Class Schedule

August 27: First class:

Lecture: History museums as "contested realms"

Discussion: "My most memorable historical museum"--What makes them memorable?

September 3: Museum missions

Preclass site visit: Daughters of the Republic of Texas Museum, take notes, using the Carr reading as a framework.
Address: I-35 and 183 junction/access road
Hours: Monday-Friday 10AM-4PM, closed Labor Day
Entrance fee: $1 for students with ID

Readings:
David Carr, "Appendix B: To Observe," in The Promise of Cultural Institutions (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira), 193-200.
Excellence and Equity:Education and the Public Dimension of Museums (Washington: American Association of Museums, 1992). Read entire booklet.

Lecture/Discussion: Who makes history museums?

September 10: Elements of traditional museum practice

Preclass site visit: Texas Military Forces Museum, Camp Mabry
Address: Camp Mabry, off 35th Street; ask directions at gate
Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 10AM-4PM
Entrance fee: free

Readings:
Pearce, Susan. Museums, Objects, and Collections: A Cultural Study (Washington: Smithsonian, 1992), Chapters 1 and 2, 1-35.
Wallace, Mike. "Visiting the Past: History museums in the United States," in Mickey Mouse History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 3-32.

Lecture/Discussion: Collecting, maintaining, displaying

September 17: Artifacts I: What's in a thing?

Show-and-tell: Students will bring an artifact with a personal connection to be discussed in class

Readings:
Crew, Spencer D., and James E. Sims. "Locating Authenticity: Fragments of a Dialogue," in Karp and Lavine (eds.), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington: Smithsonian, 1991), 159-175.
Kopytoff, Igor, "The Cultural biography of things: Commoditization as process," in Arjun Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in cultural perspective (Cambridge: CUP, 1986), 64-91.
Pearce, Susan. Museums, Objects, and Collections: A Cultural Study (Washington: Smithsonian, 1992), Chapters 3 and 4, 36-38.

Lecture/Discussion: Production and meaning of artifacts

September 24: Artifacts II: What's left after living?

Preclass site visit: George Washington Carver Museum [student-discovered local venue to substitute]
Address: 1165 Angelina Street
Hours: Tuesday-Thursday 10AM-6PM; Friday-Saturday 12PM-5PM
Entrance fee: free

Readings:
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. "Objects of Ethnography," in Karp and Lavine (eds.), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington: Smithsonian, 1991), 386-443.
Jordanova, Ludmilla. "Objects of knowledge: A Historical perspective on museums," in Peter Vergo (ed.), The New Museology (London: Reaktion, 1989), 22-40.
Pearce, Susan. Museums, Objects, and Collections: A Cultural Study (Washington: Smithsonian, 1992), Chapters 5 and 6, 89-143.
Ruffins, Fath Davis. "Mythos, Memory, and History: African American Preservation Efforts, 1820-1990," in Karp and Lavine, Museums and Communities, 507-611.

Lecture/Discussion: Artifact survival and the effect on meaning

October 1: Texts: Who says?

Preclass site visit: O. Henry Museum
Address: 409 East 5th Street
Hours: Wednesday-Sunday 12PM-5PM
Entrance fee: free

Readings:
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Chapter 1, "The Power in the Story," from Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon, 1995), 1-30.
Galloway, Patricia. "The Archaeology of Ethnohistorical Narrative," in David Hurst Thomas (ed.), Columbian Consequences, Volume 3 (Washington: Smithsonian, 1991), 453-469.

Essay topics announced

Lecture/Discussion: "Reading" paper, voice, other cultural productions

October 8: Communities I: story-bearers

Preclass site visit: No assigned site visit this week to leave you time to work on your paper proposal.

Readings:
Clifford, James. "Four Northwest Coast museums: Travel reflections," in Karp and Lavine (eds.), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington: Smithsonian, 1991), 212-254.
Handler, Richard. "On having a culture: Nationalism and the preservation of Quebec's Patrimoine," in George W. Stocking (ed.), Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 192-217.
Lavine, Steven D. "Audience, Ownership, and Authority: Designing relations between museums and communities," in Karp, Kreamer, and Lavine (eds.), Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington: Smithsonian, 1992), 137-157.
Rosenzweig, Roy, and David Thelen. The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), read Chapter 1 (15-36) and 4 (89-114); if you have time also read "Afterthoughts," 177-208. This book is available as an e-book through the UT Library catalog.

Paper proposals due to be turned in.

Lecture/Discussion: Working with communities

October 15: The work of the exhibit team

Class visit: Bob Bullock museum of Texas History. Located across MLK from the Sanchez building. Note that there is a $5.50 admission charge for this museum. We will meet at the door of the museum at 2 P.M. sharp, so be there so you can get your ticket; each student will then visit the permanent exhibits on all three floors of the museum for two hours; at 4:00 we will reassemble in one of the museum classrooms for a lecture-discussion (see below).

