Gender and Heritage Performance, Place and Politics

Gender and Heritage brings together a group of international scholars to examine the performance, place and politics of gender within heritage. Through a series of case studies, models and assessments, the significance of understanding and working with concepts of gender is demonstrated as a dynamic and reforming agenda. Demonstrating that gender has become an increasingly important area for heritage scholarship, the collection argues that it should also be recognised as a central structuring device within society and the location where a critical heritage studies can emerge. Drawing on contributions from around the world, this edited collection provides a range of innovative approaches to using gender as a mode of enquiry. From the politics of museum displays, the exploration of pedagogy, the role of local initiatives and the legal frameworks that structure representation, the volume’s diversity and objectives represent a challenge for students, academics and professionals to rethink gender. Rather than featuring gender as an addition to wider discussions of heritage, this volume makes gender the focus of concern as a means of building a new agenda within the field. This volume, which addresses how we engage with gender and heritage in both practice and theory, is essential reading for scholars at all levels and should also serve as a useful guide for practitioners.

Introduction; Chapter One: The tyranny of the normal and the importance of being liminal; Chapter Two: Johanna, Moa and I’m Every Lesbian. Gender, sexuality and class in Norrköping’s industrial landscape; Chapter Three: Gender, Heritage and Changing Traditions: Russian Old Believers in Romania; Chapter Four: Handicrafting Gender: Craft, Performativity and Cultural Heritage; Chapter Five: Naturing Gender and Gendering Nature in Museums; Chapter Six: It’s a man’s world. Or is it? The ‘Pilgrim Fathers’, religion, patriarchy, nationalism, and tourism; Chapter Seven: The Fleshyness of Absence: The matter of absence in a feminist museology; Chapter Eight: Taller than the rest: The Three Dikgosi Monument, Masculinity Reloaded; Chapter Nine: Exploring Identities through Feminist Pedagogy; Chapter Ten: Impasse or productive intersection? Learning to ‘mess with genies’ in collaborative heritage research relationships; Chapter Eleven: Transversal dances across time and space: feminist strategies for a critical heritage studies; Chapter Twelve: Gendering 'the other Germany': Resistant and Residual Narratives on Stauffenbergstraße, Berlin; Chapter Thirteen: Gender and Intangible Heritage: Illustrating the Inter-disciplinary Character of International Law; Chapter Fourteen: Women of Steel at the Sparrows Point Steel Mill, Baltimore, USA; Chapter Fifteen: ‘Does it matter?’ Relocating fragments of queer heritage in post-earthquake Christchurch; Chapter Sixteen: The politics of heritage

Ross J. Wilson is Professor of Modern History and Public Heritage at the University of Chichester, UK. His research interests include the experience, representation and memory of the First World War and he also focuses on issues of museum, media and heritage representations in the modern era. Wera Grahn is Associate Professor in Gender Studies, Senior Lecturer and Head of Unit at Linköping University, Sweden. She is also Director of Postgraduate Research Training and Director of the Master’s Programme, Gender Studies – Intersectionality and Change. Previously, she has worked as a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) in Oslo, Norway (2007–2011) and was affiliated to Upplandsmuseet for research (2006–2007). Before that, she was a PhD student at Tema Genus in Linköping (1999–2006).