A dramatic wave of unionizing in the museum world over the past year has sparked new conversations about labor and collective organizing throughout the cultural sector. Yet while those at the forefront of these conversations hope to leverage this moment into a cohesive movement, cultural labor activism has manifested in different ways throughout the cultural sector. This thesis seeks to understand the specific role of public history within the recent movement, through interviews with staff members involved in organizing efforts at their museum/historic site and media coverage of both successful and failed union drives. The goal of this work is to bring together the many disparate threads of conversation surrounding cultural labor activism to highlight the specific ways that public historical work prevents social movements. This thesis will build upon an existing yet nascent scholarship on public historical labor to contextualize this moment in a way that will appeal to a broad cross section of cultural workers. This analysis also offers potential solutions to build on the momentum of this current cultural revolution, such as calling on professional organizations like the National Council of Public History to become a player in the fight for public history labor protections. / History

The reconstruction of historical buildings has been debated by preservationists, archeologists and historians, both with each other and within their own fields. But no matter how intensely scholars discuss and disagree on the subject, professionals at historic sites still continue to reconstruct historical buildings. The questions surrounding historical reconstruction include: is it ethical to reconstruct historical buildings? Is it worthwhile to reconstruct historical buildings for the benefit of the general public? I surveyed historical site workers from across the country and visitors from Red Hill National Memorial, the last home of Patrick Henry. From the survey, visitors seem to remember where they have seen reconstructions, sometimes what happened to the original buildings and learn about the history and preservation of the historic location. Sites that continue to reconstruct and follow all the preservation laws and regulations and inform the public on why the site reconstructed the building(s) are getting it right.

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Johannesburg, 2017. / This study analyses the politics of liberation heritage in postcolonial southern Africa with special reference to Mozambique. The aim is to scrutinise the different ways in which liberation heritage discourse is used and mobilised to construct a range of socioeconomic and political values in the southern African region and to examine the processes of heritagization in Mozambique based on field observations at two national heritage sites: Chilembene and Matchedje. I adopt the conceptualisation of heritage as discourse and put the hegemonic Western heritage discourses into historical perspective in order to explore how this Western understanding of the past has influenced the official discourse and practice in southern Africa in both colonial and postcolonial periods. I argue that the process of re-appropriation and ‘mimicry’ which allow the perpetuation of Western paradigms in the conception of heritage result from a combination of geopolitical and socio-economic contexts and circumstances at play nationally, regionally and globally, combined with the strategies adopted by former national liberation movement’s ruling elites to pursue their own nationalist agendas related to state-crafting and nation-building. I also argue that the recent traction that has led to the institutionalisation of liberation heritage discourse in southern Africa, represents a specific way in which former national liberation movements, now in government, have tried to respond to changes in circumstances marked by an increasing contestation by the different social groups over the content of the official discourse of ‘the past’, based on selective memories of the liberation struggle, in an increasingly disputed multi-party democratic dispensation. To understand the politics of heritagization of the liberation struggle in postcolonial Mozambique, I look at FRELIMO’s efforts to undertake selective celebrations and to silence particular ‘pasts’ for particular ‘presents’ during the struggle years as well as through the different socio-political and economic contexts of the successive presidencies: Samora Machel (1975-86), Joaquim Chissano (-2004) and Armando Guebuza (-2014). By (1) addressing the question of why and how the heritagization of this particular category of the past (i.e. liberation heritage) accomplishes the reproduction of state power held by ruling elites of former national liberation movements, and by (2) illustrating the networks of meanings and practices on which liberation heritage rests, and by (3) analysing the socioeconomic, cultural and political work it does, this study contributes to the embryonic body of knowledge about heritage processes in southern Africa. / LG2017

This paper concerns the creation and evaluation of a branching story written by the author. Branching storylines are unique in that each branch delivers a different experience, wherefore this paper poses and attempts to answer the question, is it possible to offer similar learning experiences regardless of which story path is taken in a branching story structure? As a case study, the story is written for a pervasive game, an application for Android phones. Due to the game’s design and wishing to motivate the players to move around on their own, it was written to be segmented and yet have linear, branching storylines. The case study consisted of creating a game set at a historical site, specifically Karlsborg fort, where the story would give the players an idea of how a day in the life of a sergeant could have looked in 1865. After testing and knowledge-based questionnaires, the data body proved minute, wherefore no significant conclusions are reached; however, it is suggested story nodes are useful for giving each player equal possibility of gleaning specific knowledge from the game, gathering all storylines in event scenes where the specific knowledge is presented.

This essay highlights the resonance that occurs between place, narrative, and storyteller. The study's object of knowledge is the phenomenon of genius loci and the oral storytelling tradition. Genius loci is the idea that a place has a spirit or aura that is created and effected by the actions and presence of humans. It is an intangible cultural heritage, rooted in the physical place. The subjects of study are the storytellers in The Land of Legends and their experiences of telling stories in culturally historic places. In the present study storytellers participated in focus groups and individual interviews to discuss and share their experiences. This essay argues that when the storytellers perform a local legend, on the site where the story is said to have taken place, it activates and becomes a part of the place genius loci. Storytelling has the ability to give people access to layers of cultural heritage that otherwise would remain hidden. The present study wants to show that oral storytelling and genius loci are important aspects of the intermediation, preservation, and development of our shared cultural heritage. This is a two years master’s thesis in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies.

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