Kolkata: The Calcutta University has made an elaborate plan of viewing heritage in accordance with the contemporary times focusing upon core issues and approaches relating to the tangible and intangible, movable and immovable heritage. The Centre for Public Humanities proposed by Calcutta University has laid special emphasis on rethinking of heritage exploring various sub themes like musealisation of community heritage, collections, archives, public archeology, sites and landscapes, religious sects, heritage organisations, legislations and tangible categories like traditions, art and culture, oral history, minorities and migrant communities. "The main effort will be to trace the development and positioning of heritage as a public enterprise and fountainhead of social values. Studies on the history of Kolkata will be encouraged but the horizon may be expanded to South and South East Asia and Asia as a whole," a senior official in the Arts faculty of CU said. The CU museum has a strong tradition of collecting classical as well as regional art and craft objects. "We have plans to modernize the museum to create a platform in which the tangible results could be displayed before the public. Such platform would also be utilised for bringing heritage movement actors, custodians of popular and intangible traditions, and broader publics into conversation with academics," he added. Apart from heritage, there are nine other broad areas that will be taken up by the proposed Centre to encourage research activities on humanities which are innovative, transparent and accessible to public. This includes- governance, Public Economics and Public Policy, Business- Society Interface, Information Network Dynamics, Literature- Society Dialectics, Inclusive Pedagogy, Religion and Applied Ethics, Digital Humanities, New Technology, Media and Public Communication and University Press and Publishing. "At various levels and across time and space community oriented research has been sourced from the university. But as it has been done in a segmented manner it has not been foregrounded in the way Public Humanities does. So we decided to set up such a Centre," said Sonali Chakravarti Banerjee, vice chancellor of CU. The DPR on the activities of the Public Humanities Centre as well as a Centre for Innovation and Societal Applications has already been prepared. The university is getting Rs 50 crores fund under Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) which will be utilised for setting up the two centres.

Stay updated with all the Kolkata Latest News headlines here. For more exclusive & live news updates from all around India, stay connected with NYOOOZ.