1. Home
  2. HERM
  3. HERM 512: Advanced Methods in Heritage Research

HERM 512: Advanced Methods in Heritage Research Report a Broken Link

This course offers an understanding of the place of research in heritage resources management. On successful completion of this course, you will have knowledge of, and an appreciation for, the techniques and methods crucial to research projects that support a range of heritage activities.

Unit 1—The Big Picture: Perspectives on Heritage Research and the Public

List of Required Readings
Gibbons, Jacqueline A. “The Museum as Contested Terrain: The Canadian Case.” Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 26, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 1–6.
Harris, Leslie M. “Imperfect Archives and the Historical Imagination.” The Public Historian 36, no. 1 (February 2014): 77–80.
Moody, Jessica. “Heritage and History.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Heritage Research, edited by Emma Waterton, and Steve Watson, 113–29. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillian, 2015.
Parliament of Canada. “An Enduring Controversy: The Strategic Bombing Campaign Display in the Canadian War Museum.” Interim Report of the Subcommittee on Veteran Affairs of the Standing Committee on National Security and Defence, June 2007.
Rahikainen, Marjatta, and Susanna Fellman. “On Historical Writing and Evidence.” In Historical Knowledge: Quest of Theory, Method and Evidence, 5–44. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.
Terry, Andrea. “Gender, Canadian Nationhood and ‘Keeping House’: The Cultural Bureaucratisation of Dundurn Castle in Hamilton, Ontario, 1900-1960s.” Gender and History 25, no. 1 (April 2013): 47–64. 
Unruh, Leanne. “Dialogical Curating: Towards Aboriginal Self-Representation in Museums.” Curator The Museum Journal 58, no. 1 (January 2015): 77–89.

Unit 2—Planning a Research Project & Finding and Accessing Documentary Sources

List of Required Readings
Alves, Daniel. “Introduction: Digital Methods and Tools for Historical Research.” International Journal of Humanities and Arts Computing 8, no. 1 (2014): 1–12.
Bird, Matthew. “Design History Research in the Digital Age.” Design and Culture 6, no. 2 (2014): 243–49. 
Maxwell, Alexander. “Digital Archives and History Research: Feedback from an End-User.” Library Review 59, no. 1 (2010): 24–39.
Vintoniv, Khrystyna. “The Ukrainian Documentary Heritage in Canadian Virtual Space: Digital Exhibitions, Encyclopedias and Databases.” European Researcher 59, no. 9 (2013): 2278–83.

Unit 3—Documentary Sources: Evaluating and Interpreting Primary Text Records

List of Required Readings
Thacker, Toby. “Using Music as Historical Text in Teaching European History.” Cultural and Social History 6 no. 2 (2009): 187–94.
Sweeney, John. “Historical Research: Examining Documentary Sources.” Nurse Researcher 12, no. 3 (2005): 62–70.
Lagan, Jessica. “The Use of Primary Source Material in Academic Research.” A View from Cambridge Archive Edition, Comparative Politics 3, no. 20 (2015): 60–64.
Rael, Patrick. “How to Read a Primary Source.” In Reading, Writing, and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students. Bowdoin College, 2004.
Required Primary Sources
“R. N. W. M. Police. Canmore Alta., Crime Report.” GR1966.0166/995, Attorney General Department, Alberta Provincial Police, General Administration Files, Correspondence, May 19-21, 1909. Provincial Archives of Alberta.
Diary of Fred Seibert, Diary number 14118, DLS, 11-23 May, 1914. Provincial Archives of Alberta.
Fred Seibert to [Edouard Deville] Edmonton, Dec. 6th, 1914 (letter), 1985.0034/1559, Department of Energy and Natural Resources, Bureau of Surveying and Mapping. Provincial Archives of Alberta.
Mitchell, Elizabeth. “Going to the Country” (excerpt). In Western Canada before the War: Impressions of Early Twentieth Century Prairie Communities (1915), 13-18. Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1981.
Cameron, Agnes Deans. “Chapter V: Ninety Miles of Rapids.” In The New North: An Account of a Woman’s 1908 Journey through Canada to the Arctic. 1909.  

