Memory, Heritage, and Preservation in 20th-Century England

Memory, Heritage, and Preservation in 20th-Century England PDF Author: David Strittmatter
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303104469X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Book Description
This book explores commemoration practices and preservation efforts in modern Britain, focusing on the years from the end of the First World War until the mid-1960s. The changes wrought by war led Britain to reconsider major historical episodes that made up its national narrative. Part of this process was a reassessment of heritage sites, because such places carry socio-political meaning as do the memorials that mark them. This book engages the four-way intersection of commemoration, preservation, tourism, and urban planning at some of the most notable historic locations in England. The various actors in this process—from the national government and regional councils to private organizations and interested individuals—did nothing less than engineer British national memory. The author presents case studies of six famous British places, namely battlefields (Hastings and Bosworth), political sites (Runnymede and Peterloo), and world’s fairgrounds (the Crystal Palace and Great White City). In all three genres of heritage sites, one location developed through commemorations and tourism, while the other ‘anti-sites’ simultaneously faltered as they were neither memorialized nor visited by the masses. Ultimately, the book concludes that the modern social and political environment resulted in the revival, creation, or erasure of heritage sites in the service of promoting British national identity. A valuable read for British historians as well as scholars of memory, public history, and cultural studies, the book argues that heritage emerged as a discursive arena in which British identity was renegotiated through times of transitions, both into a democratic age and an era of geopolitical decline.

Memory, Heritage, and Preservation in 20th-Century England

Memory, Heritage, and Preservation in 20th-Century England PDF Author: David Strittmatter
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783031044700
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This book explores commemoration practices and preservation efforts in modern Britain, focusing on the years from the end of the First World War until the mid-1960s. The changes wrought by war led Britain to reconsider major historical episodes that made up its national narrative. Part of this process was a reassessment of heritage sites, because such places carry socio-political meaning as do the memorials that mark them. This book engages the four-way intersection of commemoration, preservation, tourism, and urban planning at some of the most notable historic locations in England. The various actors in this process-from the national government and regional councils to private organizations and interested individuals-did nothing less than engineer British national memory. The author presents case studies of six famous British places, namely battlefields (Hastings and Bosworth), political sites (Runnymede and Peterloo), and world's fairgrounds (the Crystal Palace and Great White City). In all three genres of heritage sites, one location developed through commemorations and tourism, while the other 'anti-sites' simultaneously faltered as they were neither memorialized nor visited by the masses. Ultimately, the book concludes that the modern social and political environment resulted in the revival, creation, or erasure of heritage sites in the service of promoting British national identity. A valuable read for British historians as well as scholars of memory, public history, and cultural studies, the book argues that heritage emerged as a discursive arena in which British identity was renegotiated through times of transitions, both into a democratic age and an era of geopolitical decline. David Strittmatter is an Assistant Professor of History at Ohio Northern University (ONU), in the USA. His research in memory studies has particular emphases on tourism and commemoration. In addition, he oversees public history and museum studies initiatives at ONU. He earned his doctorate at the University of Buffalo (SUNY) and prior degrees at the University of St Andrews in Scotland and Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

The City as Subject

The City as Subject PDF Author: Carolyn S. Loeb
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350258628
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
In The City as Subject, Carolyn S. Loeb examines distinctive bodies of public art in Berlin: legal and illegal murals painted in West Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s, post-reunification public sculptures, and images and sites from the street art scene. Her careful analyses show how these developed new architectural and spatial vocabularies that drew on the city's infrastructure and daily urban experience. These works challenged mainstream urban development practices and engaged with citizen activism and with a wider civic discourse about what a city can be. Loeb extends this urban focus to her examination of the extensive outdoor installation of the Berlin Wall Memorial and its mandate to represent the history of the city's division. She studies its surrounding neighborhoods to show that, while the Memorial adopts many of the urban-oriented vocabularies established by the earlier works of public art she examines, it truncates the story of urban division, which stretches beyond the Wall's existence. Loeb suggests that, by embracing more multi-vocal perspectives, the Memorial could encourage the kind of participatory and heterogeneous construction of the city championed by the earlier works of public art.

Europe's Deadly Century

Europe's Deadly Century PDF Author: Neil Forbes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
In the course of Europe's twentieth century, freedoms were won at the cost of terrible sacrifice. The physical remains of war, conflict and ideological struggle lie everywhere around us. The question of what to do with this common past, in which we all share an interest, lies at the centre of this important book. From a variety of professional backgrounds, the contributors consider a wide range of conflict-heritage sites in the context of international and national histories and regional and local historical narratives. Questions of who 'owns' the past, the ambiguities over how people identify with the local community or nation state, and whether or how to make moral judgements, are central. The book illustrates the challenges of documenting and describing what are often extensive, contested and sometimes enigmatic and ambiguous buildings and monuments. The priorities of conservation, and how we ensure that documents, artefacts, sites and buildings can be given adequate and appropriate protection and care, are also addressed. This book will be of interest to a wide range of professional practitioners, academics and policy-makers, as well as the general reader, and will open the way to a deeper understanding of the significance of Europe's conflict heritage.

