- Department: History of Art
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: M
- Academic year of delivery: 2023-24
- See module specification for other years: 2024-25
Who owns antiquities? This module tackles this question by focusing on nineteenth-century European colonialism in Western Asia (the “Middle East”) and the formation of universal or encyclopaedic museums in major European and American cities.
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Semester 2 2023-24 |
Who owns antiquities? Cultural, legal, economic, and political dimensions of this question continue to inform debates on the restitution and repatriation of antiquities, with immense repercussions for the fields of museology, art history, and archaeology. This module will tackle these issues by focusing on nineteenth-century European colonialism in Western Asia (the “Middle East”) and the formation of universal or encyclopaedic museums in major European and American cities. We will explore the intricate ties that link museology and archaeology with efforts of empire- and nation- building, as well as with exclusionary politics and the antiquities market. We will also pay special attention to the contemporaneous formation of non-Western museums (e.g., The Ottoman Imperial Museum), and incorporate into our analyses various indigenous sources and archaeologies. This will lead us to delve into the political nature of the concept of the archive, namely whose voices are heard and whose are suppressed, and will help us critically engage with narratives that dominate both popular and scholarly discourses today. Finally, we will turn to the practical aspects of curating by delving into one of the most pressing issues in the field: the exhibition and publication of objects with questionable provenance (histories of ownership).
By the end of the module, students should have acquired:
A solid grounding in the current debates on the restitution and repatriation of antiquities
A critical understanding of the intersections of archaeology, art history, and museology with the
histories of colonialism
Familiarity with the legal, political, and economic backgrounds of the restitution debate as well as
their historical trajectory
The ability to think critically about art historical and archaeological narratives, exhibition
didactics, and designs by situating them within the histories of the restitution and repatriation
debate
An understanding of the impact of provenance research on curatorial decision-making processes
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
You will receive feedback on assessed work within the timeframes set out by the University - please check the Guide to Assessment, Standards, Marking and Feedback for more information.
The purpose of feedback is to help you to improve your future work. If you do not understand your feedback or want to talk about your ideas further, you are warmly encouraged to meet your Tutor and/or Supervisor during their office hours.
Azoulay, Ariela Ai¨sha. Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London and Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 2019.
Bahrani, Zainab. “Conjuring Mesopotamia: Imaginative Geography and a World Past.” In Archaeology Under Fire, edited by Lynn Meskell, 159-74. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.
Bahrani, Zainab, Zeynep C¸elik, and Edhem Eldem, eds. Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914. Istanbul: SALT, 2011.
Cuno, James. Who Owns Antiquity? Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
C¸elik, Zeynep. About Antiquities: Politics of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016.
El-Daly, Okasha. Egyptology: The Missing Millennium: Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings. London: Routledge, 2007.
Hartman, Saidiya. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2019.
Shaw, Wendy M. K. Possessors and Possessed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003.
Trigger, Bruce G. “Alternative Archaeologies: Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist,” Man, New Series, v. 19, No. 3 (September1984), pp. 355-370.
Von Dassow, Eva. “Nation Building in the Plain of Antioch from Hatti to Hatay.” In Perspectives on
the History of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, edited by Agnes Garcia-Ventura and Lorenzo Verderame, pp. 190-208. University Park, Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns, 2020.