Cirrus@Austlit

'This introduction to the special issue of Landscapes theorizes the questions suggested by the theme, "Landscape: Heritage." Weaving personal narrative with literary criticism, cultural studies, human geography, and ecology, the essay examines the way humans become human by developing complex relationships with landscapes over time. As landscapes contain the physical traces of human habitation and development, certain narratives of human inhabitants are written and memorialized in and by those landscapes. The monumentalization of specific heritages leads to contests between human groups who require certain heritages to be memorialized, but not others. Greater awareness of one's humanity requires recovery of polyphonic landscape heritages and continual re-inscription. The concluding section of the essay traces the connections between the individual publications in the issue, and shows how they unite in providing diverse understandings of how humans become human by re-inscribing heritage in Landscapes.' (Publication introduction : Hubbell, D. (2018). Becoming Human in the Land: An Introduction to the Special Issue of Heritage: Landscapes. Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language, 8(1).)