CAS Dean Appointed as City Heritage Council Head, to Launch Visayas History Book

College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Dean Dr. Earl Jude Paul Cleope’s “The Visayas, Islands in the Sea: A History” will have its soft launch on May 27 during the Dumaguete Heritage Summit – a gathering of cultural workers and art practitioners of Dumaguete City.

Dr. Cleope’s book is a “modest attempt to offer a new framework towards the writing of a ‘total’ national History which continues to be a serious challenge to scholars today”. Dr. Cleope added that this endeavor is a modest incipient attempt to emphasize a point that the maritime parts of the Visayas – that mirrored that of the whole archipelago – were central to its identity and cultural heritage.

The soft launching is one of the activities in the upcoming Hugkat 2017 Heritage Summit hosted by Dumaguete City. The Summit, which will be the first one, will gather around 200 cultural workers and practitioners of the City.

According to Prof. Ian Rosales Casocot, member of the City’s Culture and Arts Council, this invitational creative industries summit, gathers the various heritage stakeholders of the City involved in museums and galleries, archives and libraries, language and translation, monuments and parks, historical research, heritage communication, cultural education, traditional cultural communities, dramatic arts, cinema, literary arts, visual arts, music, dance, and architecture and allied arts.

“The aim of the summit is to reflect on the state of their respective fields in relation to cultural and natural heritage, what the most urgent concerns [they] face in [their] fields, and what needs to be done and by whom,” Prof. Casocot added.