The Longue Durée of Cultural Heritage: Curation of the Past from Antiquity to the Present Day

An interdisciplinary conference at the Norwegian Institute in Rome (University of Oslo), 5.-7. December 2022. In collaboration with the Heritage Experience Initiative (HEI), University of Oslo.

Confirmed invited speakers include Thora Petursdottir (HEI/University of Oslo), David C. Harvey (Aarhus University), Birgit Meyer (University of Utrecht), Chiara Mannoni (Ca' Foscari University of Venice), Lars Boje Mortensen (University of Southern Denmark), Anne Eriksen (University of Oslo), Arnold Witte (University of Amsterdam), and Christopher Whitehead (Newcastle University).

Across the world, there is a burgeoning interest in cultural heritage, among academics and professionals, as well as in politics. While heritage is typically thought of as a modern concept with origins in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there is ample proof that pre-modern societies curated their pasts in highly comparable ways. Starting from the understanding of cultural heritage as a process, we recognize certain practices regarding the management of spaces, monuments, and objects in pre- and early modern societies as congruent to types of activity commonly placed within the heritage rubric. By adopting a long-term approach to the subject, this conference aims to create opportunities for new lines of research across disciplines. This includes examining historical examples to contextualize, interrogate, and deepen our understanding of modern approaches to heritage. Moreover, developments in contemporary heritage theory and practice can provide a fresh and productive framework for examining and categorizing processes in the past. By bringing together scholars working on issues of heritage in the present day with those studying similar ideas in more remote, historical contexts, this interdisciplinary conference aims to foster a dialogue which can enrich analyses of heritage practices in the past and in the present day.

We invite contributions from scholars with a contemporary and/or historical focus (in particular, we welcome research on pre-modern periods). Relevant themes include (but are not restricted to):
- Methodologies of heritage
- Case studies of pre-modern heritage curation/preservation
- Authenticity
- Destruction and iconoclasm
- Ruins and reconstructions
- Commodification
- Preservation as deconsecration
- Restoration
- Are texts intangible heritage? Textual heritage(s) and their material dimensions - epigraphy, archives, corpora, etc.
- Images/representations of heritage processes

Please submit a paper proposal of max. 250 words and a short CV (half page) to k.b.aavitslandroma.uio.no
no later than 15 May 2022.

Scholars without funding from their home institutions can apply for travel grants to the same address.

https://www.hf.uio.no/dnir/english/