Session: #467

Theme & Session Format

Theme:
3. Heritage Narratives and Representations
Session format:
Session with presentation of 6 slides in 6 minutes

Title & Content

Title:
CANCELLED Accessing Diversity in Popular Images of the Past
Content:
With the growing amount of data aDNA research is providing to our knowledge of past societies, past migration, biological sex identification, health and visual appearance of past individuals, there is also a rising discussion on ethic concerns and demands on the necessity of conceptualizing outlines how those results should be interpreted.
This represents additional challenge to academic institutions, museums and other media of science communication. It can lead to negative critique and accusations of a politically influenced agenda behind decisions of how to reconstruct past individuals and societies in visual and descriptive imaginations. While some of those accusations led to some uproar in public media, it remains unclear how the majority of the public is perceiving new interpretations of past humanity.
For our session we would like to ask for contributions on exemplary cases of visual reconstructions and renewals of past individuals that can be considered as „diverse“, and cases of public or scientific reactions on such reconstructions. This might include public and social media, schoolbooks, movies, documentations, individual artwork and museum displays. Our definition of „diverse“ hereby includes the representation of disabilities, age, BIPOC and other marginalised groups defined by visual features as well as gender and sexuality representation.
Visual reconstructions are often controlled or made by institutions without archaeologists. With that in mind, we would like to discuss how archaeologists can advocate for the past to be represented positively in other areas, and how do archaeologists place themselves to better advocate for diversity in the past.
We would also like to discuss possible approaches on how to evaluate reactions and opinions of the audience we are distributing our science communication to.
To encourage discussion on the different aspects of this session, it is planned to be held with pecha kucha presentations.
Keywords:
Diversity, Representation, Museum, Science Communication
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:

Organisers

Main organiser:
Nicola Scheyhing (Germany) 1
Co-organisers:
Karissa Annis (United States) 2
Doris Gutsmiedl-Schümann (Germany) 3
Jo Zalea Matias (United States) 4
Affiliations:
1. Independent Researcher
2. Savannah College of Art & Design, M.S. Anthropology University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
3. Universität der Bundeswehr München, Department of Social Sciences and Public Affairs, Historical Institute
4. Wilbur Wright College, Chicago