Kerry Ward

Examining museums in global history gives critical insight into their present role in society. Museums were sites of identity at local, regional, national, imperial and global levels. The collection and display of objects allowed communities, states, and empires to use cultural heritage, history, and science to interpret the past.

This theory course concerns historical knowledge and the practices of doing History. Topics may include: the construction of historical knowledge; the construction of historical ignorance and agnotology; the construction of archives and the relationship between History and archives; textual vs non-textual archives; changing approaches to what History studies or what counts as history. Some of the themes of the course may include what is an archive? What is its relationship to power and Western and non-Western ways of knowing and evidence? Could an archive be a shrine, spirit possession, or non-government sanctioned and curated? Could or should an historian jettison the archive?