Long Term-Impacts and Ongoing Reflections: Reviewing Belonging-Centered Emotive Dialogue to Address Visitor Experiences of Guilt

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This presentation introduces the Belonging-Centered Emotive Dialogue model; a model of visitor programming designed to address feelings of collective shame and guilt experienced by visitors in heritage spaces in order to promote self-reflection and reconciliatory action. Underpinning this approach is psychological research stating that guilt, when acknowledged, can be used to foster empathy and promote reparation for past harms. The BCED model uses facilitated dialogue and historical archaeological collections to elicit these pro-social benefits of guilt while mitigating the negative consequences of shame including disbelief, defensiveness, or avoidance.

The immediate and long-term impact of the BCED model will be explored through the analysis of its implementation at two museums; the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which was supported by the SHA scholarship program, and St. Mary’s Museum in Ontario. While these case-studies relate to Canadian colonialism, I will propose how this model could be used to interpret other difficult histories.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow