Study day list
Museums and Communities
The history of anthropology is intimately linked to museums. Over the last few decades there has been an attempt at involving various communities into museum work as a means to repair to criticism moved against the institution as monolithic, static, and un-democratic. The course looks at the various ways in which communities are and can be engaged in museum work, offering an interesting perspective of the role of museums today. Being the first step into a very complex field, the course aims at familiarizing students with major issues in current museology, with the objective of raising awareness of the different ways in which cultural material can be variably used and classified.
The course can attract students in museum studies, education, and community engagement, but also aspiring museum guides, and anyone interested in institutional ethics, as well as those working in community development, cultural resources managements, and heritage. Furthermore, it can expand critical, analytical, and topical knowledge among prospective education officers, community leaders, and cultural ambassadors.
Museums and communities: Marrakesh, wall decoration (© Max Carocci, 2009)
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Anthropology of Fashion and Dress: Pondicherry, textiles drying in the sun (© Max Carocci, 2015)
Anthropology of clothing and fashion
What can anthropology tell us about fashion, clothing and dress? This study day explores the differences and similarities between Fashion Studies and an Anthropology of clothing. It addresses the ways in which anthropology makes sense of how people change their appearances in a variety of different ways, while providing a short history of the role that appearances had in the classification of different peoples. While offering interesting new facts and insights into the world of bodily practices, the course opens up a series of thought-provoking questions that may help us reframe how we look at other people.
The course can attract students in sociology, postcolonial, cultural, and media studies, as well as those following practice-based subjects such as fashion and textiles studies, jewellery, and hairdressing. It can also expand critical, analytical, and topical knowledge among tattoo artists, professionals in the creative and fashion industry (designers, journalists, merchandisers, stylists), and whoever has a curiosity and interest in the social and cultural dimensions of fashion, clothing and dress
Curating Non-Western Arts in Western Institutions
Over the last few decades, the presence of non-Western objects in museums and galleries has raised important questions about value, aesthetics and hierarchies between cores and peripheries. This concentrated one day course provides a map for navigating the difficult terrain of non-Western arts and their place in Western institutions. Partially based on the tutor’s own experience in curating and teaching non-Western visual cultures and World Arts, the course addresses the flexible dividing lines between classes of objects from beyond the West. The study day hopes to provide a new toolkit for students to analyse non-Western objects in multiple contexts, from the art gallery, to the museum shop, the auction house, and the collector’s home.
The course may be interesting to junior curators, museum guides, journalists in the culture sector, collectors, and art practitioners, crafts people and artisans, folklorists, and gallerists.
