School of History Seminar Series 2012 - Cultural heritage and the mediation of identity, memory and historical narratives

McDonald Room, Menzies Library, ANU

Cultural heritage and the mediation of identity, memory and historical narratives

Dr Laurajane Smith, School of Archaeology & Anthropology, ANU

This future fellowship project aims to document the way museum exhibitions and heritage sites are used to construct and negotiate social and cultural values and meanings. The project is based on over 4,000 interviews with visitors and staff at heritage sites and museums in Australia, the US and England, across six different genre of museum/heritage sites. The memory and identity work that visitors undertake is documented, as is the way historical narratives are negotiated as visitors discuss the meaning of their visits. It is accepted that museum and heritage site audiences are not simply passive receptors of the curator's or interpreter's messages, but how audiences actually engage with exhibitions and heritage sites, and what they do with the messages they take away, is neither documented or understood. By charting and comparing the way heritage is used by heritage professionals and audiences in different national contexts, and across a range of different museum/heritage genres, the project aims to reveal the cultural and social ‘work' that heritage does in society.

Laurajane Smith works in the area of heritage studies, and is editor of the International Journal of Heritage Studies and series general editor with Professor William Logan of Key Issues in Cultural Heritage (Routledge). She is author of the book Uses of Heritage (2006). Prior to arriving at the ANU in 2010, she held the position of Reader in Heritage Studies at the University of York, UK, where she directed the MA in Cultural Heritage Management for nine years. Originally from Sydney, she taught Indigenous Studies at the University of New South Wales (1995-2000), and Heritage and Archaeology at Charles Sturt University (1990-1995). She also worked as a heritage consultant in south-eastern Australia for a number of years.