The museum holds itself to be the preserver of cultural memory, yet museums as we know them are a nineteenth-century invention. This course explores their function as shapers of cultural practice and national identity while considering recent efforts to reach communities previously excluded from the museum world. We'll talk a great deal too about how museums work as classifiers of knowledge and how they represent culture, as commodity and experience.
This is a fun course, but it requires a lot of effort. Be prepared to read, write, and discuss your way through an activity-packed semester. Along the way, We'll visit ten local museums and historic sites for behind-the-scenes tours of some of the most historically significant and most cutting-edge museums in the United States.
Welcome back, too, those of you who've taken this course in the past and are still following along on the blog. Feel free to join in and share your expertise in the online conversation.
Looking forward to a great semester--see you all soon!
