MUSEUMS & ANTHROPOLOGY

Catalog description

What does it mean to preserve, display, and remember culture? Though museums were foundational institutions for anthropologists to display and interpret culture, in recent decades critical questions of ownership, voice, and decolonization have become forefront for museum studies. Through a series of readings, films and discussions this course will critically engage with anthropological concepts and entanglements with museums in our historical and contemporary world. We will explore issues of diversity and inclusion, colonialism and ownership, and voice and representation. We will critically assess major museum institutions, community museums, experimental museums as well as monuments and ask what it means to represent, negotiate and contest human material and visual culture.