Fall 2023 Course Schedule

MONDAY:

Museum Career Lab
MSMS-GA 3990-002, Class # 19241 (2 Points)
Rosanna Flouty
Monday, 1:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

Navigating the museum field as an emerging professional requires self-advocacy, communication, and an adept understanding of how to leverage a personal network and create a personal brand as a pathway toward career opportunities. Museum Career Lab is a space for cultivating these skills and having honest conversations about challenges experienced in museum work. Students will learn strategies for communicating in a variety of potentially complicated situations, establish professional goals, and will discuss core concepts involved in the practice of being “at work” in museums, including institutional culture, politics, and processes. This course is intended to best serve the needs of students at this pivotal point of their academic and professional career. Seven class meetings will range in formats from group discussions, guest speakers, and individual meetings. Museum Career Lab, like the practice of museums, is emerging and evolving in real-time as the field responds to a changing landscape and is designed to meet the needs of students in the lab. Students will be required to work on their resumes, cover letters, and networking skills. They will also be involved in shaping topics and encouraged to collaborate to format our class meetings collectively.

Museums and Communities
MSMS-GA 2228-001, Class # 2983 (4 Points)
Ilk Yasha
Monday, 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.

We have witnessed a rise in civic engagement and social justice programming in museums today. Community, history, and fine arts museums now include civic activism, community participation, and community organizing in their mission and core activities. A movement toward civic engagement and social justice manifests in all aspects of museum practice, including exhibition, education, and collections care. In this seminar, we investigate the theoretical underpinnings of these programs along with their practical implementation and evaluation. We assess museum activism in the context of inequality and racism within the museum itself and community resistance against museums. Students build an understanding of community programming in the context of current literature on the museum in the public sphere, the museum as contact zone, placemaking, and museum ethics. Guest speakers address community-based programming, including the logistics of program development, program evaluation, and program website design. The seminar combines project-based learning with reading, discussion, and writing about theory that motivates and critiques community-based museum programming. Students choose their own final projects. Options include assessing an existing community-based museum program, designing a new museum-based program and developing its website, and writing a seminar paper.

TUESDAY:

Decolonizing Museums
MSMS-GA 3330-001, Class # 19239 (4 Points)
Jane Anderson
Tuesday, 9:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

Ethnographic and universal museums are increasingly in crisis. Critical questions about how such museums came to hold their collections, and the colonial conditions of their accumulation are being asked alongside other concerns for appropriate display, collection management and community engagement. Through a lens where decolonization is understood as a call for ethical and equitable transformation of the museum, its objects and its ‘subjects’, this course explores “the museum” as a site of ethnographic inquiry itself, examining it as a social institution embedded in a broader field of cultural heritage that is perpetually under negotiation. We reflect on how museum principles of classification, practices of collection and exhibition, uptake of media, technology, and archiving have influenced the ways in which knowledge has been formed, presented, and represented; and interrogate the role of museums as significant social actors in broad anthropological debates on power, materiality, value, representation, culture, nationalism, circulation, aesthetics, science, history, and “new” technologies. The movement to decolonize the museum is only increasing and in this course we will explore what this means at a theoretical and practical level with a focus on how the museum can respond and indeed transform for the future.

Research Seminar
MSMS-GA 3991-001, Class # 2507 (2 Points)
Miriam Basilio
Tuesday, 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

This course includes candidates for both the Advanced Certificate and the M.A. in Museum Studies. The class is designed to help students identify a research question, navigate relevant primary and secondary sources, and produce a well-written, well-organized research paper at the end of the term. For those in the Advanced Certificate program, the course will focus on a final 30-page (double-spaced) Museum Studies research paper. M.A. students will focus on writing an introduction and one chapter of a master’s thesis. The research seminar provides students with a collective structure and series of deadlines as they develop individual research projects. Students will be responsible for their own research and writing, as well as thoughtful reading and comments in writing groups.

Research Seminar
MSMS-GA 3991-003, Class # 2991 (2 Points)
Camille-Mary Sharp
Tuesday, 4:55 p.m. - 6:55 p.m.

WEDNESDAY:

Museums & Contemporary Art
MSMS-GA 3335-001, Class # 2856 (4 Points)
TBD, Adjunct
Wednesday, 9:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

This course investigates historical, theoretical, and practical aspects of the collecting and exhibiting of contemporary art in museums. Topics include curatorial strategies for exhibition and collection development, conservation issues, museums and social activism, and conflicts of interest that arise for museum staff and trustees.

History and Theory of Museums
MSMS-GA 1500-002, Class # 2500 (4 Points)
Lauraberth Lima
Wednesday, 1:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

This course introduces students to the theoretical foundations of museum studies, tracing the social, cultural, and political history of museums. We follow the formation of the modern museum with a specific focus on the U.S. context. The course examines a variety of museum genres – encyclopedic museums, art museums, museums of natural history, and even historic houses – through an interdisciplinary lens that attends to critical topics such as colonialism, gender and sexuality, and the politics of knowledge. Students are expected to engage with required course texts and conduct weekly visits to New York museums. Assignments include weekly reading reflections, an exhibition review, and a final research paper.

Research Seminar
MSMS-GA 3991-004, Class # 19242 (2 Points)
Marisa Karyl Franz
Wednesday, 2:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

History and Theory of Museums
MSMS-GA 1500-001, Class # 2499 (4 Points)
Camille-Mary Sharp
Wednesday, 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.

