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Elena Razlogova Introduction to Museum Studies Sample Syllabus Description This course provides an introduction to the theoretical and practical issues confronting history museums and curators in the United States today. Student will read case studies on how particular museums have been founded, managed, and transformed; and learn from museum curators about the intricacies of artifact accession and exhibition production. They will visit and evaluate museums and virtual exhibits, study major exhibit controversies, and consider debates about the politics of memory and visual display. These theoretical and methodological readings will provide a basis for a hand-on section of the course where students will create a proposal for an actual or virtual museum exhibit. Requirements and Grades There are four main requirements for this course: 1. Active Participation in discussions, both online and in class. 2. An analysis of a material culture object. 3. A Exhibit Review Essay, in which you will evaluate an actual or virtual museum exhibit of your choice. 4. An Exhibit Proposal--a plan for an actual or virtual museum exhibit. These major requirements will make up your final grade with the different items roughly weighed as follows: participation (20%); material object analysis (15%); review essay (30%); project proposal (35%). Weekly assignments will include visits to local museums. You will be expected to report on your experience of these museums and exhibits in class and online. There will be an online component to class participation. This component is meant to extend discussion beyond our meeting times, to encourage debates on your projects, and to define this seminar as a workshop and a group experience. Everyone is strongly encouraged to post reflections on the class discussions, readings, and projects to our class email list. As a general guideline, you should initiate online discussion at least twice and respond to topics raised by others at least twice. Readings Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig, eds., History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989). Mike Wallace, Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). Richard Handler and Eric Gable, The New History in an Old Museum : Creating the Past at Colonial Williamsburg (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997). Edward Tabor Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America's Holocaust Museum (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). Additional readings will be available online and provided in xerox. Syllabus Week 1: Museum Studies: Introduction, Requirements, and Themes Week 2: Museum Exhibit Production Workshop Meet at the National Museum of American History Guest: Pete Daniel, Curator Read: David Dean, "The Exhibition Development Process," in The Educational Role of the Museum , ed. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (2nd ed.; 1999). Communications Design Team, Royal Ontario Museum, "Spatial Considerations," in The Educational Role of the Museum. John Hennigar Shuh, "Teaching Yourself to Teach with Objects," in The Educational Role of the Museum. Michael Baxandall, "Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects," in Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display , ed. Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine (1991). Week 3: Digital History Workshop Meet in the Computer Lab Prepare: Bring your password to your web hosting account, a free trial copy of Dreamweaver MX 2004, and a free Internet file transfer program (WS-FTP, Secure Shell, Fetch, or Fugu) Read: Dan Cohen, draft chapters for Making Online History (these
are best read online because of the hyperlinks): Jacob Nielsen, Alertboxes: Larry Gales, "Web Page Design Inspired by Edward Tufte" http://staff.washington.edu/larryg/Classes/Rinflux/zz-influx.html Reference: Dreamweaver Tutorial: http://www.macromedia.com/support/dreamweaver/tutorial_index.html Intro to HTML: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/96/53/index0a.html?tw=authoring HTML Teaching Tool: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/teachingtool/index.html HTML Cheatsheet: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/reference/html_cheatsheet/index.html Derek M. Powazek, The Basic, Basic Table: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/96/47/index3a.html?tw=authoring Week 4: The Museum and Historic Site in Context Read: Part One, in History Museums in the United States Wallace, Introduction, "Visiting the Past," "Razor Ribbons," "Boat People," "Progress Talk," and "Industrial Museums," in Mickey Mouse History. Harold Skramstead, "An Agenda for American Museums in the Twenty-First Century,"Daedalus (Summer 1999): 109-129. Visit and Evaluate: National Museum of Health and Medicine The Lost Museum http://lostmuseum.cuny.edu/ Write and Post on the web: Analysis of a Material Object (illustrated) Week 5: Virtual