1. Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach have famously described the museum visit as ‘a civilising ritual’ that served
the purposes of the state apparatus. Who is included and who excluded in the ‘civilising ritual’ of museums
and their displays?
2. The museum has frequently been declared dead or represented in ruins. Nevertheless, it continues to
boom. With visitor numbers soaring and more and more museums being built, what does the future hold?
– You are invited to design a museum capable of meeting the challenges of the present. How do you
define its tasks? What will it show and/or collect? How will it identify and communicate with its
audiences? And what part does it play in society? Consider these and other questions as you design your
museum of today.
3. Choose one exhibit (or cluster of exhibits) in the WWI gallery to discuss what changes take place in and
around an object at the moment it is placed in to a museum; consider materiality, interpretation,
presentation, access, possibilities of use and institutional context.
READING THE PAST:
1. Ann Rigney claims ‘imaginative literature helps keep historical horizons open,’ while Richard Evans is
worried that ‘historians relying on imaginative literature are often led astray.’ What do you think? Discuss
the implications of reading novels as history.
2. In Poetics of space, Gaston Bachelard introduces the idea of ‘reading’ the house. What readings are
possible in the novels from our sessions? Can houses (and gardens) be considered active, even destructive
forces?
3. Notions of the ‘other’ and the ‘outsider’ are common in Gothic fiction. Discuss how and why this might be
the case, using examples from our sessions.
5
POSTCOLONIAL PERSPECTIVES:
1. Have museums been successful in ‘turning the world upside down’, Robert Young’s challenge to the
dominant, usually Western view of culture. (R. J Young, 2003)? Evaluate the response or otherwise to
postcolonial discourse with reference to a museum and its displays
2. ‘The artist who has decided to illustrate the truths of the nation turns paradoxically towards the past’
(Frantz Fanon, 1961). Discuss with reference to the work of two artists.
3. Analyse the work of an “African” artist between notions of tradition (heritage, nation, colonialism) and
globalization. Ensure you employ theoretical frameworks for both understandings of tradition or local
cultures and globalization.
MEMORY SOCIETY POLITICS:
1. ‘One of the most surprising cultural and political phenomena of recent years has been the emergence
of memory as a key concern in Western societies ‘ (A. Huyssen). Discuss with reference to detailed
analysis of a film or culturally produced interventions as acts of remembrance.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/public_culture/v012/12.1huyssen.html
2. In what ways have either artists or architects engaged with the challenge of memorialising the
Holocaust? What challenges does their work raise for visitors/spectators?