Field Notes - 14 October 2013 - Rethinking Approaches to ‘Heritage’

18/10/2013 55 min

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Episode Synopsis

Of Cats, Cathedrals and Crusaders: Rethinking Approaches to 'Heritage' through Representations of Restoration in Cyprus

Dr Astrid Swenson (Brunel University, London)

Discussant: Professor David Abulafia (University of Cambridge)



Abstract

The paper examines the history of the rediscovery and reinterpretation of the Crusades during the modern colonisation of the Mediterranean. More particularly, it will closely examine the photographs and drawings of Cyprus made and collected by the French medievalist Camille Enlart in 1899 on a government sponsored research mission. These visual archives can be used to rewrite the history of heritage in Europe from the margins by reinserting a perspective that is both imperial and transnational, and that connects the history of art and archaeology with that of the history of medicine. But these images are also useful in transcending a focus on national and imperial rivalries by reflecting about how to connect the public uses of heritage sites, with more intimate, embodied, sensory, personal appropriations

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