Institutions and Well-Being: Heritage, Space & Bodies

Cornelia Wächter Announcement
Location
Sweden
Subject Fields
Cultural History / Studies, Urban History / Studies, Geography, Psychology, Social Sciences

We invite contributions for a collection of articles exploring the intersections of heritage, space and well-being. The planned volume seeks to investigate how traces of history impact on space and the ways in which the ensuing interrelations facilitate or curtail well-being. Thus, for instance, ‘traces’ of history affect the extent to which different (ethic, gendered, classed, etc.) bodies can extend into space (Ahmed 2006), and this has significant influence on their well-being. More specifically, “traces of the past in the present” (Harrison 2013, 166) shape the degree to which different bodies can benefit or are incapacitated from spaces designated for well-being. We are, for instance, interested in (representations of) how lingering traces of the past in (mental) health care spaces impact on subjects’ (practitioners’ as well as clients’) perception of and affective reaction to those spaces.

As Rodney Harris argues, “heritage is primarily not about the past, but instead about our relationship with the present and future. […] Heritage is not a passive process of simply preserving things from the past that remain, but an active process of assembling a series of objects, places and practices that we choose to hold up as a mirror to the present, associated with a particular set of values that we wish to take with us into the future” (2013, 4). This association with a particular set of values is often implicit rather than explicit, and people are not necessarily aware of this association, but its impact – embodied and entrenched in performativity and embedded material practices – is no less profound in those cases.

The anthology aims to offer a forum for trans- and interdisciplinary debate and therefore invites contributions from scholars and practitioners working in diverse fields, such as architecture; art history; literary and cultural studies; philosophy; political theory; psychology; social work; sociology; theology. We are particularly interested in non-Western perspectives.

Possible topics could include but are not restricted to: Spaces, heritage, well-being, and

  • Ability, Age, Class, Ethnicity, Gender, Religion, Sexuality
  • Heritage Industries
  • Political Histories
  • National Ideologies
  • Exclusions and Inclusion
  • International Comparisons
  • History of Institutions
  • Performance of Identity

Please send an abstract of 300-500 words and a short bio-note to Elisabeth Punzi, Christoph Singer, and Cornelia Wächter by 28 March 2018. 

Contact Information

Dr. Elisabeth Punzi

University of Gothenburg

Faculty of Psychology

Dr. Christoph Singer

University of Paderborn

Department of English

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Cornelia Wächter

University of Bochum

Department of English

Contact Email
elisabeth.punzi@psy.gu.se