Readings:
Galloway, Patricia. "Revising the South's Colonial Story for a Postcolonial Audience," presented at American Historical Association 1996 meeting, session Revisioning the Past.
Visit the background webpage for the Bob Bullock museum and follow up on the links for participating designers and planners: http://www.tspb.state.tx.us/tspb/TSHM/About/Backgrnd.htm

Lecture from Lynn Denton, museum director:
how the museum works
funding and audience issues
how the museum works with stakeholders

October 22: Communicating histories I: conceptual

Readings:
Baxandall, Michael. "Exhibiting Intention: Some preconditions of the visual display of culturally purposeful objects," in Karp and Lavine (eds.), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington: Smithsonian, 1991), 33-41.
Pearce, Susan. Museums, Objects, and Collections: A Cultural Study (Washington: Smithsonian, 1992), Chapters 7, 8, and 9, 144-209.
Chenhall, Robert. Nomenclature for museum cataloging : a system for classifying man-made objects (Nashville: AASLH, 1978), chapters 1-3, pp. 3-38.

Lecture/Discussion: How to make a story into a visit

October 29: Communicating histories II: physical

Preclass site visit: Note: Jourdan-Bachman Pioneer Farm will not be open for us to visit. Therefore there will be no assigned visit this week; take the time to visit the museum(s) you are studying for your paper.

Readings:
Pearce, Susan. Museums, Objects, and Collections: A Cultural Study (Washington: Smithsonian, 1992), Chapter 10, 228-255.
Kulik, Gary. "Designing the Past: History-Museum Exhibitions from Peale to the Present," in Warren Leon and Roy Rosenzweig (eds.), History Museums in the United States: A Critical Assessment (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 2-37.
Belcher, Michael. Exhibitions in Museums (Washington: Smithsonian, 1991), Chapter 9, pp. 99-121.

Lecture/Discussion: Space, movement, and story

November 5: Communities II: story-hearers

Preclass site visit: LBJ Library museum exhibits (UT campus)
Address: 2313 Red River, on UT campus
Hours: Every day except Christmas, 9AM-5PM
Entrance fee: free; parking also convenient and free
Be sure to leave yourself plenty of time for this, as there is more there than you may think.

Readings:
Eco, Umberto. "Travels in Hyperreality," in Travels in Hyperreality (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 3-58. This one is optional, chiefly for the little section on the LBJ exhibits. You can find it at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/eco2.html
Pearce, Susan. Museums, Objects, and Collections: A Cultural Study (Washington: Smithsonian, 1992), Chapter 11.
Wallace, Mike. "Museums and Controversy," in Mickey Mouse History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 115-129.
Handler, Richard, and Eric Gable. The New History in an Old Museum (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998). This book covers a study of Williamsburg by two anthropologists and is an interesting read. But it's not as available as I had hoped, so here is an interesting substitute: paired articles from the Journal of American History, June 1994 (available through JSTOR: just look for Journal of American History in the PCL catalog), the first one a summary of the work, followed by a response from Williamsburg:
Eric Gable and Richard Handler, "The Authority ofDocuments at Some American History Museums," JAH 81(1), June 1994, 119-136.
Cary Carson, "Lost in the Fun House: A Commentary on Anthropologists' First Contact with History Museums," JAH 81(1), June 1994, 137-150.

Lecture/Discussion: What makes the visitor's experience?

November 12: Historical museums and informal learning

Preclass site visit: Texas State Cemetery
Address: 909 Navasota
Hours: M-F, 8-5; Sat 8-1

Readings:
Heumann Gurian, Elaine. "Noodling around with exhibition opportunities," in Karp and Lavine (eds.), Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington: Smithsonian, 1991), 176-190.
Merriman, Nick. "Museum visiting as a cultural phenomenon," in Peter Vergo (ed.), The New Museology (London: Reaktion, 1989), 149-171.
Gordon Fyfe and Max Ross. "Decoding the visitor's gaze: rethinking museum visiting," in Sharon MacDonald and Gordon Fyfe (eds.), Theorizing Museums: Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 127-150.

Lecture/Discussion: Reception of meaning in the historical museum

November 19: Austin's historical landscape and museums

Reading:
Perin, Constance. "The Communicative Circle: Museums as Communities," in Karp et al., Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington: Smithsonian, 1992), 182-220.
Peter Gould and Rodney White, Mental Maps (Baltimore: Penguin, 1974), 15-49.

Lecture/Discussion: Understanding Austin's historical landscape

November 26: Student investigations in historical museums

Student Presentations: Each student will present a five-minute summary of research for the term paper. Students will be expected to be prepared to answer questions on the research and to discuss other students' papers. Each paper will be allowed a ten-minute time slot to allow for five minutes' discussion afterwards. This is your chance to hone your paper's ideas a little and get feedback on it from your classmates.

December 3: Final discussions: What have we learned?

Lecture/Discussion: Summary of take-home points from the course, discussion of issues raised by student papers.

Term papers due; take-home exam questions passed out

Class evaluation

December 13: Take-home exam papers due (email as attachment to instructor) For access to the take-home exam assignment, click here.