Exhibits and Digital History Read: Wallace, "The Virtual Past: Media and History Museums," in Mickey Mouse History Sue Ann Cody, "Historical Museums on the World Wide Web: An Exploration and Critical Analysis,"Public Historian 19 (Fall 1997), 29-53. Steve Dietz, "Telling Stories: Procedural Authorship and Extracting Meaning from Museum Databases" http://www.archimuse.com/mw99/papers/dietz/dietz.html Visit and Evaluate: The Great Chicago Fire and the Web of Memory http://www.chicagohs.org/fire/index.html Do History http://www.dohistory.org National Postal Museum http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/ Black Loyalists: Our History, Our People http://collections.ic.gc.ca/blackloyalists/ Week 6: Exhibit Review Essay Presentations Write, Post on the Web, Present: Exhibit Review Essay (Note: presentations should be five minutes long with five minutes of discussion) Week 7: Telling Stories Through Objects and Images Read: Thomas J. Schlereth, "History Museums and Material Culture," in History Museums in the United States Svetlana Alpers, "The Museum as Way of Seeing," in Exhibiting Cultures Mieke Bal, "Telling, Showing, Showing Off," in Double Exposures: The Subject of Cultural Analysis (1996). Visit and Evaluate: The Smithsonian American Art Museum's collections at the Renwick Gallery George Catlin and His Indian Gallery (virtual exhibit and Catlin Classroom) http://americanart.si.edu/collections/exhibits/catlin/index.html Devices of Wonder: from the World in a Box to Images on a Screen http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/devices/choice.html HistoryWired: A Few of Our Favorite Things http://historywired.si.edu/index.html World History Sources, Art History Lesson http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/analyzing/mcobjects/analyzingobjsintro.html Week 8: Museums and Popular History Read: Handler and Eric Gable, The New History in an Old Museum Wallace, Section II, in Mickey Mouse History Visit and Evaluate: Spy Museum National Geographic: Remembering Pearl Harbor http://plasma.nationalgeorgraphic.com/pearlharbor/ The History Channel http://www.historychannel.com Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America http://www.journale.com/withoutsanctuary/ Week 9: Individual Meetings to Discuss Projects No regular class; individual meetings to discuss projects. Week 10: Museums and National Controversies Read: Wallace, "Museums and Controversy" and Section IV in Mickey Mouse History . "Introduction" and "Anatomy of a Controversy," in History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past , ed. Edward Tabor Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt (1996). Alan Wallace, "The Battle over 'The West as America'" in Art Apart: Art and Ideology Across England and North America , ed. Marcia Pointon (1994). Visit and Evaluate: National Air and Space Museum Enola Gay: Former Exhibition, National Air and Space Museum http://www.nasm.si.edu/galleries/gal103/gal103_former.html Week 11: Museums and the Politics of Memory Read: Linenthal, Preserving Memory Alison Landsberg, "America, the Holocaust, and the Mass Culture of Memory: Toward a Radical Politics of Memory," New German Critique 71 (Spring/Summer 1997): 63-86 . Frisch, "The Memory of History," in Shared Authority David Glassberg, "Public History and the Study of Memory," Public Historian 18 (Spring 1996): 7-23. Visit and Evaluate: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (web site) http://www.ushmm.org/ Week 12: Museums and American Cultures Read: Part II, in History Museums in the United States Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Objects of Ethnography," in Exhibiting Cultures . Gaby Porter, "Seeing Through Solidity: A Feminist Perspective on Museums," in Theorizing Museums: Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World, ed. S. MacDonald and G. Fyfe (1996). Donna Haraway, "Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936," in Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Science (New York: Routledge, 1989), 26-388. Visit and Evaluate: Smithsonian Museum of Natural History National Museum of the American Indian (by special arrangement) American Memory http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html Week 13: Museums and Shared Authority Read: Michael Frisch, "Introduction," in A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (1990). John Kuo Wei Tchen, "Back to the Basics: Who Is Researching and Interpreting for Whom?" Journal of American History 81 (December 1994): 1004-1010. Roy Rosenzweig, "Afterthoughts: Everyone a Historian," in Presenting the Past http://chnm.gmu.edu/survey/afterroy.html Stephen E. Weil, "From Being about Something to Being for Somebody: The Ongoing Transformation of the American Museum," Daedalus (Summer 1999): 109-129, 229-258. Week 14: Presentation of Final Projects Students project proposal presentations. Week 15: Presentations of Final Projects Project presentations continued. Final Projects Due |