Course for international guest/part time students
- Faculty
- Faculty of Humanities
- Organization
- BTK Atelier Department for Interdisciplinary History
- Code
- BMI-KOMA21-13
- Title
- History of cultural heritage institutions in Hungary
- Usual semester
- Autumn
- Published semester
- 2026/27/1
- ECTS
- 4
- Language
- en
- Learning outcomes
- The course aims to outline the making of the concept of national culture heritage and its contents; it shows the components of this complex category, tracing the process in which the collections of items belonging to national heritage were established and the institutional system allowing their preservation and presentation was constructed. The course enables students to handle the conceptual, institutional and legal knowledge on national heritage with a historical perspective of the period ranging from the nineteenth-century beginnings to the present era. A historical background like this is an indispensable precondition for the professional activity of experts in libraries, archives and museums, as a familiarity with the development of the given institution and its collections helps them stimulate the same institutional process.
- Course content
- The course discusses the making and the institutionalisation of academic disciplines responsible for the research and interpretation of cultural heritage, such as archaeology, monument care, ethnography, archival and library science, with an emphasis on their respective competence areas within the production of the past, and their link with the writing of cultural history, as well as the nationalising discourses of cultural policy in the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. It explores the share of the state and civil society in the preservation of cultural heritage, the changing priorities of cultural policies, the contents of the discourses on heritage; it poses the questions of the accessibility of heritage for various social groups, and scrutinizes the legal framework provided by national legislation. The course introduces the personalities who have shaped the heritage related academic disciplines, institutions and policies in efficient ways. It analyses the tensions arising in the politics of heritage and memory, and, finally, delineates the relationship between Hungary as a homeland and the Hungarian minorities abroad, as well as the place of national and ethnic minorities within Hungarian national heritage.
- Assessment method
- Practice grade. The basic frame for evaluating student performance of the course determined by the university's code of conduct. According to this document, the instructor can determine the means of evaluation of the course depending on the nature of the field of knowledge and skills presented at the course. A practice grade usually takes the form of an evaluation based on written and/or presented works related to the student's work at a seminar individually or as a member of a student team.
- Bibliography
- Ernő Marosi, Gábor Klaniczay (eds.), The Nineteenth-Century Process of „Musealization” in Hungary and Europe, Budapest, Collegium Budapest, 2006, 408 p., ISBN 963-9293-10-5 ● Mihály Szegedi-Maszák (ed.): National Heritage – National Canon, Budapest, Collegium Budapest, 2001, 381 p. (Collegium Budapest Workshop Series No. 11) ● Vilmos Keszeg (ed.): À qui appartient la tradition? À quoi sert-elle? La tradition entre culture, utilisateur et entrepreneur. Who Owns the Tradition? What Is Its Purpose? Tradition Between Culture, User and Contractor, Cluj-Napoca, Erdélyi Múzeum-Egyesület, 2014. ISBN 978-606-8178-69-1