The Rise of Heritage

The Rise of Heritage PDF Author: Astrid Swenson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107469112
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
Where does our fascination for 'heritage' originate? This groundbreaking comparative study of preservation in France, Germany and England looks beyond national borders to reveal how the idea of heritage emerged from intense competition and collaboration in a global context. Astrid Swenson follows the 'heritage-makers' from the French Revolution to the First World War, revealing the importance of global networks driving developments in each country. Drawing on documentary, literary and visual sources, the book connects high politics and daily life and uncovers how, through travel, correspondence, world fairs and international congresses, the preservationists exchanged ideas, helped each other campaign and dreamed of establishing international institutions for the protection of heritage. Yet, these heritage-makers were also animated by fierce rivalry as international tension grew. This mixture of international collaboration and competition created the European culture of heritage, which defined preservation as integral to modernity, and still shapes current institutions and debates.

The Counter-Memorial Impulse in Twentieth-Century English Fiction

The Counter-Memorial Impulse in Twentieth-Century English Fiction PDF Author: S. Henstra
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230297358
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
A wide-ranging study that examines the tendency in 20th-century English fiction to treat grief as an occasion for social critique, unconventional readings of works by Ford, Lessing, and Winterson demonstrate how narrative experimentation in this period responds to socio-historic conditions like post-imperial melancholy, nuclear fear and homophobia.

Heritage Interpretation

Heritage Interpretation PDF Author: Marion Blockley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135129177
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
An essential guide to present practice and policy concerning issues in heritage management, Heritage Interpretation draws on the accumulated expertise and international reputation for excellence of the UK heritage industry to describe and analyze best practice in heritage interpretation. The contributors, all responsible for developing best practices, come from a range of heritage organizations including English Heritage, The National Trust, Historic Scotland, CADW and National Parks. They draw on examples from throughout the UK, from public art and twentieth-century military remains, to cathedrals and urban heritage, and discuss the range of interpretive options available and how they can be appropriately tailored to specific places and audiences. Providing practical guidance on interpretive techniques, the book provides insights into the philosophies and thinking that underpins their adoption in particular contexts. This clear and easy guide is an valuable addition to the reading list of any student of history or heritage studies.

Memorylands

Memorylands PDF Author: Sharon Macdonald
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135628726
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Book Description
Memorylands is an original and fascinating investigation of the nature of heritage, memory and understandings of the past in Europe today. It looks at how Europe has become a ’memoryland’ – littered with material reminders of the past, such as museums, heritage sites and memorials; and at how this ‘memory phenomenon’ is related to the changing nature of identities – especially European, national and cosmopolitan. In doing so, it provides new insights into how memory and the past are being performed and reconfigured in Europe – and with what effects. Drawing especially, though not exclusively, on cases, concepts and arguments from social and cultural anthropology, Memorylands argues for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the cultural assumptions involved in relating to the past. It theorizes the various ways in which ‘materializations’ of identity work and relates these to different forms of identification within Europe. The book also addresses questions of methodology, including discussion of historical, ethnographic, interdisciplinary and innovative methods. Through a wide-range of case-studies from across Europe, Sharon Macdonald argues that Europe is home to a much greater range of ways of making the past present than is usually realized – and a greater range of forms of ‘historical consciousness’. At the same time, however, she seeks to highlight what she calls ‘the European memory complex’ – a repertoire of prevalent patterns in forms of recollection and ‘past presencing’. The examples in Memorylands are drawn from both the margins and metropolitan centres, from the relatively small-scale and local, the national and the avant-garde. The book looks at pasts that are potentially identity-disrupting – or ‘difficult’ – as well as those that affirm identities or offer possibilities for transcending national identities or articulating more cosmopolitan futures. Topics covered include authenticity, temporalities, embodiment, commodification, nostalgia and Ostalgie, the musealization of everyday and folk-life, Holocaust commemoration and tourism, narratives of war, the heritage of Islam, transnationalism, and the future of the past. Memorylands is engagingly written and accessible to general readers as well as offering a new synthesis for advanced researchers in memory and heritage studies. It is essential reading for those interested in identities, memory, material culture, Europe, tourism and heritage.

Heritage, Conflict, and Peace-Building

Heritage, Conflict, and Peace-Building PDF Author: Lucas Lixinski
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040017851
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 170

Book Description
Heritage, Conflict, and Peace-Building examines the possibilities arising from, and challenges associated with, transforming heritage from a casualty of conflict into an opportunity for peacebuilding. The contributors to this book, who hail from academia and practice, present case studies that shed light on the multifaceted factors and conditions influenced by diplomacy, nationalism, victimhood, and the roles of diverse institutional actors in fostering peace. They demonstrate the possibilities and pitfalls of the work heritage does for local communities, the nation-state, and the international community, when these different actors and their peace aspirations and agendas intersect. Looking at heritage and peace processes on all continents, the contributions in this volume amount to a compelling analytical account of how the discourses of heritage and peace connect, overlap, and diverge. They also emphasise that our shared aspiration for peace should not be taken for granted in a heritage context, and that it is incumbent upon heritage scholars and practitioners to be more intentional about the work they wish to do to promote peace. Heritage, Conflict, and Peace-Building will be of interest to scholars and practitioners working in heritage studies, transitional justice, museum studies, international relations, education, history, and law.

Uses of Heritage

Uses of Heritage PDF Author: Laurajane Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134368038
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
Examining international case studies including USA, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, this book identifies and explores the use of heritage throughout the world. Challenging the idea that heritage value is self-evident, and that things must be preserved, it demonstrates how it gives tangibility to the values that underpin different communities.