LHIST5221 Public History and Heritage Course Descriptor

Course Overview

Public History and Heritage gives students the chance to learn about the role of history in society, by creating a piece of history for the wider public and reflecting on the experience.

The course also forms an introduction to the scholarly literature on public history and heritage. Public history is history in the public sphere, whether in museums and galleries, heritage sites and historic houses, radio and television broadcasting, film, popular history books, social media, or public policy within government. The central challenge and task of public history is making history relevant and accessible to people outside academia, whilst adhering to an academically credible historical method. 

This course will explore the theory and practice of public history in heritage, broadcasting, publication and policy, asking questions such as, how is the past used? What is authenticity? Must public – or popular – history mean ‘dumbing down’? Can we satisfy the public’s curiosity about the past in a way that also satisfies us as historians? We will consider historical controversies, the abuse of the past, and the ethics of misrepresenting the past. 

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

Knowledge and Understanding

Subject Specific Skills

Transferable and Employability Skills

Teaching and Learning

This course has a dedicated Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) page with a syllabus and range of additional resources (e.g. readings, question prompts, tasks, assignment briefs, discussion boards) to orientate and engage students in their studies

The scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course are:

Lectures/seminars 

40 scheduled hours – typically including induction, consolidation or revision, and assessment activity hours.

• Version 1:all sessions in the same sized group

OR 

• Version 2: most of the sessions in larger groups; some of the sessions in smaller groups

Faculty hold regular ‘office hours’, which are opportunities for students to drop in or sign up to explore ideas, raise questions, or seek targeted guidance or feedback, individually or in small groups. 

Students are to attend and participate in all the scheduled teaching and learning activities for this course and to manage their directed learning and independent study.

Indicative total learning hours for this course: 150 Assessment

Assessment

Both formative and summative assessment are used as part of this course, with purely formative opportunities typically embedded within interactive teaching sessions, office hours, and/or the VLE. 

Summative Assessments

Further information about the assessments can be found in the Course Syllabus.

Feedback

Students will receive formative and summative feedback in a variety of ways, written (e.g. marked up on assignments, through email or the VLE) or oral (e.g. as part of interactive teaching sessions or in office hours).

Indicative Reading

Note: Comprehensive and current reading lists are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative reading list provided below is for a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• Assmann, J. (2008).’Communicative and Cultural Memory’. In. Erll, Astrid ; Nünning, Ansgar (eds.): Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook. Berlin; New York.
• Nora, P. (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Representations, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory 26: 7-24.
• Halbwachs, M., & In Coser, L. A. (1992). On Collective Memory.
• Hobsbawm, E., and T. Ranger (eds.). (1983). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Lowenthal, D. (1985). The Past is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Smith, L. (2006). Uses of Heritage. London and New York: Routledge.

Indicative Topics

Note: Comprehensive and current topics for courses are produced annually in the Course Syllabus or other documentation provided to students; the indicative topics provided below are used as a general guide and part of the approval/modification process only.

• How to write for a public audience
• Collective memory
• Value and ownership in heritage
• Heritage in space and time
• Dark heritage
• Museums and source communities
• Heritage and identity
• Heritage and communities
• Digital heritage