‘Emotions and Heritage’ explores intersections between the history of emotions and the history of heritage, from the medieval to the present.
‘Emotions and Heritage’ considers the long affective history of heritage, examining how emotions work to shape heritage both in the past and today. The central research question of the project is: ‘how was heritage understood and conceptualised in the past, and what role did emotions play in shaping heritage?’ In this regard, ‘Emotions and Heritage’ seeks to question what ‘heritage’ meant in different historical contexts spanning from the medieval to the contemporary era. Our case studies recognise heritage and emotion to have complex, evolving and vibrant histories, with discussion ranging from the meanings of carved stone for medieval Orcadians to battlefields in Britain, the Scottish and English heritage of nineteenth-century settlers and convicts and its effect on Australian indigenous peoples, as well as the collecting habits of twentieth-century Australians.
This project particularly analyses the ways in which heritage is represented in families and bloodlines (blood), monuments and objects (stone), and in landscape and places (land) imbued with memories and emotions. Feelings of nostalgia for a heritage lost, expressions of grief carved into stone monuments, and the ways in which emotional heritages shape relationships and forge communities are several topics that are examined within this project.
Publications
Alicia Marchant (ed.), Historicising Heritage and Emotions: The Affective Histories of Blood, Stone and Land fromMedieval Britain to Colonial Australia, Routledge Studies in Heritage Series, Routledge, forthcoming, 2016.
Alicia Marchant, ‘Reading Emotions in Heritage and Heritage in Emotions’, in Historicising Heritage and Emotions: The Affective Histories of Blood, Stone and Land fromMedieval Britain to Colonial Australia, edited by Alicia Marchant, Routledge Studies in Heritage Series, Routledge, forthcoming, 2016.
Alicia Marchant, ‘John Hardyng’s Scotland: Concepts of Heritage in the Fifteenth Century’, in Historicising Heritage and Emotions: The Affective Histories of Blood, Stone and Land fromMedieval Britain to Colonial Australia, edited by Alicia Marchant, Routledge Studies in Heritage Series, Routledge, forthcoming, 2016.
Susan Broomhall, “‘Of House and Home’: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and the emotional significance of blood, stone and land”, in Historicising Heritage and Emotions: The Affective Histories of Blood, Stone and Land fromMedieval Britain to Colonial Australia, edited by Alicia Marchant, Routledge Studies in Heritage Series, Routledge, forthcoming, 2016.