This course encourages students to develop a critical understanding of how justice is positioned, locally and internationally, as a subject of display. There is currently a global industry arising from the conversion of former sites of imprisonment to tourist attractions. Parliament houses and law courts, as either decommissioned or as functional sites of law-making and keeping, manage and display collections, conduct public tours and implement conservation heritage plans. In addition, there is an international push for museums to actively support social justice by ensuring that the whole of the public can benefit from museum resources. This course will focus on these intersections between museums and heritage sites with social justice, criminal justice, law making, and associated mechanisms of democracy.

Using theories and methods of sociology, human rights, cultural studies and the politics of representation, this course analyses the role of museums and heritage management in the history and practice of notions of justice, including in those countries where democracy has been threatened. In addition to lectures and multi-media recordings of international approaches to the depiction of human rights and social justice programmes in museums, students will also engage in direct learning experiences through field trips in Canberra and regional NSW.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Students will be required to participate in excursions within Canberra and in regional New South Wales, which may include an overnight stay in regional NSW. Students will need to cover the cost of their accommodation. Transport will be provided. Students will only be permitted to travel outside of Canberra upon completion of ANU required documentation, including, where required, the travel to a high risk destination form and the approval of all documentation by the relevant delegate.