Conferences

CHAMP is sponsoring three upcoming conferences:

• Cultural Heritage and Human Rights (Spring 2006)
• Intangible Heritage (Spring 2007)
• World Heritage Cities (Spring 2008)

Cultural Heritage and Human Rights
March 10-11, 2006
Link to Workshop Program
Link to Abstracts
Link to Speaker Biographies

This workshop addresses human rights as a deeply political aspect of heritage preservation and management. Heritage is a concept to which a positive value is often assigned. Human rights advocates assert that heritage is necessary to the articulation and preservation of cultural identity. But heritage is also intertwined with identity and territory, where individuals and communities are often in competition or outright conflict. In the assault on human lives and political autonomy, the cultural history and values of a community are also attacked, destroying not only individuals but the very fabric of society. The display of heritage monuments and performance can be a strategy for asserting minority identity in the face of majority pressure. As such, it can be a tool for resistance and the expression of difference. Conversely, the erasure of cultural expressions—such as buildings, monuments, language, religion, and social practices—is a powerful tool in warfare and political regulation.

In this workshop ten scholars consider various relationships between cultural heritage and human rights with case studies from around the globe and as seen through the lens of a range of disciplinary perspectives (Archaeology, Anthropology, History, Landscape Architecture, Law, Urban & Regional Planning). Studies include Native American/ First Nation and Australian aboriginal rights to land, resources, and sovereignty; conflicts between local communities and national authorities in South Asia; the destruction of cultural property in times of conflict and war; techniques of surveillance and disciplinary order in the urban spaces of colonial and apartheid cities; and the role of the United Nations and heritage groups (such as World Monument Fund) in articulating and defending heritage preservation as an aspect of human rights. Among the roundtable questions for discussion, following the presentations, are:

• Is there a universal right to the free expression and preservation of cultural heritage, and if so, where is that right articulated and can it be protected?
• Is cultural heritage a concept that serves to enforce group conformity or can it be a way to maintain and display difference?
• Is heritage worth suffering for? killing for?
• How is the notion of “heritage” used to unite and to divide communities?
• How do heritage preservation policies and designations (such as UNESCO's World Heritage Sites) impact human lives and social groups? Do such organizations promote welfare at a regional level?
• Who defines cultural heritage and who should control stewardship and the benefits of cultural heritage?
  

Intangible Heritage Embodied
March 30-31, 2007

In 2003, UNESCO adopted a new international convention to safeguard “intangible cultural heritage,” defined as epics, tales, music, rituals, celebrations, craftsmanship, and systems of folk knowledge about medicine, astronomy and the natural world. This intangible cultural heritage is regarded by many scholars and cultural activists as vital to the well being of traditional communities.

For a performative heritage to have and keep its effect, it must not only admit change but reinvent itself through constant iteration. Thus, there are issues of preservation and documentation as well as interpretation and the degree to which a performance today represents the values of a larger cultural identity, past or present. This workshop explores the non-material, intangible character of heritage by focusing on the human body as a vehicle for memory, movement, and sound. Among the embodied performances considered are dance, the globalization of music among diaspora communities, theater, ritual, lore, and the transmission of oral literature and its changing audiences. The workshop considers problems (such as authenticity, intellectual property rights, how to preserve something that is, by its very nature, unstable and dynamic) and possibilities (such as revival and revitalization) of implementation of the new UNESCO convention through case studies drawn from around the world.

CHAMP poses the following framing questions for the Spring 2007 workshop:

• In what ways is intangible heritage today informed by the past?
• What is the relationship of permanence and ephemerality in intangible heritage?
• How do the local, national and global interact and intersect in expressions of intangible heritage?
• What will be the impact of the UNESCO Convention? What new problems and challenges does it generate?

This workshop follows the traveling exhibition, “Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal,” hosted by the Krannert Art Museum in Fall 2006.

World Heritage Cities
Spring 2008

Many of the world’s great heritage cities are suffering from decay and face imminent physical destruction of their urban core due to ill-conceived restoration and reconstruction, pollution and traffic, and antiquated infrastructure. Tourism to these cities has conflicting impacts. National tourism boards represent, “manufacture,” and “museumify” these cities as attractions and signs of the identity of their countries, deploying history in an aggressively modern project of economic development and engagement with the globalized world. As the historic city becomes a commodity, traditional residents are forced to compete with tourists and the service sector that supports them for access to and use of what was formerly their own social and physical space. There is a frequent loss of traditional urban populations due to gentrification. Traditional social life is altered due to the influx of tourists eager to “consume” heritage.

The challenges and contradictions of these important population centers should be comprehensively addressed at the start of the 21st century with the goal of generating productive international dialogue and the beginning of creative solutions for their preservation and revitalization. World Heritage Cities will be a major international research conference engaging urban planners, national and international NGOs, architects, archaeologists, historians, economists, and tourism experts in a critical examination of heritage management at a range of beautiful but endangered World Heritage Cities around the world.