Heritage in a broad sense
The research programme Heritage studies forms of heritage from the ancient world through today. Inspired by Critical Heritage Studies, New Historicism, Environmental Humanities, Materiality Studies, and Comparative Approaches to Natural and Cultural Heritage Practices, we are interested in questions about why and how to study heritage, why and how certain items, buildings, manuscripts, writings, literatures, religious traditions, rituals, and cultural performances are selected for preservation in museums, in (literary and cultural) history, and archives, and which roles they play in identity formation, cultural memory and in the formation of collective and individual futures. We examine e.g. nature preservation movements, nature writing, national parks, natural history museums, zoological gardens, and biodiversity initiatives as arenas for the preservation, handling, maintenance, practice, and contestation of heritage. We are, finally, interested in phenomena that may be described as cross-pollinations or entanglements of cultural and natural heritage, including traditions, practices, and literatures connected to landscapes, forests and the sea, and conventions and rites linked to authorities and institutions that have become ‘second nature’, including royalty, nobility, and clergy.
Inheritance as a phenomenon
In our view, there are many overlaps between current discussions of cultural and natural heritages, and these are often intricately intertwined. Boundaries between natural history and cultural history, material and immaterial heritage, cultural and natural heritage are dissolving, and extinction studies and heritage studies approximate to each other: What should be kept for the future? How should it be managed? How can it be done with care? In continuation, we understand heritage as any kind of nature-cultural, material or immaterial phenomena that are considered fragile, threatened, exposed, and valuable and which have therefore become the target of practices that categorize, collect, curate, maintain them. Heritage practices can happen in more or less institutionalized ways which stimulate interesting questions about how cultural, natural, and hybrid forms of heritage are identified, collected, practiced, maintained, challenged, and contested. In some cases, like rewilding, care means not doing anything. We are interested both in the role that materiality, media, emotions, and sensory experiences play in the preservation or disposal of certain forms or aspects of the past, the environment, and landscapes, and in the changing ideological currents that shape these processes.
A changing concept
Heritage is, however, not only about the past. It is eminently about the present and the future. It is relational, undergoing constant transformation, and continuously revalued in new contexts – negatively, ambiguously, positively. The question of heritage in our understanding of the term can also be productively addressed in relation to topical discussions and societal challenges such as hyper-objects, climate change, ecology, disinformation, and the Anthropocene. Thus, we work with themes such as (biological, cultural, linguistic) hereditary diversity; democratization of heritage in data flows, self-curation, media, archives, and review practices; and precariousness of heritage brought about by environmental threats and climate change-related menaces or related to ephemeral media and fragile materials, weathering landscapes, and precarious life forms.
The members' expertise and skills
The research programme includes scholars with expertise in Literature, Study of Religion, History, Archaeology, Middle Eastern Studies, Cultural Studies, and with sociological and philological expertise ranging from Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew (classical, Rabbinic, modern), Greek, Latin, Arabic (classical and modern) to an array of modern European languages. It is directed by Laura Feldt (the Study of Religion) and Sofie Kluge (Comparative Literature). Heritage houses several independent research unities, including the H.C. Andersen Center, the Pontoppidan Center, and Center for Medieval Literature, along with a longer array of externally funded research projects.