IVAN GASKELL
Bard
Graduate Center
CURRENT AND FUTURE
COURSES
876
Tangible Things: Observing, Collecting, Sorting
The objective of this course is to use object-centered historical
and interdisciplinary research to advance the conception of a future exhibition
drawn from the many collections at Harvard University. Buried in storage within
Harvard’s museums are relics of “international experiences” —moments of
wonder, envy, conflict, and appropriation—that extend over more than
three centuries. They expose the intellectual assumptions and the political and
economic forces that have shaped American encounters with the world. Treating
divisions among the arts, the humanities, and the sciences as permeable, the
seminar will investigate how collecting and categorizing tangible things have
progressively shaped social, intellectual, and cultural boundaries in American
society. The seminar will be conducted in parallel with a seminar at Harvard University
convened by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. The two seminars will confer
electronically, and (funding permitting) will hold two joint residential
weekend workshops, one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one in New York City.
Given fall semester, 2012
Wednesdays at 1.30