THURSDAY:

Museum Management
MSMS-GA 1502-001, Class # 23178 (4 Points)
Helen Warwick
Thursday, 9:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

This core course provides an overview of the management capabilities required, and the core management tools used, in today's museums. During the course we will also review current issues in museums and have the opportunity to discuss our views on the leadership and management shown in addressing these issues.

Participants will be introduced to a range of museum professionals and be asked to complete individual and group assignments that will prepare them for understanding museum management challenges. There will be the opportunity to explore how museums have approached current issues, strategic planning, financial management, the development of a mission-aligned program and collection, marketing and communications plans, and methods to achieve sustainability. And the resources provided on each topic will provide reference materials for future use. Care will be taken to assess how museums can support people, resources, collections and infrastructures that their communities need. Collectively, we will gain an understanding of the practical strategies that create and maintain well-run museums that are meaningful to their publics and the field.

Topics in Museum Studies: Death, Decay, Destruction
MSMS-GA 3330-002, Class # 19240 (4 Points)
Marisa Karyl Franz
Thursday, 1:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

This course focuses on museums and other sites of memory as places entangled with loss. Together, we will discuss aspects of the histories, ethics, care, and politics surrounding work such as collections of human remains, conservation work in cemeteries, and purposeful destruction of art installations. As a class, we will engage with theories of dark tourism, nostalgia, moral and ethical philosophy, and existential threats to our world. We will address a wide variety of case studies including ruins that are preserved as decaying sites, ghosts who haunt historic house museums, prison museums as spaces of political activism, and the art practice around sites of nuclear destruction. At the center of the course is a consideration of how we care for ends and endings to address the creative and intellectual space of impermanence within sites of preservation. While these are challenging topics, we will be collaboratively exploring the productive possibilities of these concepts and the place of death, decay, and destruction within our philosophical and cultural traditions.

Museums & Interactive Technologies
MSMS-GA 2225-001, Class # 3210 (4 Points)
TBD, Adjunct
Thursday, 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.

This course examines how museums use networked technologies and digital media in the development and fulfillment of their missions. Students consider the creative, theoretical, and practical implications of integrating various technologies from multiple perspectives. Students gain an understanding of the ever-shifting landscape of social media and digital marketing, digital-born artworks, emerging technologies, and the role of digital practice in confronting issues of social justice.

FRIDAY:

Museum Education
MSMS-GA 2224-001, Class # 2504 (4 Points)
Sharon Vatsky
Friday, 1:45 p.m. - 4:45 p.m.

This seminar provides an overview of the field of Museum Education. The field is considered in the context of the museum's relationship to its multiple constituent communities, with application to a broad range of audiences. Topics to be considered include object-based learning, program planning, evaluation, and exhibition interpretation.

OTHER:

Research in Museum Studies
MSMS-GA 3915-001, Class # 2505 (1-4 Points)
Rosanna Flouty

Independent research on a topic determined in consultation with the program director.

Internship
MSMS-GA 3990-001, Class # 2506 (2 Points)
Lauraberth Lima

M.A. and Advanced Certificate students spend a minimum of 300 hours over one or more semesters in a project-oriented internship at a museum or other suitable institution. Students nearing completion of course prerequisites (MSMS-GA 1500, MSMS-GA 1501, and MSMS-GA 1502) must schedule a planning meeting with the Program's Internship Coordinator. A daily log, evaluations, and progress report are required. Students must earn a grade of B or better to receive the M.A. or Advanced Certificate. Further information is available in the Internship Guidelines Packet.

CROSS-LISTED COURSES

Intro to Archives
MSMS-GA 1010-001, Class # 2731 (4 Points) - 2 Seats
Nicole Milano
Monday, 4:55 p.m. - 7:35 p.m.

Introduction to Archives provides an introductory overview of the archival profession. Students develop an understanding of the historical development of the field of archives and engage with current issues, trends, and theories that are shaping the profession. Students also consider the role of the archivist and the use of archives and historical collections by a range of users and become familiar with the theoretical considerations that underlie the core functions of archival administration. The course explores the legal and ethical responsibilities of archivists, as well as the codes of conduct that have been developed and debated within the profession. Students gain an understanding of how new technologies and digital records are shaping the way that archivists do their work and the skills they must develop to perform core archival functions with digital records.

Intro to Public History
MSMS-GA 1750-001, Class # 2699 (4 Points) - 2 Seats
Ellen Noonan
Wednesday, 4:55 p.m. - 7:35 p.m.

In this capstone seminar course, students are expected to undertake an original research project that relates to either the archives or public history field. The final product may take several forms: 1) a 30-50 page, article-length, research paper that might be submitted for publication in an academic journal; 2) a public history or archives project, which has been worked out with a cooperating institution, that might result in such products as a consulting report, finding aid with recommendations for handling or treating particular types of material, or collections survey; 3) an online project that contextualizes a body of historical source material and brings it to broader public attention.

Creating Digital History
MSMS-GA 2033-001, Class # 2988 (4 Points) - 2 Seats
Leah Potter
Thursday, 4:55 p.m. - 7:35 p.m.

A hands-on introduction to “doing history” in the digital age, Creating Digital History focuses on the evolving methodologies and tools used by public historians to collect, preserve, and present digital sources. Students will become familiar with a range of web-based tools and learn best practices for digitizing, adding metadata, tagging, and clearing permissions. By evaluating existing digital history projects and discussing perspectives from leading practitioners, students will also consider the role of the general public as both audiences for, and co-creators of, digital history. The core requirement is a collaborative digital history project that will be developed throughout the semester on a selected historical theme.