Heritage University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Overview

Students enrolled in the The Master of Arts in Heritage from University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg by dissertation are required to work with a supervisor to produce research of 40,000 words. Students enrolled in the programme by coursework and research report are required to complete three coursework units, as well as write a research report of 20,000 words.

Key Facts

With a bias towards the arts, the degree programme is understood to encourage critical thinking around public representations of history, monumentalisation, and the bureaucratization of memory and its politics.

Rather than it being about managing heritage sites and their collections,  the degree focuses on conceptual engagements that interrogate how heritage sites work towards constructing perceptions of public culture.  In particular, how public cultures impact and/or are impacted by heritage and arts policies. It does this by fostering knowledges of the intersectionality of heritage, race, identity, ethnicity, cultures and the public sphere.

Thinking about the politics of heritage, the degree encourages current/popular debates that may engage contestations of sites of knowledge. It questions what constitutes forms of knowledge, public memory and debates around land, land dispossession and its discontents. Core courses taken within this degree often look at public art, exhibitions, festivals, monuments, and so forth.