Universität Wien
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240533 VO MM3 Introduction to Museum Anthropology (2026S)

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 24 - Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie
Moodle

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Details

Language: English

Examination dates

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

  • Friday 06.03. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 13.03. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 20.03. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 17.04. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 08.05. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 15.05. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 22.05. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 29.05. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 05.06. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 12.06. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 19.06. 15:00 - 16:30 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

This lecture introduces students to museum anthropology as a sub-discipline concerned with the
history, politics, and ethics of ethnographic collections in museological contexts. The aim of the
lecture is to provide students with an understanding of both the historical formation of this sub-
discipline and the ethnographic museum itself. Students will learn about early practices of collection
and exhibition and how these changed through time. A further focus lies on current museological debates,
including new museological approaches, and decolonizing the museum through provenance research and
resistitution. The lecture also conveys what roles anthropologists have assumed in institutions exhibiting
ethnographic collections, the role of the anthropologist as curator, and the building of relationships with
indigenous communities.

Assessment and permitted materials

The course involves formal lectures with the use of audio and visual materials. Students are expected
to write an exam at the end, which will consist of questions to which they have to provide short written
answers.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

To pass the course, students have to reach at least 51% of all points.
Grades:
1: 100 % bis 91 %
2: 90 % bis 76 %
3:75 % bis 61 %
4: 60 % bis 51 %
5: 50% and lower

Examination topics

Lecture contents and specific readings

Reading list

Readings:

Primary Readings:
Bennett, Tony. 1988. “The Exhibitionary Complex.” New Formations 4: 73–102.
Kuper, Adam, 2023. The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions. London: Profile Books.
Penny, H. Glenn. In Humboldt’s Shadow: A Tragic History of German Ethnology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021.

Additional reading:
Barth, Fredrik, André Gingrich, Robert Parkin, and Sydel Silverman. 2005. One Discipline, Four Ways: British, German, French, and American Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Conklin, Alice L. 2013. In the Museum of Man: Race, Anthropology, and Empire in France, 1850–1950. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Cvetkovski, Roland, and Alexis Hofmeister, editors. An Empire of Others: Creating Ethnographic Knowledge in Imperial Russia and the USSR. Central European University Press, 2014.
Hicks, Dan. 2020. The brutish museums: The Benin bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution. London: Pluto Press.
Karp, Ivan, and Steven Lavine. 1991. Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Matiasek, Katarina, and Harald Wilfing. 2021. “Evolutionary Anthropology, Colonial Histories and a Collection Reframed.” In Das Museum im kolonialen Kontext: Annäherungen aus Österreich, edited by Pia Schölnberger, 81–98. Vienna: Czernin Verlag.
Mirzoeff, N. 2017. Empty the museum, decolonize the curriculum, open theory. Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 25 (53). doi:
10.7146/nja.v25i53.26403.
Modest, Wayne, Nicholas Thomas, Doris Prlic, and Claudia Augustat. 2019. Matters of belonging: Ethnographic museums in a changing Europe. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
Penny, H. Glenn. Objects of Culture: Ethnology and Ethnographic Museums in Imperial Germany. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002
Rydell, Robert W. 1987. All the world’s a fair: Visions of empire at American international expositions, 1876-1916. Paperback ed. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Fr 06.03.2026 12:47