Tales from the Cauldron: Travels into Modernity with an Iron Pot

• Event Date: Wednesday, May 22, 2013
• Time: 4:00 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Talk
• Exhibit-Related tag

The function of objects changes over time, and in parallel their values change, too. But beyond notions of direct utility and more indirect symbolic values, objects can open up larger narratives that speak to us of change and transformation, continuities and connections that extend beyond historical and geographical boundaries. In imagining the life of an iron pot, one of the first products of the industrial revolution, Professor Mike Robinson would like to take you to the dramatic cultural landscapes of its creation and how such landscapes have been similarly dramatically transformed, from places of production to places of consumption. Moreover, he'd like to explore the real and imagined connections that exist between objects, events and global mobilities. In doing so he hopes to raise questions as to how we understand objects and notions of value.

This talk is presented in conjunction with the International Conference on Heritage and Popular Culture, a shared symposium sponsored by CHAMP (Collaborative for Cultural Heritage Management and Policy) at UIUC and its University of Birmingham partner, IIICH (Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage).

The speaker, Professor Mike Robinson, is the Director of Ironbridge Institute and Chair of Cultural Heritage at the University of Birmingham, England. He is the founder and director of the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change and editor of Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, which he created. His research interests for the past 25 years have focused on the interconnections between tourism, heritage and culture. Among many other volumes he has published are Tourism and Cultural Conflicts; Literature and Tourism; Festivals, Tourism and Social Change; The Framed World; Emotion in Motion; Cultural Tourism in a Changing World; and the Sage Handbook of Tourism Studies. He has worked with UNESCO on tourism, culture and sustainable development and was commissioned to write a World Diversity Report for UNESCO. In 2010 he was appointed by Her Majesty’s UK Government/Department of Culture, Media and Sport to be part of the Expert Panel which assesses the UK’s candidates for the UNESCO Tentative World Heritage List. He is a former elected member to the Culture Committee of the UK National Commission for UNESCO and a founding member of the UNESCO/UNITWIN Network on Tourism, Culture and Development. He is a Board member/Trustee of the Council for British Research in the Levant and has held Visiting Professorships in Italy and Taiwan.