Decolonising Heritage and Memories
Full course description
This course centers around the question of how societies deal with their colonial heritage and the memories of colonialism. Students will engage with scholarship in the fields of Heritage and Memory Studies to be able to reflect critically on ongoing struggles for the decolonization of societies and their arts and cultural institutions. The course starts with an overview of decolonial and postcolonial theories. In the weeks thereafter, different themes connected to the histories of colonialism, colonial heritage, and memories of colonialism will be covered in great depth. Students will engage with practices related to the transformation of colonial heritage and explore memories of colonialism, postcolonial trauma, as well as questions around identity, restitution, and historical justice. They will investigate case studies dealing with the contestations surrounding the decolonization of museum exhibitions, colllections, institutions, and public sites. Academic, political, legal, and ethical questions around the restitution of cultural artifacts will be as much subject of investigation as broader systems of power that were shaped by colonialism and still dominate knowledge production and consumption today.
This interdisciplinary course draws on approaches and contributions from the fields of memory studies, heritage studies, cultural studies, archaeology, anthropology, postcolonial studies, history, law, and political science. Students will not only read primary and secondary sources but also use novels and film to understand decolonization and its challenges. During the course, students are expected to work on one specific case study that they will present in class.
Course objectives
At the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Reflect critically on contemporary debates on decolonization and postcolonialism in the fields of Memory and Heritage;
- Compare and reflect critically on different theories that deal with colonialism, coloniality and decoloniality;
- Identify and explain legacies of colonial domination and oppression;
- Understand actors, issues and institutions engaged in decolonization;
- Reflect critically on systems of power.
Recommended reading
- Gensburger, S. & Wüstenberg, J. (Eds.) (2023). De-Commemoration. Removing Statues and Renaming Places. New York: Berghahn
- Settele, V. (2015), Including exclusion in European memory? Politics of remembrance at the House of European History. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 23(3), 405-416.
- Sierp, A. (2020). EU Memory Politics and Europe’s Forgotten Colonial Past. Interventions, 22(6), 686–702.
- Timm Knudsen, B., Buettner, E., Zabunyan, E., Oldfield, J. (Eds.) (2021). Decolonizing Colonial Heritage: New Agendas, Actors and Practices in and Beyond Europe. London: Taylor & Francis.
- Trouillot, Michel-Rolph (1995). Silencing the Past. Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press. pp. xvii-xix, 1-30, 70-107.
- Tuensmeyer, V. M. (2022). Repatriation of Sacred Indigenous Cultural Heritage and the Law: Lessons from the United States and Canada. Berlin: Springer.