ABSTRACTS

This talk explores the initial stages of the Grand Tour – between the end of the Sixteenth Century and the first half of the Eighteenth Century – as a transcultural experience that defied rigid boundaries between Catholic and Protestant countries. With crossing such boundaries came new and hybrid identities that contrasted with the contemporary formation of Nation States. The creative impact of this formative expatriation was firmly grounded on plurilingualism and empiricism and led to the elaboration of a shared cultural heritage that intermixed with tastes, fashions, imported art genres and collecting. This rich network of exchanges and cultural contaminations had deep effects on the formation of European culture, as well as being a fundamental stage towards a development of a brand of modernity that through a seemingly paradoxical dialogue with the past provided the impetus for change.

Oral tradition of Jewish music repertoires throughout the places and times of the diaspora is presented as a case study of how an intangible cultural heritage contributes to, and is instrumental in, defining identity: with a special focus on Italy, as the long uninterrupted history of Italian Jewish communities affords a unique perspective on the establishment and persistence (or lack thereof) of memory, on synagogue music tradition not only as a form of worship but as a trademark, a means of defining what does or doesn't belong to a community.

The word “heritage” is quickly spreading not only in politics and the civil society at large, but also in many fields and disciplines of the Humanities and Social Sciences. “Cultural heritage” has been associated to almost every kind of tangible or intangible cultural product and practice to draw attention on its social and aesthetic value: from food to abandoned factories, from craftmanship to the history of LGBT movement. Curiously, the “text”, one of the earliest and most important examples of cultural product, has received scant attention by heritage specialists until now.
This lecture analyses the reasons why manuscripts, books, and their textual contents hardly have a place into present categorizations of cultural heritage, i.e. the UNESCO lists. We will reflect on how framing the study of texts, their transmission and reproduction as cultural heritage leads to a wider understanding of the role of technologies of inscription in shaping and preserving culture and cultural identities in the 21st century. This paper will focus on the Japanese context, a viewpoint that can serve to put into perspective and challenge mainstream occidental visions that are often taken for granted. More particularly, we will illustrate several examples of “texts” – including literary works, musical scores, architectural plans, and geographical maps – to provide a reflection on processes of “heritagization” both in the premodern and modern period. We will question the concept of heritage and “inheritance”, as well as concepts of authorship, ownership, and authenticity of texts. At the end of the seminar a tentative definition of “textual heritage” will be proposed to encourage a debate.

The events in Afterlives take place in East Africa before, during and after the First World War. It is a part of history which has slipped through the popular memory of WW1. My book Afterlives attempts to jog that memory. I was not primarily concerned to write about the war itself but about the lives of people caught up in these bewildering and violent ambitions of strangers. Nor did I want to write about an oppressor and the oppressed, although largely that was how it was. Nevertheless, there were people who chose sides, people who joined up to fight for reasons that would later seem incomprehensible. I tried to imagine how people survived and endured and found reprieve and succour in the midst of what they had to cope with.

Critical Heritage Studies has emerged out of a concern across a number of different academic disciplines with uncovering the ways in which the past is implicated in nation building and the articulation of forms of difference (e.g. gender, race, class, ethnicity, culture), and its connection with differentiated forms of liberal and illiberal social governmental practices, through various cultural institutions such as memorials, monuments, museums and heritage sites. More recently it has benefitted from contributions from the environmental humanities, which have encouraged critical exploration of nature conservation, showing how it is also caught up in similar and overlapping systems of knowledge/power. This paper aims to map out a future agenda for critical heritage studies which builds upon these interests, emphasising the role of comparative approaches to natural and cultural heritage practices and the involvement of practitioners and publics as co-researchers with the aim of resourcing more critical engagements with the implications of conservation and preservation outside of the academy, oriented towards the production of more just and sustainable futures.

The Last Prince of Bengal explores the impact of British control on one of the most significant royal families in India and the political machinations which robbed that family of its wealth and status. It is also the story of two marriages: first the Nawab of Bengal’s marriage to an English chambermaid in 1870 and their life together in London; second, the marriage of their youngest son, the author’s grandfather, to an English governess, enabling her to become a successful writer. In 1925 they changed their names and identities so that they could emigrate to Australia in spite of that country’s ‘White Australia’ immigration policy. The book seeks to combine historical research with family memoir, and observes ways in which individual identities are enabled, limited, or complicated by changes in place and social context.

This talk covers important issues related to teaching language courses to heritage speakers, addressing questions such as these: What are their linguistic, affective, and academic characteristics? What makes them different from foreign language learners? What placement procedures, instructional approaches, and materials are most appropriate in working with heritage speakers? There will be particular focus on Spanish heritage language teaching.

In the early twentieth century, many prominent authors who wrote feuilleton articles for German newspapers were Jews. When and why did this genre become attractive to German-Jewish authors? And how did the place of publication influence their writing, as well as the reception of their work? The present paper is a manifesto of sorts that will explore these questions by offering some reflections on the complex history of German-Jewish literature, and some general observations that should path the way for more detailed study and analysis.