Please scroll down to begin reading at Chapter V.
Diary of Robert Henry Robertson. Glenbow Archives M 9145: Page 21.
Diary of Robert Henry Robertson. Glenbow Archives M 9145: Page 22.
Diary of Robert Henry Robertson. Glenbow Archives M 9145: Page 23.
Letters of Dr. Mary Percy Jackson, Archives Society of Alberta, Alberta InWord: July 21, 1929.

Page 1
Letters of Dr. Mary Percy Jackson, Archives Society of Alberta, Alberta InWord: July 21, 1929.

Page 2
Letters of Dr. Mary Percy Jackson, Archives Society of Alberta, Alberta InWord: November 21, 1929.

Page 1
Letters of Dr. Mary Percy Jackson, Archives Society of Alberta, Alberta InWord: November 21, 1929.

Page 2
Letters of Dr. Mary Percy Jackson, Archives Society of Alberta, Alberta InWord: February 25, 1930.

Page 1
Letters of Dr. Mary Percy Jackson, Archives Society of Alberta, Alberta InWord: February 25, 1930.

Page 2
Forget, Amedee Emmanuel. “Chapter 28 An Ordinance Respecting Fences, [Assented to November 21, 1903].” Ordinances of the North-west Territories Passed in the Second Session of the Fifth Legislative Assembly. Regina, 1903.
Front Page. The Sedgewick Sentinel, March 17, 1910. [image]
Editorial Page. The Sedgewick Sentinel, March 17, 1910. [image]
Sample Page. The Sedgewick Sentinel, March 17, 1910. [image]
Statistics Canada. “Wages and Hours of Labour by Selected Trades in Selected Cities of Canada, 1927” (table).
Statistics Canada. “Average Wages per Hour for Specified Occupations in Certain Cities, 1945.”

Unit 4—Documentary Sources: Examining Pictorial Records

List of Required Readings and Viewings
Emmison, Michael, Philip Smith, and Margery Mayall. “Two-Dimensional Visual Data: Photographs and Beyond.” In Researching the Visual, 62–104. London: Sage Publications, 2014.
Belton, Robert. “Visual Poetics.” In Sights of Resistance: Approaches to Canadian Visual Culture, 7–18. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2001.
Carter, John E. “The Trained Eye: Photographs and Historical Context,” Public Historian 15, no. 1 (1993): 55–66.
Beaulieu, Michel S. “Wie es eigentlich gewesen? Early Film as Historical Source?” In Building New Bridges. Sources, Methods, and Interdisciplinarity, edited by Jeff Keshen, and Sylvie Perrier, 249–64. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005.
Crowley, John. “‘Taken on the Spot’: The Visual Appropriation of New France for the Global British Landscape.” Canadian Historical Review 86, no. 1 (March 2005): 1–28.

Unit 5—Oral History: The Document and the Research Method

List of Required Readings
Freund, Alexander. “Under Storytelling’s Spell? Oral History in a Neoliberal Age.” The Oral History Review 42, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2015): 96–132.
Calliou, Brian.  “Methodology for Recording Oral Histories in the Aboriginal Community.” In The Canadian Oral History Reader, edited by Kristina R Llewellyn, Alexander Freund, and Nolan Reilly, 25–52. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016.
Culture, Multiculturalism and Status of Women, Government of Alberta. Heritage Note Series: Oral History, 2020. 

Read sections “Types of Interview” through to the end of “Tips and Examples for Framing Questions,” pp. 13–16.
Portelli, Alessandro. “What Makes Oral History Different.” In The Oral History Reader, edited by Robert Perks, and Alistair Thomson, 63–74. London: Routledge, 2003.
Raleigh Yow, Valerie. “Interviewing Techniques and Strategies.” In The Oral History Reader. 3rd ed., edited by Robert Perks, and Alistair Thomson, 153–78. London: Routledge, 2016.
Sheftel, Anna, and Stacey Zembrzycki. “Who’s Afraid of Oral History? Fifty Years of Debates and Anxiety about Ethics.” The Oral History Review 43, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2016): 338–66.

