Symposium
CULTURAL EXPERIENCE AND UNIVERSITY HERITAGE
CPC-USP (Center for Cultural Preservation at the University of São Paulo)
São Paulo, March 7- 9, 2012
In the mid-1990s, UNESCO created a special forum dedicated to encouraging
university’s involvement with issues of heritage. UNESCO’s interest then was not
precisely the cultural heritage of the university itself, but the building of international
networks within the academic world. The aim seemed to be the establishment of a
larger multilateral scale of cooperation between national/ foreign universities and
preservation institutions, programs and policies.
Beginning in 2000, a diverse initiative was structured with the creation of the
International Committee for University Museums and Collections (UMAC) inside the
prestigious International Council of Museums (ICOM). Dedicated to protecting
collections and exchanging ideas and works among institutions of higher education, the
nexus there with the “university heritage” still seemed to derive from exogenous
concepts raised within the very particular reality of museums.
The symposium “Cultural Experience and University Heritage” does not intend to focus
on the role the university has been fulfilling in developing reflections on cultural
heritage in general, nor to evaluate its own policies for museums and collections.
Instead, it intends to advance on the discussion of a “native” concept of heritage,
directly connected to the historical and cultural experience of the university itself. By
elaborating on university’s institutional specificity in time and place - as well as on the
intellectual practices with which it operates, its role within public life and among the
various forms of culture and knowledge - we hope to contribute to the reflection upon
the modes of relevance and protection of certain kinds of objects and supports proper
to university heritage.
In addition to fostering a broader reflection on the theme, involving intellectuals,
academics and experts from diverse areas of knowledge, we also intend here to gather
material for the consolidation of a policy on heritage, memory and collections within the
University of São Paulo.
The symposium is promoted by USP’s Center for Cultural Preservation. Created in
2002 by the Rector’s Office for Culture and University Extension, it continues the work
of an earlier Commission on Cultural Heritage, born in 1986. Its initial activities were
the identification, protection, conservation and dissemination of buildings, sites,
monuments and collections of historical and artistic value belonging to the university. In
recent years though some initiatives have moved beyond the registers of consecration,
monumentality, antiquity, exceptionality or rarity.
The challenge before us is to think critically about the broader links between heritage
and the university on three fronts: first, going beyond the occasional and exogenous
nature of initiatives in this field to adopt principles and guidelines coherent with the
cultural specificity of the university; secondly, abandoning the nostalgic, official or
celebratory tone that often reverberates through the conceptual field of heritage and
the university; and lastly, and above all, deflecting the focus of interest from the great
landmarks, personalities and achievements, or monuments and collections, toward the
memory of the groups that comprise the university, the uniqueness of their cultural,
intellectual and scientific practices, their attributes of creativity and innovation, their
daily supports for work and existence, as well as the links established with outer
cultural and political experiences.
OPENING
March 7th, 7:00 p.m.
Headquarters of the Center for Cultural Preservation – CPC-USP – Casa Dona Yayá
Rua Major Diogo, 353 - Bela Vista – São Paulo - SP
Prof. Maria Arminda do Nascimento Arruda (USP´s Rector for Culture and Extension)
Prof. André Mota (School of Medicine/ Museum of Medicine-USP)
Prof. Fernanda Arêas Peixoto (Department of Anthropology -FFLCH-USP)
Prof. José Lira (CPC/School of Architecture and Planning -USP)
PANELS
Theater of the School of Medicine of the University of São Paulo
Av. Dr. Arnaldo, 455 – Metrô Clínicas – São Paulo - SP
March 8th
Panel 1 9:00 a.m. to 12 noon
THE UNIVERSITY AND PUBLIC LIFE
The university appears, at least in the West, to have some sociological features in
common with the city, most probably as a result of its historical affinity with values of
secularity, tolerance, specialization, concentration and diversity. However, there are
notable differences between one and the other, whether related to their social and
cultural biases, or from the point of view of the kinds of knowledge they produce.
This panel proposes to think about similarities, differences and relationships between
the university and the public life, taking into consideration the plurality of cultural
attributes and meanings that each represents. In what ways are universities inscribed
in urban life, now and in the past? How do they react to social, cultural and political
stimuli around them, often connected to non-academic ideologies and discourses? At
what level can it be said that the university holds the monopoly on the production and
safekeeping of authorized knowledge, and how does this relate to the new ‘habitats’ of
knowledge that society has been developing? What are the relationships that research
and academic discourse establish with public culture, politics, the press, the practical
professions and social interventionism? How to bridge the gap between erudite
academia and the social (and political) conditions of daily life, political controversies,
local experiences and institutional authorities?
Prof. Franklin Leopoldo e Silva (Department of Philosophy - FFLCH-USP)
Prof. Sérgio Miceli (Department of Sociology - FFLCH-USP)
Prof. Fernando Novais (Department of History - FFLCH-USP)
Moderator: Prof. Fernanda Arêas Peixoto (Department of Anthropology - FFLCH-USP)
Panel 2 | 2 p.m to 5 p.m.
