Title: Louisville’s (Other) Heritages

Speaker: Lisa Bjorkman, University of Louisville and Malmö University 

Abstract: This talk will present a community engaged research project titled Louisville’s (Other) Heritages which is based in the American city of Louisville – a city whose a rich heritage attracts visitors from all over the world. Louisville’s (Other) Heritages is an interactive digital story map that enriches understandings of heritage by amplifying voices and perspectives that tend to be less prominent in Louisville’s official histories and received urban heritage narratives: those of city residents with more-recent migration backgrounds. The story map foregrounds the role – both historical and contemporary – that migration has played in Louisville’s development and transformation, and is motivated by the understanding that migration is not exceptional, but is (and has always been) a driving force in our shared human history. Central to the project is the notion that who we are and where we’re headed is bound up with how we understand and represent our heritage – and that “heritage” is not reducible to (or determined by) ideas about the culture or traditions that may be predominant in someone’s birth nationality or country of origin. Instead, the storymap allows meaning and significance of migration histories to emerge through accounts of how migration experiences have informed their lives, aspirations, and hopes for the future in Louisville. The talk will present some of the ethnographic material, will discuss research process and community engaged methodology, as well as the afterlives of the project.