History 546: Museums and Collecting
Professor Tracy Teslow
Spring 2009
12:30 a.m. – 1:50 p.m., Tuesday & Thursday
McMicken 205
Office hours: T, TH 2:00 – 4:00 pm and by appointment
310D McMicken tel: 556-2557 email:
Course Description
The hand of a mermaid, a miniature landscape inside a tiny box, cheese turned to stone, a bat as large as a pigeon -- all found in the 17th century British Ashmolean Museum, along with whale bones, pelicans and Turkish shoes. In 1802, in Philadelphia, Charles Wilson Peale exhibited portraits of Revolutionary war heroes alongside mounted animal specimens, glass cases filled with minerals, and a mastodon skeleton. How can we comprehend these curious collections? Why don't museums display mermaids anymore? Such questions provoke us to ask even more basic ones: What are museums for? Who do they serve? What underlies the authority of their claims about the world? In this course we will explore collecting and displaying objects as a means for creating and organizing knowledge about the world, from the early modern period to the present, from early cabinets of curiosity to later museums of art, science and history, first in Europe and then in the United States. We'll study how ideas about nature itself, and how one reaches conclusions about the world, have changed over the last 400 years, and look at the profound effects these changes have had on museums and collecting.
Required Readings
· Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, Knopf, 1996.
· Readings on Blackboard
Course Structure, Assignments, Grading
Class meetings will be devoted to lectures covering the historical period in question and relevant themes, and discussion of assigned texts. You are expected to prepare the readings carefully before class; participation in discussion is encouraged and expected. I will give 5 short reading quizzes (one or two questions) throughout the quarter. These are not designed to trip you up or test your recall of obscure facts, but merely to determine whether you have done the reading and mastered basic concepts and arguments. There will be three essays; 5 pages for undergraduates, 10 for graduate students. For the first essay, you will visit a local museum of your choice (picked from a list I’ll provide) during the third week and write a commentary/analysis. Your second writing assignment, on an assigned topic, is due the seventh week. A final essay on an assigned topic will be due finals week. There will be a short in-class final exam covering readings and lecture, consisting of short answer and identifications items. I’ll provide you with a Final Exam Study Guide to help you prepare. Papers will be submitted via Safe Assign.
Percentage
Class Participation 10%
5 Reading quizzes 10%
Essay #1 20%
Essay #2 20%
Final Exam + Essay 40%
Please note:
· Plagiarism is not allowed. The first instance will result in a failing grade on your assignment. Subsequent infractions may result in failing the course. Plagiarism entails presenting others’ work as your own—whether that of your roommate, work obtained on the internet, or material from a book or article. You need not copy an entire paper or article to commit plagiarism—any identifiable portion of text that you include in your essay without proper attribution constitutes plagiarism and is grounds for action. If you are unclear about what constitutes plagiarism, please consult the guidelines in the Student Code of Conduct or talk to me.
· Late papers—will be penalized. Exceptions will be made only in the case of hardship or illness. Every effort should be made to notify me in advance.
· Email. Papers may not be sent as email attachments, except with permission.
Course Schedule
WEEK 1 Introduction: The Origins of Modern Museums (March 31 + April 2)
· Lorraine Daston, “The Nature of Nature in Early Modern Europe,” Configurations, 6.2 (1998), p. 149-172. See also images of items discussed in Daston posted on Blackboard.
WEEK 2 Early Modern Museums & Collecting (April 7+9)
· Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996: “A World of Wonders in One Closet Shut,” p. 17-47; “Site of Knowledge,” p. 97-150.
WEEK 3 Museum Visits (April 14+16)
NO CLASS – Individual museum visits
· Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750, Zone Books, 2001: “ The Enlightenment and the Anti-Marvelous,” p. 329-363.
WEEK 4 Modernity and the Museum (April 21+23)
For Tuesday:
· Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, London: Routledge, 1995: “The Formation of the Museum,” p. 17-58.
For Thursday:
· Bennett: “The Exhibitionary Complex,” p. 59-88; “The Political Rationality of the Museum,” p. 89-105.
ESSAY #1: Museum commentary/analysis
DUE: 4:00 p.m., Friday, April 24, in my History Department mailbox, 360 McMicken. Papers must also be submitted digitally via Safe Assign.
