We want to hereby warmly welcome you to the fourth lunch lecture in the Environmental Humanities Center’s lunch lecture series! In this lecture Dr. Marilena Mela will discuss the roles heritage can play in the environmental humanities through case-studies pertaining to environmental activism and landscape stewardship in which heritage is present or conspicuously absent.
The lecture takes place on Thursday the 22nd of May from 12:00 until 13:00 in the Library Lounge, which is located in the VU main building at the far-end of the library space on the first floor.
To provide enough sandwiches this lunch lecture, please sign up here.
Heritage in Environmental Activism and Landscape Stewardship
Over the last decades, the field of heritage studies has increasingly engaged with landscapes and issues of environmental and social justice. However, the positioning of heritage as a relevant concept within the environmental humanities has yet to be systematized. In this lecture, I explore cases of environmental activism and landscape stewardship to outline three roles of heritage in this new conceptual landscape. First, I examine how official cultural and natural heritage frameworks have historically excluded both humans and nonhumans from their landscapes of home, even under the pretext of nature preservation. Second, I discuss how local and environmental activists employ narratives of inheritance and intergenerational justice to mobilize place attachment as a political tool against unsustainable landscape transformations. Finally, I introduce the notion of ‘unused’ heritage—latent structures and practices created by previous generations, embedded in landscapes but yet to be reclaimed by communities, that may offer viable or livable alternatives for human-nonhuman cohabitation in this age of environmental crisis.
N.B. This lecture will take place in person in Amsterdam and will not be streamed or recorded.
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