Anthropology 303 - Eat! An Exhibition

Fall
2019
01
4.00
Amy Hall
W 02:00PM-05:00PM
Amherst College
ANTH-303-01-1920F
GREA 102
acoxhall@amherst.edu

In this weekly seminar, students will research, design, and install an exhibition at the Mead Museum centered on the theme of food. Working in teams, students will have the opportunity to experience various aspects of curating a museum exhibit - from selecting and researching art and objects to display, to determining interpretive strategies, to coordinating installation, to writing object labels, to planning educational and public programs for the exhibition. Critical course readings centered on food and museum studies during the first half of the course will provide the foundation for student-directed research outside the class. Situating art and objects as both visual culture and ethnographic evidence, the course asks: How have people built kinship, community and meaning through food and eating? What visual and material culture has been created to celebrate and interrogate the act of planting, preparing, and consuming food? What has been considered a food delicacy and how has that shifted in time? In what ways have foodstuffs been part of a “transit of empire”? What new stories might emerge through conversations amongst those objects?

Limited to 18 students. Fall semester. Visiting Professor Hall and E. Potter-Ndiaye.

Permission is required for interchange registration during the add/drop period only.