Remember to include your ticket stub or other dated evidence of museum attendance to receive credit for your paper!
WEEK 5 Gender and Museums (April 28+30)
· Donna Haraway, Primate Visions. Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science, New York: Routledge, 1989: “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-36,” p. 26-58
· Paula Findlen, “Masculine Prerogatives: Gender, Space, and Knowledge in the Early Modern Museum” p. 29-58 (in The Architecture of Science, edited by Peter Galison and Emily Thompson, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999)
WEEK 6 Early American Museums (May 5+7)
· Laura Rigal, “Peale’s Mammoth,” p. 18-38 (in American Iconology, edited by David C. Miller, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993)
· Andrea Stulman Dennett, Weird and Wonderful: the Dime Museum in America, New York: New York University Press, 1997: “Barnum and the Museum Revolution, 1841-1870,” p. 23-40
· Steven C. Levi, “P.T. Barnum and the Feejee Mermaid,” Western Folklore, vol. 36, no. 2 (April 1977), p. 149-154.
· M.H. Dunlop, “Curiosities Too Numerous to Mention: Early Regionalism and Cincinnati’s Western Museum,” American Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 4 (Autumn 1984), p. 524-48.
WEEK 7 Natural History Museums + Anthropology (May 12+14)
· Alison Griffiths, Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, & Turn-of-the-Century Visual Culture, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002: “Life Groups and the Modern Museum Spectator,” p. 3-45; “Science and Spectacle: Visualizing the Other at the World’s Fair,” p. 46-85
· Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998: “Objects of Ethnography,” p. 17-78
Essay #2 DUE: 4:00 p.m., Friday, May 15, via Safe Assign
WEEK 8 Museums and Race in the United States: African Americans (May 19+21)
· Spencer Crew, Field to Factory: Afro-American Migration 1915-1940, Washington, D.C.: Dept. of Public Programs, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1987. (on Reserve)
· Eric Gable, “Maintaining Boundaries, or 'Mainstreaming' Black History in a White Museum,” p. 177-202 (in Theorizing Museums, edited by Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe, Blackwell, 1998)
· James Allen, Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, Twin Palms 2000. (On Reserve)
· Without Sanctuary, website: http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/
· Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, website: http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/
· National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, website: http://www.freedomcenter.org/
WEEK 9 Museums and Race in the United States: Native Americans (May 26+28)
· William W. Fitzhugh, “Ambassadors in Sealskins: Exhibiting Eskimos at the Smithsonian,” p. 206-245 (in Exhibiting Dilemmas: Issues of Representation at the Smithsonian, edited by Amy Henderson and Adrienne L. Kaeppler, Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997)
· Tony Bennett, “Four Northwest Coast Museums: Travel Reflections,” p. 212-254 (in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display, edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991)
· Danielle LaVaque-Manty, “There are Indians in the Museum of Natural History,” Wicazo Sa Review, vol. 15, no. 1, The Secular Past, the Mythic Past, and the Impending Future. (Spring 2000), p. 71-89.
· George Pierre Castile, “Commodification of Indian Identity,” American Anthropologist, New Series, vol. 98, no. 4 (Dec. 1996), pp. 743-749.
WEEK 10 Critiques of the Museum (June 2+4)
For Tuesday:
· Video: The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey, (31 min.) –- On Reserve Langsam
· Coco Fusco, “The Other History of Intercultural Performance,” TDR (1988-), vol. 38, no. 1 (Spring 1994), pp. 143-167.
· Diana Taylor, “A Savage Performance: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco’s ‘Couple in the Cage’,” TDR (1988-), vol. 42, no. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 160-175.
· Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimbeltt, “The Ethnographic Burlesque,” TDR (1988-), vol. 42, no. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 175-180.
· Coco Fusco, “Fusco Responds to Taylor and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett,” TDR (1988-), vol. 42, no. 4 (Winter 1998), pp. 10-12.
For Thursday:
· Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, Mice on Toast, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology, Vintage Books, 1996
June 9: FINAL EXAM (In class) 2:15 p.m. — 4:15 p.m. Essay due at beginning of exam.
Bring blue books!
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