Layered Landscapes: Traces of the British Past

Catalog description

What kinds of evidence exists to allow contemporary students to evaluate a country's history of human endeavor? What different roles do buildings, monuments, and records play in forming collective memory? What other kinds of cultural objects - like art, music, and literature - create and augment varying identities within political borders? What role does a nation's established record and its interpretations play in perpetuating particular perspectives?This course asks how and why British communities and institutions preserve and sustain their material record asking how monuments were built, used, and described. We shall explore how (the potentially collective) memories of Britain are gathered, categorized, described, made accessible and felt. We shall investigate how to read the traces of landscapes layered through time, and inquire about the work archives, museums, public monuments, and tourist sites do to testify to a past that was glorious for some and deeply oppressive and violent for others. The course will introduce students to the fundamental skills and methodological framework required for working with an informed humanities expertise; a professional expertise that is critical, recognizing complexity, different viewpoints, and open-ended interpretation. Students will learn to read and interpret archival sources, and to practice the description, analysis, and public-facing discussion of primary materials. Among the places we may visit are the Bodleian Library, Oxford History Centre, and the museums in Oxford; the British Library and the British Museum in London; Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire; Offa's Dyke (Shropshire); and a variety of monuments and preserved features in the local landscape.