ANTH 330 - Decolonizing Material Culture and Museums

What is material culture? How do people relate to the world through tangible and intangible heritage? How do museums navigate meaning-making in their exhibits? This course explores the various active and recursive roles of “things” in shaping social worlds and sharing public stories. The goal of the course is to attain familiarity with museology and the theoretical perspectives therein. We will discuss the various critical perspectives on materiality and its role in museum interpretation. This course also explores historic and recent developments in museum practice including: the impacts of salvage ethnography, the rise of digitization, and the recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples in museums.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): ANTH 201 or ANTH 211
Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.