Museums and Medicine

This course is designed to introduce students to the relationship of the museum as a history-specific institution which arose in the late 18th and early 19th century in Western Europe (and then, the United States), and its relationship to colonial medicine. The course also asks students to imagine other models of medicine and practices of curation juxtaposing historical case studies with current debates in museology and curatorial praxis, around collection histories and the possibility of transforming the museum into a space of healing and repair. Collection visits at Princeton and field trips to Philadelphia will form part of the course.