received from Dr. Guillemette Crouzet (European University Institute) and Dr. Eva Miller (University College London)
Dates: 25th – 26th May 2023
Times: 10:00 – 18:15 (25th May) 9:30 – 18:30 (26th May)
Location: Occulus 0.04, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL
Programme (html)
Programme (pdf.)
Registration is required for attendance at the conference. There is a small conference fee of £5. The conference will be in person only.
The final panel discussion, ‘Whose Heritage?’ is open to all and does not require registration.
Overview
Since Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798 with a cadre of scientific experts, the Middle East has been framed as the cradle of the world past: the place where civilization began, burgeoning with antiquities, where ancient history was visible in the landscape—or could be made so through the right kind of labour. This framing continues to affect heritage politics and international relations in the region.
This conference explores how historical consciousness about the Middle East was reshaped in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and new senses of its ancient past forged through excavation and exegesis of traces of ancient civilisations. How did the emerging disciplines of archaeology and ancient history shape the modern region? How were these scholarly disciplines in turn shaped by competing visions and agendas of empires and new nations, ‘outsiders’, ‘locals’, and those who fell between these categories? Papers will consider these questions over this crucial period, across diverse places within the Middle East, through various lenses.
As part of the Global History and Culture Centre, we will also reflect on what it means for the past of one particular region to be so heavily linked to the concept of a ‘global’ heritage, belonging to the world at large.
Financially supported by the Habitability Global Research Priority, Connecting Culture Global Research Priority, Humanities Research Centre, the Institute of Advanced Studies (all of the University of Warwick), the Past and Present Society and the British Institute for the Study of Iraq.