 |
 |
From Plunder to Preservation: Britain's and the "Heritage" of Empire, c. 1820-1940, 21-22 March 2009, King's College Cambridge
| Location: | United Kingdom |
| Conference Date: | 2009-03-21 (Archive) |
| Date Submitted: |
2009-02-20 |
| Announcement ID: |
167092 |
|
FROM PLUNDER TO PRESERVATION: Britain and the “Heritage” of Empire, c. 1820-1940, 21-22 March 2009, King's College Cambridge
The invention of heritage has become an important, yet highly fragmented, field in nineteenth-century studies. The conference aims to shed light on what has so far remained under-explored in the scholarly literature, the links between preservationism and imperialism. Most research on preservationism has been divided into area studies or test-cases within the British Isles. The aim of this conference is to bring together specialists on preservation in Britain and the colonies (from a range of countries and disciplines) to map a more entangled picture of preservation in the British Empire. Taking into account the importance of competition between different European imperial powers, the conference focuses in particular on the relationship between metropolis and dependant heritages. The underlying and most general questions might be put most crudely like this: what response did an Imperial authority take towards the heritage of a dependent area, how did imperial and indigenous preservationism interrelate, and how did this come to affect or interact with attitudes towards the heritage of the home country?
The programme is divided into six roundtables over two days. The opening roundtable From Plunder to Preservation looks at the late 18th- and early 19th-century background, asking how the expanding European powers treated the ancient sites they encountered. Next, the privileged role of the Classical World is examined. How did the imperialists treat classical remains and how did this treatment in turn influence colonial preservation? As the Biblical World played an equally crucial part in the Victorian cultural imagination, the following panel analyses the preservation of religious sites under British domination. Empires and Civilizations examines how imperialists dealt with the monuments of non European civilizations, which often had been empires themselves, from India to Egypt and Mesoamerica. Interactions with the New World extended the concept of heritage to include endangered nature and peoples but were also characterised by transatlantic attempts to preserve the built heritage of the English speaking world and the British Empire long after the independence of the United States. The conference closes with a roundtable on imperialist versus nationalist preservation and provides an outlook onto the later 20th century.
The conference has been generously sponsored by: The Cambridge Victorian Studies Group; King’s College, Cambridge; Boston University; The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and The British Academy.
Registration: £35. Concessions £15.
To register please email admin@victorians.group.cam.ac.uk
Programme:
Saturday 21 March
10:00 Registration and Coffee, King’s College
11:00 Welcome and Introduction
Astrid Swenson (CVSG, Cambridge )
11:30 Roundtable: From Plunder to Preservation
Chair: Peter Mandler (History, Cambridge)
Maya Jasanoff (History, Harvard University)
Holger Hoock (History, University of Liverpool)
Sujit Sivasundaram (History, LSE)
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Panel 2 The Classical World
Chair: Anthony Snodgrass (Classics, Cambridge)
Ed Richardson (independent scholar: “This Memory is Not for You”
Mary Beard (Classics, Cambridge: “Officers and Gentlemen? How imperialist a project was nineteenth-century Roman Britain?”
Robin Cormack (Courtauld Institute: “Byzantium and Sudan”
15:45 Tea
16:15 Panel 3 The Biblical World
Chair: Michael Ledger-Lomas (CVSG Cambridge)
David Gange (CVSG, Cambridge): “Unholy Water: Archaeology, the Bible, and the last Nile floods”
Simon Goldhill (Classics, Cambridge: “Restoration and Empire: Ashbee’s Jerusalem”
Eleanor Robson (HPS, Cambridge): “Occupied and Mandate period Iraq (c.1917-32)”
18:00 Drinks Reception
Sunday 22nd March
9.00 Panel 4 Empires and Civilizations
Chair: t.b.a.
Indra Sengupta (German Historical Institute London: “Preservation and the vexing question of religious structures in colonial India”
Donald Malcolm Reid (Georgia State University/University of Washington): “Claiming the Pharaohs, 1882-1922: A British, a French, and an Egyptian
Egyptologist at Imperial High Noon”
Lindsay Allen (Classics, King’s College London)
“Appropriations of Imperial Space at Persepolis”
10:45 Tea
11:15 Panel 5 The New World
Chair: Richard Drayton (History, Cambridge)
Donna Yates (Archaeology, Cambridge): “The Early 20th-Century Excavations of E. R. Merwin and Publication as
Problematic Preservation at a Remote Maya City”
Sadiah Qureshi (CVSG, Cambridge): “Dying Americans: Race, Extinction and Conservation in the New World”
Melanie Hall (History of Art, Boston University): “Despoliation or diplomacy? Britain, Canada, the United States and the evolution of an English-speaking heritage”
13:00 Lunch
14:00 Roundtable: Between Imperialist and Nationalist Preservation
Chair: Marie Louise Stig-Sørenson (Archaeology, Cambridge)
Erik Goldstein (International Relations, Boston University)
Margarita Diaz-Andreu (Archaeology, Durham University)
Astrid Swenson (CVSG, Cambridge)
16:00 Tea
|
Didn't find what you're looking for?
Try our power search! |
Return to the top of this page
Return to announcements home
|
Send comments and questions to H-Net
Webstaff. H-Net reproduces announcements that have been submitted to us as a
free service to the academic community. If you are interested in an announcement
listed here, please contact the organizers or patrons directly. Though we strive
to provide accurate information, H-Net cannot accept responsibility for the text of
announcements appearing in this service. (Administration)
|
|
