Culture, Heritage and Representation Perspectives on Visuality and the Past

The 'visual' has long played a crucial role in forming experiences, associations, expectations and understandings of heritage. Images convey meaning within a range of practices, including tourism, identity construction, the popularization of the past through a variety of media, and the memorialization of events. However, despite the central role of 'the visual' in these contexts, it has been largely neglected in heritage literature. This edited collection is the first to explore the production, use and consumption of visual imagery as an integral part of heritage. Drawing on case studies from around the world, it provides a multidisciplinary analysis of heritage representations, combining complex understandings of the 'visual' from a wide range of disciplines, including heritage studies, sociology and cultural studies perspectives. In doing so, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the theoretical and methodological tools necessary for understanding visual imagery within its cultural context.

Contents: Introduction: a visual heritage, Steve Watson and Emma Waterton; Part I Relocating the Visual: Inside/outside: ways of seeing the world, Tony Schirato and Jen Webb; People-place-past: the visitor experience of cultural heritage, Martin Selby; The perpetual performance and emergence of heritage, David Crouch. Part II Representation and Substitution: The popular memory of the Western Front: archaeology and European heritage, Ross Wilson; Historiography and virtuality, Jerome de Groot; Visualizing the past: Baudrillard, intensities of the hyper-real and the erosion of historicity, Richard Voase. Part III Visual Culture and Heritage Tourism: 'Wild on' the beach: discourses of desire, sexuality and liminality, Annette Pritchard and Nigel Morgan; Authenticity, the media and heritage tourism: Robin Hood and Brother Cadfael as Midlands tourist magnets, Roy Jones; Branding the past: the visual imagery of England's heritage, Emma Waterton; Time machines and space craft: navigating the spaces of heritage tourism performance, Tom Mordue; The tourist as juggler in a hall of mirrors: looking through images of the self, Tom Selwyn. Part IV Constructing Place: The story behind the picture: preferences for the visual display at heritage sites, Yaniv Poria; Site seeing: street walking through a low-visibility landscape, Tim Copeland; Constructing Rhodes: heritage tourism and visuality, Steve Watson; Index.

Dr Emma Waterton is RCUK Academic Fellow in Heritage and Public History at the Research Institute for the Humanities, Department of History, Keele University, UK. Dr Steve Watson is Principal Lecturer at the Business School, York St John University, UK