THE UNIVERSITY, THE CITY AND NATURE
This panel proposes a reflection on the university relationship with physical space. It
contemplates the immediate interface of the university buildings and campuses with the
urban and regional circumstances of their environment, as well as the different
categories of “field” - urban and rural, environmental and social, archeological and
natural, mineral and botanical and others – that constitute the empirical universe of
different sciences.
In this sense it is important to reflect on the tendency of universities and the scientific
disciplines to move closer or to distance themselves from their surroundings and their
research subjects, sometimes becoming more involved with, sometimes more distant
from them. What kind of spaces, ecologies and architectures do they produce for
themselves? How to relate the universities’ intellectual and spatial experiences – some
located in dense urban centers, other in isolated, peripheral or rural areas, protected
suburbs or advanced campuses – from the standpoint of the relevance and vitality of
the knowledge they produce? How are the academic disciplines - when surpassing
their daily physical and institutional limits - shaped by and how do they shape their
universes of research, either reacting to or absorbing and recreating their properties
and stimulus?
Prof. Carlos Roberto Monteiro de Andrade (Architecture and Planning Institute, USP)
Prof. Marcus Granato (Museum of Astronomy and Related Sciences/ MCT)
Prof. José Reginaldo Santos Gonçalves (Department of Anthropology, IFCS-UFRJ)
Moderator: Prof. Lilia Blima Schraiber (School of Medicine, FM-USP)
March 9th
Panel 3 | 9:00 a.m. to noon
THE CULTURE OF SCIENTIFIC PRACTICES
The panel’s objective, as the title indicates, is to think about university production as
practices, i.e. based on the tasks that comprise it and not in the usual way, as a
function of the academic results that distinguish them. This is an attempt to prompt a
reflection based on the routines in the classrooms, laboratories and research groups,
on the preferentially chosen tools, technics, methods and procedures, sensitive to the
“styles” and traditions of the institutions, fields of knowledge and intellectual
generations themselves.
The proposal is to launch an extended reflection on the types of work undertaken within
the university, and to compare in detail specific environments and case studies, based
on the supposition that university heritage is constructed, and reconstructed, in daily
practice. The looking “inside” (and self-reflection) about university production must also
contemplate movements “outwards”, towards extra-institutional or extra-academic
partnerships on the political and cultural scenario, as well as to other cultures, systems
of thought and languages, including those which are called traditional or pre-scientific.
Roberto de Andrade Martins (Physics Institute -UNICAMP / UEPB)
Stelio Alessandro Marras (Brazilian Studies Institute -USP)
Eduardo Góes Neves (Archeology and Ethnology Museum -USP)
Moderator: André Mota (School of Medicine/ Museum of Medicine - USP)
Panel 4 | 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
HISTORY, MEMORY AND UNIVERSITY HERITAGE
The goal of this panel is to discuss how university heritage is constituted, whether as
an updating of former symbolisms and practices, or as the creation of new fields of
historical and cultural meaning. In this sense, the proposal is to reflect on the records
of institutional history and the relevance of university collections, landmarks and
memorabilia, in order to incorporate the social, historical and cultural specificities of
university heritage, both tangible and intangible, in its connections to the work and
practices there performed and the memory of creations, innovations and experiences in
the arts, humanities, sciences and technologies.
Taking into account the multidisciplinary and intellectual heterogeneity that
characterizes the university, and cross referencing some of the its main supports of
memory, we hope to grasp some articulations and contrasts with the institutional
history and identity. How to conceptualize such a university heritage? What are its
singularities or relationships that they produce with other memorial and identity figures?
or with those practiced by other instances of cultural heritage: museums, libraries, and
official preservation agencies, for example? What fields of objects, meanings,
attributes and categories are peculiar to it? What kinds of valorization and recognition,
treatment, record keeping, conservation and dissemination policies do they request?
What public role would a policy for university memory and heritage fulfill in
contemporary society? What values, legacies and contributions would it have to
cultivate for future generations?
Prof. Ulpiano Toledo Bezerra de Menezes (Department of History - USP)
Prof. Maria Cecília França Lourenço (School of Architecture and Planning -USP)
Prof. Antonio Augusto Arantes Neto (Department of Anthropology -UNICAMP)
Moderador: Prof. José Tavares Correia de Lira (CPC/ FAU-USP)
FREE EVENT
REGISTRATION
February 01 to 26, 2012.
Please visit the download section of the CPC-USP site www.usp.br/cpc, to find the
registration form that must be filled out and sent by e-mail (cpcpublic@usp.br) or by fax
(55 11 3106-3562) through February 26. Registration will be confirmed by e-mail by
February 28th.
Organization
Centro de Preservação Cultural da USP
(Center for Cultural Preservation – USP)
Pró-Reitoria de Cultura e Extensão Universitária da USP
Dean’s Office for Culture and University Extension – USP)
Support
Faculdade de Medicina da USP
University of São Paulo – School of Medicine
Museu Histórico da Faculdade de Medicina da USP
Museum of History of the School of Medicine - USP
Departamento de Antropologia da FFLCH - USP
Department of Anthropology of FFLCH - USP