Unit 6—Material Culture: Artifact-Based Research and Source of Evidence

List of Required Readings
Dennis, Flora. “Material Culture and Sound: A Sixteenth-Century Handbell.” In Writing Material Culture History, 151–55. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
Stecher, Anne de. “Souvenir Art, Collectible Craft, Cultural Heritage: The Wendat (Huron) of Wendake, Quebec.” In Craft, Community and the Material Culture of Place and Politics, 19th– 20th Century, edited by Janice Helland, Beverly Lemire, and Alena Buis, 37–57. Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2014.
Brodie, Antonia. “Marking and Memory: An Embroidered Sheet in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.” TEXTILE 14, no. 2 (2016): 160–75.
Martin, Ann Smart. “Lustrous Things: Luminosity and Reflection before the Light Bulb.” In Writing Material Culture History, 157–63. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
Brooks, Bradley C. “The Historic House Furnishings Plan: Process and Product.” In Interpreting Historic House Museums, edited by Jessica Foy Donnelly, 128–43. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2002.
Newell, Jenny. “Old Objects, New Media: Historical Collections, Digitization, and Affect.” Journal of Material Culture 17, no. 3 (2012): 287-306.
Baas, Christopher, and Darrin Rubino. “The Most Successful Press in This or Any Other Country: The Material Culture of 19th-Century Beater Hay Presses in the Mid-Ohio Valley.” Material Culture 45, no. 1 (2013): 1–20.

Unit 7—Material Culture: Archaeological Resources and Heritage Research

List of Required Readings
Deetz, James. “Recalling Things Forgotten: Archaeology and the American Artifact.” In In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life, 2–25, 165–67. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1977.
Little, Barbara J. “What Is Our Evidence?” In Historical Archaeology: Why the Past Matters, 59–64, 179, 193–98. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007.
Sawatzky, Roland. “Blumenhof Village and the Archaeology of Social Difference.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 34 (2016): 13–38.
Zimmerman, Larry J., and Jessica Welch. “Displaced and Barely Visible: Archaeology and the Material Culture of Homelessness.” Historical Archaeology 45, no. 1 (2011): 67–85.

Unit 8—Architectural Heritage Resources: Documenting, Researching, and Interpreting Buildings

List of Required Readings
Weizman, Eyal, and Andrew Herscher. “Architecture, Violence, Evidence.” Future Anterior 8, no. 1 (Summer, 2011): 110–23. 
Kalman, Harold. “The Opening of the West.” Excerpt from A Concise History of Canadian Architecture, 338–68. Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2000.

To access page 338 of the text, enter the number 349 into the page-finder box above the page. Read to the end of the section entitled "The Opening of the West" on page 368.
Ricketts, Shannon, Leslie Maitland, and Jacqueline Hucker. Excerpts from “Architecture in the Twentieth Century.” In A Guide to Canadian Architectural Styles. 2nd ed., 113–15, 117–21, 177–90. Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2004.
Weir, Scott. “The Picturesque Gothic Villa Comes to Town: The Emergence of Toronto’s Bay-and-Gable House Type.” Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada 41, no. 1 (2016): 57–76.
City of Calgary. How to Research Building History.
McMaster University Library. Fire Insurance Plan Legends.
Victoria’s Chinatown, Bird's-Eye Map, 1889.
Excerpts from Calgary: Stephen Avenue and Area Historical Walking Tour. Alberta Community Development Historic Sites Service, and the Stephen Avenue Heritage Area Society, 1999 reprint, 10–11, centre map (1 page), 61–62.
Hohol’, Demjan. Excerpt from “Later Changes (1930-1945).” The Grekul House: A Land Use and Structural History, 135–39, 156–57. Alberta Culture Historic Sites Service, Occasional Paper No. 14, March 1985.

Unit 9—The Resources of Place: Researching and Interpreting Landscapes

List of Required Readings
Hourdequin, Marion. “Ecological Restoration, Continuity, and Change: Negotiating History and Meaning in Layered Landscapes.” In Restoring Layered Landscapes: History, Ecology, and Culture, edited by Marion Hourdequin and David G. Havlick, 13–33. Oxford: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2015.
Bocking, Stephen, and Barbara Znamirowski. “Stories of People, Land, and Water: Using Spatial Technologies to Explore Regional Environmental History.” In Historical GIS Research in Canada, edited by Jennifer Bonnell and Marcel Fortin, 83–108. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2014. 

