Lecture: Grappling with Heritage

Professor Lafrenz Samuels, a leading expert in questions of how societies create and engage with questions of shared heritage, will offer in this public lecture an introduction to key theories of heritage management through the lens of monuments. To bring these abstract questions to life, she will explore a wide range of examples, drawing from her fieldwork in Tunisia where modern peoples determine how they relate to a contested past from ancient Roman dominance to its modern republic, recent studies of how climate change and biodiversity loss in Italy have affected landscapes designated as heritage sites, and ongoing debates surrounding "what to do" about problematic monuments from Confederate monuments in Charlottesville to Fascist sites in Sicily.

This event is sponsored by the Ancient Mediterranean Studies invited speaker series, and co-sponsored by the Departments of Visual and Performing Art and Anthropology/Sociology.