CHAMP
Collaborative for Cultural Heritage and Museum Practices

CHAMP is an interdisciplinary collaborative at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the critical study of cultural heritage and museums in the global context. CHAMP’s principal goal is to critically examine the articulation and representation of cultural identity on local and worldwide scales and to interrogate theories of heritage and museum practice that emerge from them.

CHAMP sponsors yearly conferences:

Cultural Heritage and Human Rights (March 10-11, 2006)
Intangible Heritage Embodied (March 30-31, 2007)
Heritage Cities (March 7-8, 2008)
Contested Cultural Heritage in a Global World (April 24-25, 2008)

Environmental Horizons Sustainability Summit

This April 23-24, 2008 event, sponsored by the Environmental Council and the Provost, showcases campus initiatives focussing on the environment and sustainability. Speakers include Richard J. Jackson and Majora Carter.

Cultural Heritage Conservation in South Asia: The Three Shalamar Baghs.

This workshop convened leading conservation architects to identify common issues and priorities for landscape heritage conservation theory and practice in South Asia. Issues discussed included conflicts between heritage preservation and modern uses, contested site histories, legislative and institutional barriers to effective conservation, and conservation as a stimulus for economic regeneration of local communities. The panel met on Nov 1, 2007 and focused on cultural heritage as represented in historic gardens in Srinagar, Lahore and Delhi. It was held in conjunction with the India 60 symposium on November 2-3, 2007 at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

African Architectural History Today

African Architectural History and the Undergraduate Curriculum, a colloquium organized by Rebecca Ginsburg and sponsored by the Center for African Studies, the Department of Landscape Architecture, and other university units, was held at the Illini Union December 1-3, 2005.

This international conference hosted by the Landscape Architecture Foundation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Illinois Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects will discuss how the following forces will reshape our world and practice!

Champaner-Pavagadh was declared a World Heritage Site at the UNESCO meeting in China in June 2004.  This decision was based upon the extensive documentation of cultural heritage resources by Heritage Trust, Baroda and landscape management proposals by a team of faculty and students from the Department of Landscape Architecture who made two trips to the site in May 2001 and January 2003.  Week-long design workshops were conducted with Heritage Trust and Architecture students from MS University, Baroda.  The proposals were then developed in semester-long design workshops in the campus, resulting in two reports that were part of the submission to UNESCO for World Heritage Status.

The Champaner-Pavagadh Archaeological Park site has ruins of a handsome fifteenth-century city and has continued importance as a sacred pilgrim center for Hindus and Jains.

This March 5-6, 2004 symposium organized by Dianne Harris examined the relationship of the built environment to the reinforcement of social constructions of racial identities and modalities of racism. Its focus was on the everyday spatial apparatuses that reflect, reinforce, and even create racially based practices of exclusion, oppression, minoritization, and privilege in a variety of realms.  Invited speakers included scholars  whose works focus on environmental justice, cities and public spaces, housing, and landscapes.

This colloquium was held on February 27, 2004 in honor of Professor Emeritus Robert B. Riley.  Featured speaker was Lucy Lippard, with respondants Kenneth Helphand, Helaine Silverman, Achva Benzenburg Stein and Rachel Leibowitz.   For information, visit the colloquium website.

This two-day symposium organized by Dianne Harris took place on October 4-5, 2002.  It served to launch the Department’s Ph.D. in Landscape Architecture (History and Theory Concentration).

The Landscape and Vision Symposium took the act of seeing and perception as its point of departure, paying particular attention to landscape reception and perception.  Its scope was broad, geographically and temporally, with topics ranging from antiquity to the present.  Landscapes are subject to the discriminating eye of the beholder and to what some scholars have called the social construction of vision.  Each speaker examined a particular place and time and the way habits of perception shaped both the designed landscape and the viewer's perception of that place."

The Department has been involved in designing a cultural heritage district with Taj Mahal as its focus in Agra, India.  The activities have included site visits by faculty and students, a symposium on Mughal gardens of Agra, and a semester-long design studio in 2000.  The results are published in a report and CD-ROM.  A web site entitled "A Walk Along the Yamuna" gives a view of the project.