To download the PDF of the required reading, click on the “Open Access” tab and select Chapter 5.
Harney, Marion. “Introduction.” In Historic Building Conservation: Gardens and Landscapes in Historic Building Conservation, xv–xxiii. London: Wiley Blackwell, 2014.
Johnson, Jay T. “Place-Based Learning and Knowing: Critical Pedagogies Grounded in Indigeneity.” GeoJournal 77, no. 6 (2012): 829–36.

Unit 10—Putting It All Together: A Case Study in Heritage Research

List of Required Readings and Viewings
Babcock, Douglas. “Structural History.” In The Factor’s House, Fort Dunvegan: A Structural History. Prepared for Alberta Culture, Historic Sites Service, unpublished report, 1985, 11–28, 47–49.
Larmour, Judy. “Sources.” In The Hudson’s Bay Company’s Factor’s House, Dunvegan: A Material History, 1877–1900. Prepared for Alberta Culture, Historic Sites Service, unpublished report, 1987, 25–33. 
Larmour, Judy. “Emile Grouard, Artist Bishop of the North: The Altar Paintings and Decoration of the Sanctuary in St. Charles Church, Dunvegan.” Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada/Société pour l’étude de l’architecture au Canada Bulletin 17, no. 4 (December/décembre, 1992): 105–09.
Smith, Brian, Mary Margaret Smith, and Kathleen M. Neary. “GlQp-6: Discussion and Evaluation.” In Archaeological Investigations, Dunvegan, Alberta: Hudson’s Bay Company 1877 Factor’s House (GlQp-8) and St. Charles Mission Roman Catholic Church (GlQp-6) Permit 89-20. Prepared for the Fort Dunvegan Historical Society and Alberta Culture and Multiculturalism, Archaeological Survey and Ethnology, Provincial Museum of Alberta, 1991, 84–85.

Videos

Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza, Seville, Spain. Judy Larmour. [video]

The landmark heritage building, constructed under a succession of architects (1782–1881), is a major bullfighting centre in Spain. Visitors are often more struck by its controversial purpose than by its architecture and cultural heritage values. 
“Cameramen filming at Native scene at Fort Macleod, Alberta, 1920, ” (CU1107603) by Unknown. Courtesy of Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.

This photograph was taken during the filming of the 1921 movie Cameron of the Royal Mounted. Consider how different its meaning might be without knowing this information, and consider how the meaning changes depending on whether the image is cropped or zoomed out to varying degrees. 
Myers, Patricia. The Iconography of Cookbooks: A Cultural Window. Athabasca University, 2008. [video]

This video, developed for this course, includes ten images of cookbook covers, which have been selected and analyzed by Patricia Myers, a historian with Alberta’s Historic Resources Management Branch.
Athabasca University. Heritage Research and Historic Dunvegan, Alberta. Athabasca University, 2008. [video]

Milk Makes Muscle. Produced by the Alberta Department of Agriculture. 1920s. [video] 

 [Video. Originally produced in 16mm film.] Black and white. Silent with intertitles. 7 minutes 42 seconds. Original format 16 mm film.This film is provided courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Alberta HeRMIS (Heritage Resources Management Information System) online Exhibits collection. Film courtesy Provincial Archives of Alberta.
Peeling Back the Layers: Revealing the Structural History of the Factor’s House: The Factor’s House, Exterior [video]

Peeling Back the Layers: Revealing the Structural History of the Factor’s House: The Factor’s House, Interior [video]

Furnishing the Factor’s House: The Curator and Artifact-Specific Research [video]

Furnishing the Factor’s House: Seeking Original and Historic Items [video]

Furnishing the Factor’s House: Prototypes and Reproduction [video]

Furnishing the Factor's House: Working with Ghosts [video]

Furnishing the Factor’s House: Currently Manufactured Items [video]

Furnishing the Factor’s House: Taking the Measure of the Building [video]

Furnishing the Factor’s House: Acquisition Is Always Ongoing [video]

Interpreting the Site for Visitors: Putting a Tour Script Together [video]

Interpreting the Site for Visitors: Reading the Visitor [video]

Interpreting the Site for Visitors: Issues of Identity—Past and Present [video]

Interpreting the Site for Visitors: Welcome to the Factor's House! [video]