounded ...
There is no doubt that the involvement of civil society is a key element in the history of heritage. Working upstream, in line with or against the tide of state recognition, enlightened amateurs or ordinary citizens have invested time and energy in the safeguarding and enhancement of a good, a place or a practice, judged, from their point of view, as irreplaceable or remarkable. It is easy for each country or each region to find an example of a precursor, working alone or in a group, who has ...
Most of what we experience as heritage emerges into conscious recognition through a complex mixture of political and ideological filters, including nationalism. In these processes, through a variety of devices (museums, scholarly research, consumer reproduction, etc.), dualistic classifications articulate a powerful hierarchy of value and significance. In particular, the tangible-intangible pair, given legitimacy by such international bodies as UNESCO, reproduces a selective ordering of cul...
Sunday 5 June, 2016
Digital installations and interventions have been seen as a promising ways to support and foster dialogue in museum exhibitions. How does this potential translate into practice and does it enable reflexive and critical approaches towards heritage-making? This session aims to explore how digital installations and interventions in the context of museum exhibitions envision the notion of the ‘dialogic museum’. It particularly aims to articulate and problematize the role of digital in...
"What does heritage change?" is a multifaceted question to which the answer(s) are in primary respects related to real-life negotiations among different groups of citizens, cultures, races, ethnic groups, sexual identities, and social classes about received, official and/or widely accepted or accomodated intangible attributes, cultural traditions, historic monuments, buildings, and other transmitted or revived historical legacies. Heritage designated by and for whom, for what motivations, an...
Monday 6 June, 2016
This session will address the potential and limitations of heritage as a tool for leverage, empowerment and dissent in Africa. It is widely acknowledged that heritage—the selective valuation and use of the past in the present—can be an oppressive. Heritage work in Africa has even been characterized as "an instrument for dictatorship" (Peterson et al. 2015:28) because it is often implicated in upholding particular narratives and political orders, imposing a singular vision onto a heterog...
Tuesday 7 June, 2016
To date, very little literature explicitly explores the relationships of museums and heritage to historical consciousness, despite the overlapping concerns shared by these respective fields. This roundtable addresses the subject of museums as sites of historical consciousness by reflecting on a recent book project. Museums as Sites of Historical Consciousness: Perspectives on Museum Theory and Practice in Canada (working title, UBC Press, 2016) examines (1) ways that museums create and sha...